100 Quotes by Guy Kawasaki
Guy Kawasaki, an American author, speaker, and entrepreneur, has been a driving force in the tech industry, known for his evangelism of Apple products during the company's early years. Kawasaki's marketing acumen and innovative approach to business helped popularize the concept of "evangelism marketing," where he advocated for products he believed in with genuine passion. His insights into entrepreneurship, technology, and marketing have been shared through books, speaking engagements, and his role as a venture capitalist. Kawasaki's emphasis on creating products that truly improve people's lives and his willingness to challenge conventional business practices have left a lasting impact on the tech and startup ecosystems. His advice and expertise continue to guide aspiring entrepreneurs and business leaders around the world.
Guy Kawasaki Quotes
Simple and to the point is always the best way to get your point across. (Quote Meaning)
Better to fail at doing the right thing than to succeed at doing the wrong thing. (Meaning)
Patience is the art of concealing your impatience. (Quote Meaning)
Some things need to be believed to be seen. (Meaning)
Entitlement is the opposite of enchantment. (Quote Meaning)
Sales fixes everything. (Meaning)
Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. (Quote Meaning)
The art of innovation is the ability to ignore the naysayers and listen to the people in the field. (Meaning)
The purpose of a pitch is to stimulate interest, not to cover every aspect of your startup. (Quote Meaning)
Entrepreneur is not a job title. It's the state of mind of people who want to alter the future. (Meaning)
The best reason to start an organization is to make meaning. (Quote Meaning)
The hardest thing about getting started is getting started. (Meaning)
Revolutionary means you ship and then test! (Quote Meaning)
If you don't toot your own horn, don't complain that there's no music. (Meaning)
Innovation happens on the next curve. (Quote Meaning)
Eat like a bird, poop like an elephant. (Meaning)
Jump to the next curve. (Quote Meaning)
Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard. (Meaning)
A good idea is about ten percent and implementation and hard work, and luck is 90 percent.
Patience is the art of concealing your impatience.
What I lack in talent, I compensate with my willingness to grind it out. That's the secret of my life.
Smart, well-meaning people get it wrong when they start believing that the world owes them something and that the rules are different for them.
Don't worry, be crappy. (Quote Meaning)
Entrepreneurship is not for everyone.
When I finally got a management position, I found out how hard it is to lead and manage people.
Every social media post should have a beautiful graphic. If there are two identical stories, the one with the beautiful graphic will always win.
I think that no one, or very few, are born as good presenters. It's a skill that you learn.
A crash is when your competitor's program dies. (Meaning)
Coming from the U.S., you tend to look at one homogeneous market with 350 million people. But in Europe, every country has its own customs and laws.
If you make money, you might not make meaning.
Create something, sell it, make it better, sell it some more and then create something that obsoletes what you used to make.
I don't want to make more friends. I have four kids, I have plenty of friends, and all the personal relationships I need.
The most important thing is that you hire people who complement you and are better than you in specific areas. Good people hire people better than themselves. So A players hire A+ players.
A company should search for every instance of the use of its name and zoom in when there are issues - both good and bad.
My perspective is this: my allegiance is to the best product for my needs. For a computer, this means Macintosh. For phone and tablet, this means Android.
The good news about entrepreneurship is that your fate is in your hands. The bad news is that your fate is in your hands!
Good people hire people better than themselves. So A players hire A+ players. But others hire below their skills to make themselves look good. So B players hire C players. C players hire D players, etc.
Ambitious failure, magnificent failure, is a very good thing.
Great companies start because the founders want to change the world... not make a fast buck. Call me a romantic, but I think entrepreneurs should try to change the world. This comes from working at Apple... old habits die hard.
I have developed a Zen-like approach to the operating systems that people use: 'When you're ready, the right operating system will appear in your life.'
What you learn in school is the opposite of what happens in the real world. In school, you're always worried about minimums. You have to reach 20 pages or you have to have so many slides or whatever. Then you get out in the real world and you think, 'I have to have a minimum of 20 pages and 50 slides.'
Evangelism is selling the dream. (Quote Meaning)
Simple and to the point is always the most effective. (Meaning)
When you enchant people, your goal is not to make money from them or to get them to do what you want, but to fill them with great delight.
I would like my kids to inherit a world where people succeed because of merit and hard work, not entitlement, and where people accept others for what they are and not try to change them.
A simple summary of my life is that my parents worked very hard so that I could have a great education, and I took that education and worked very hard to get where I am. I would like my kids' lives to be exactly the same.
Leverage your brand. You shouldn't let two guys in a garage eat your shorts.
Most venture capitalists won't read a business plan unless the entrepreneur is introduced to them by a contact.
If you're an entrepreneur and you think that the president makes a difference to your business, you should stay at your current job.
I merely consider myself a father, and one role of a father is to provide financial resources for his family.
The A-listers and the A+ listers, are reporting the news, they're not making it.
If you look at my Twitter feed it is 99% links, but 1% is me responding and 1% of a big number is a big number.
Most people who graduate from college think they have to make a perfect choice. Is it Goldman Sachs? Is it Google? Is it Apple? They think that their first job is going to determine their career, if not their life.
I don't take myself that seriously. I'm a pragmatist.
It's hard to name a person who is unpopular who has influence.
If you have to put someone on a pedestal, put teachers. (Quote Meaning)
A large social-media presence is important because it's one of the last ways to conduct cost-effective marketing. Everything else involves buying eyeballs and ears. Social media enables a small business to earn eyeballs and ears.
Great companies start because the founders want to change the world... not make a fast buck.
Entitlement is the opposite of enchantment.
It doesn't matter whether the Dow is 5000 or 50,000. If you're an entrepreneur, there is no bad time to start a company.
I think that no one, or very few, are born as good presenters. It's a skill that you learn. The key is the 10/20/30 rule: 10 slides given in 20 minutes using no font smaller than 30 points. If people just adhered to this rule, they would double or triple the quality of their presentations.
The most powerful way to convince the interviewer that you can do the job is to show how much you already know about the industry, the company, and the products/services of the company. In other words, enchant the interviewer with how much you already know.
If you provide enough value, then you earn the right to promote your company in order to recruit new customers. The key is to always provide value.
It's easy to say that entrepreneurs will create jobs and big companies will create unemployment, but this is simplistic. The real question is who will innovate.
At the end of my life, is it better to say that I empowered people to make great stuff, or that I died with a net worth of $10 billion? Obviously I'm picking the former, although I would not mind both.
Companies in Europe should stop trying to do the U.S. version of a European idea.
A 50-year-old company can innovate as well as two guys/gals in a garage.
I do have a peripatetic and active intellectual curiosity.
― Guy Kawasaki Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
