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Ten Tips For Startups – Guy Kawasaki

Posted Under: Pre-Startup, Startup

Today’s post is inspired by Guy Kawasaki’s presentation at Tiecon 2006. Guy does not need an introduction but for those who have been living under the rock, I mean have been busy building their business in your garage with no Twitter access… read his full bio here. This is an excellent presentation full of tips, insights, and lots of humor. I highly recommend every entrepreneur and aspiring entrepreneur to watch it however, if you don’t want to spend 40 minutes watching a video, here’s a text/tweetable break down of what I learned:
1. The best way to start a company is to make meaning. (~4:30) If you focus on making meaning, you will make money. There are three ways to make meaning. [tweet]

i) Increase the quality of life.

ii) Right a wrong

iii) Prevent the end of something good

2. Make a Mantra (~6:30) – A mantra is a 3 of 4 word code for your employees to live by. [tweet]

Here are some good examples:

i) Wendy’s: “Healthy fast food”

ii) FedEx: “Peace of mind”

iii) Target: “Democratize Design”

3. Get Going (~12:10) [tweet]

i) Think different – Don’t stop at doing something better, do that particular something 10 times better

ii) Polarize people

iii) It’s impossible to create a prefect for everyone, therefore stick to a more specific market.

iv) Find a few soul mates. People that believe in your product and share the same vision as you!

4. Define a business model (~15:00) [tweet]

i) Be Specific

ii) Know your customer and how to get ‘your’ money out of their wallet and into yours

iii) Keep it simple. Do not over-complicate with research and jargon

iv) Ask women about your business model. Men have a natural “kill” instinct that clouds their thoughts

5. Weave a MAT (Milestones, Assumptions and Tasks) (~17:00) [tweet]

i) Milestones: example of milestones are finishing a design, shipping products

ii) Assumptions: what will be your ROI? How many sales calls can you make per day?

iii) Tasks: Help achieve your milestones or tests your assumptions

[googlevideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3755718939216161559#[/googlevideo]

6. Niche Thyself (~20:00) [tweet]

i) Make sure you have the ability to create a product or service that is unique and that it offers a value to your customers.

7. Follow the 10/20/30 Rule (~24:00) [tweet]

i) Your presentations should have 10 slides

ii) Title, problem, solution, business model, underlying magic, marketing and sales, competition, team, projections, status and time-line

iii) Those 10 slides should be given in 20 minutes

iv) The smallest font size you should use is a 30 point

8. Hire infected people! (~27.27) [tweet]

i) They should love your product and not just have education and experience

ii) Hire better than yourself, A players hire A+ players

9. Lower barriers to adoption (~30:20) [tweet]

i) Flatten the learning curve – “How many of you can change the time on the VCR?”

ii) Don’t ask people to do something that you wouldn’t – such as fill out lots of data on a form in order to sign up

iii) Embrace your evangelists

10. Seed the clouds (~31:30) [tweet]

i) Let your seeds blossom into revenue

ii) Enable test drives of your product

iii) Find the people that influence others:  Although we automatically think the influencers are the CEOs and Presidents, sometimes the higher up you go, the thinner the air is.  Start by working the bottom.

11. Don’t let the bozos grind you down! (~33:40) – Bonus point. [tweet]

i) Ignore the naysayers and don’t let anyone dishearten you.

Success to all!

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