Don't Waste Your Time With Guy Kawasaki

Re:Don't Waste Your Time With Guy Kawasaki by nickb on Saturday July 07, 2007 @01:45AM (#32903)

Lots of Guy haters here... why? AoS is an excellent book. If you followed his "obvious" advice, you'd do well. Fact is, there really are no big secrets to being successful. All it takes a lot of effort, tenacity, ethics and perseverance. Guy's AoS captures these perfectly. Look at successful people... many of them have no formal education and no degrees from Ivy schools. WHat they do have are those qualities I mentioned above... and they excel at them. Because his book has a lot of common sense in it, that should tell you something: just do it! Persevere, release that app... get the feedback and iterate until it works and the feedback becomes positive. Never give up!

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Re:Don't Waste Your Time With Guy Kawasaki by dpapathanasiou on Saturday July 07, 2007 @09:47AM (#32922)

Lots of Guy haters here... why?

This comment sums it up nicely: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26958

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Re:Don't Waste Your Time With Guy Kawasaki by neilc on Saturday July 07, 2007 @02:28AM (#32904)

Personally I didn't get very much useful out of AoS. As others have mentioned, most of the advice was simply common sense, at least if you've already read PG's essays. I also found the writing style to be annoying and gimmicky -- one "top 5 list" after another, and terms like "make mantra" and "rainmaker", for example. In general, the book felt like it over-promised and under-delivered. For example, the book is not for "anyone starting anything", it is plainly about how to start a startup company, and not a school, charity or non-profit organization. Chapters on bootstrapping, raising venture capital, and pitching investors aren't very relevant to a typical charity organization, to the best of my knowledge. Although I bought the book with only an interest in learning about startups, there's something to truth in advertising...

Then again, I put the book down after a few chapters, as I wasn't getting anything out of it -- but in fairness, I should probably give it another try.

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Re:Don't Waste Your Time With Guy Kawasaki by hello_moto on Sunday July 08, 2007 @12:17PM (#33100)

Not trying to be a jerk here but all books are supposed to refresh our mind and open our eyes wider. Some can be applied, some can't. It's up to the readers to use the "mantras" (mix-match) to help them to be successful.

Take PG's essays (or books). Some of us love it because it has the sense of defending and making geeks as a superstar. It goes down to whom the author is. Is he voicing our mind? Is he in our field?

If you're a marketing guy, GK and Seth Godin are probably your top authors. If you're from Software industry, Eric Sink and Joel are probably your guys. And if you're in the euphoria of startups (specifically of Web 2.0), Paul is your guy.

When people from Paul's world read Joel's, they probably boo him because he's "too Microsoft" style-ish. But if you actually an ISV (micro or not) like Eric Sink and the rest, Joel's essays made sense a lot.

It's just a different world.

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