Guy Kawasaki

Last updated

Guy Kawasaki
Guy Kawasaki at Wikimania 2015 - 2.jpg
July 2015 at Wikimania
Born
Guy Takeo Kawasaki

(1954-08-30) August 30, 1954 (age 70)
Honolulu, Hawaii Territory
Alma mater
Occupations
Children4
Website Official website OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

Guy Takeo Kawasaki (born August 30, 1954) is a Japanese-American marketing specialist, author, and Silicon Valley venture capitalist. [3] He was one of the Apple employees originally responsible for marketing their Macintosh computer line in 1984. He popularized the word evangelist in marketing the Macintosh as an "Apple evangelist" and the concepts of evangelism marketing and technology evangelism/platform evangelism in general. [4] [5]

Contents

From March 2015 until December 2016, Kawasaki sat on the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees, the non-profit operating entity of Wikipedia. [6]

Kawasaki has also written fifteen books, including The Macintosh Way (1990), The Art of the Start (2004), and Wise Guy: Lessons from a Life (2019).

Early life

Guy Kawasaki was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to Duke Takeshi Kawasaki (d. 2015) and Aiko Kawasaki. [7] [8] His family lived in an area outside Honolulu called Kalihi Valley. His father, Duke, once served as a fireman, real estate broker, state senator, and government official while his mother was a housewife. [9] He attended ʻIolani School and graduated in 1972. [10]

Kawasaki graduated from Stanford University in 1976 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology. [10] He then attended law school at UC Davis, but quit after about a week of classes when he realized that he disliked law school. [11] [12] In 1977, he enrolled in the UCLA Anderson School of Management, where he earned an MBA degree. [10] While there, Kawasaki also worked at a jewelry company, Nova Stylings. Kawasaki observed, "The jewelry business is a very, very tough business, tougher than the computer business... I learned a very valuable lesson: how to sell." [13]

Career

External videos
Guy Kawasaki (by Eirik Solheim 01).jpg
Nuvola apps kaboodle.svg The art of innovation Guy Kawasaki, TEDxBerkeley, TEDx, 21:15, February 22, 2014
Nuvola apps kaboodle.svg Ten Words You Seldom Hear in Social Media, Social Data Week, September 16, 2013, 29:21

In 1983, Kawasaki got a job at Apple through his Stanford roommate, Mike Boich. [10] [14] He was Apple's chief evangelist for four years. In a 2006 podcast interview on the online site Venture Voice, Kawasaki said, "What got me to leave is basically I started listening to my own hype, and I wanted to start a software company and really make big bucks." [15] In 1987 he was hired to lead ACIUS, the U.S. subsidiary of France-based ACI, which published an Apple database software system called 4th Dimension. [16]

Kawasaki left ACIUS in 1989 to further his writing and speaking career. In the early 1990s he wrote columns that were featured in Forbes and MacUser magazines. [10] [17] [18] He also founded another company, Fog City Software, which created Emailer, an email client that sold to Claris. [19] [20] A collection of namesake software utilities called Guy's Utilities for Macintosh (GUM), was published by After Hours Software in the early 1990s. [21] An edition of GUM for PowerBook systems was acquired by Gordon Eubanks and was subsequently remarketed by Symantec as The Norton Essentials for PowerBook. [22] [23]

He returned to Apple as an Apple Fellow in 1995. [10] In 1998, he was a co-founder of Garage Technology Ventures, a venture capital firm that has made investments in Pandora Radio, Tripwire, The Motley Fool and D.light Design. [24] [25] In 2007, he founded Truemors, a free-flow rumor mill, that sold to NowPublic. [26] [27] [28] He is also a founder at Alltop, an online magazine rack. [14] [29]

In March 2013, Kawasaki joined Google as an advisor to Motorola. His role was to create a Google+ mobile device community. [30]

In April 2014, Kawasaki became the chief evangelist of Canva. [1] It is a free graphic design website for non-designers as well as professionals and was founded in January 2013.

On March 24, 2015, Kawasaki joined Wikimedia Foundation's board of trustees. [31] He stepped down at the end of December 2016. [6]

On April 25, 2017, WikiTribune mentioned him as an adviser. [32]

On February 26, 2019, Penguin Group released Wise Guy, described as Kawasaki's most personal book to date. While the book is written as what could be considered a memoir, it contains a series of vignettes that include various personal experiences that Kawasaki says have enlightened and inspired him. [33]

December 2019 to Current, Kawasaki created a podcast called Remarkable People. There are now over 90 episodes available including interviews with Jane Goodall, Stephen Wolfram, Andrew Yang and Sal Khan. Kawasaki has stated that he believed the podcast was his best and most under appreciated work. [34]

Personal life

Kawasaki and his wife have four children: Nicodemus ("Nic"), Noah, Nohemi, and Nate. [35] Nohemi and Nate are biological siblings whom the couple adopted from Guatemala. [36]

Bibliography

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References

  1. 1 2 "Guy Kawasaki Joins Australian Design Startup Canva As Chief Evangelist". TechCrunch . AOL. April 16, 2014. Retrieved January 26, 2016.
  2. ↑ "Best Sellers: Hardcover Advice & Misc". The New York Times . March 27, 2011.
  3. ↑ Cameron, Chris (February 26, 2010). "Weekend Reading: Guy Kawasaki Author Spotlight". ReadWrite.
  4. ↑ Solis, Brian; Breakenridge, Deirdre K. Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media Is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR. FT Press, 2009. p. 9.
  5. ↑ Lucas-Conwell, Frederic (December 4, 2006). "Technology Evangelists: A Leadership Survey" (PDF). Growth Resources, Inc.
  6. 1 2 Henner, Christophe (December 23, 2016). "Update regarding expiring Board terms". Wikimedia Foundation . Retrieved January 12, 2017.
  7. ↑ "Duke Takeshi Kawasaki". Star-Advertiser. September 16, 2015.
  8. ↑ Evangelista, Benny (June 17, 2012). "Guy Kawasaki a doting father – and hockey player". SFGate .
  9. ↑ "A Brief History of Mine". guykawasaki.com. December 30, 2005.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kawasaki, Guy (2015). "Who Is Guy?". guykawasaki.com. Retrieved August 9, 2015.
  11. ↑ Kawasaki, Guy (March 11, 2013). The Top 10 Mistakes of Entrepreneurs (Video). YouTube . Archived from the original on December 12, 2021. Retrieved August 9, 2015.
  12. ↑ Iwata, Edward (November 10, 2008). "Entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki Doesn't Accept Failure". USA Today . Retrieved August 9, 2015.
  13. ↑ Bryant, Adam (March 10, 2010). "Just Give Him 5 Sentences, Not 'War and Peace'". The New York Times . Retrieved August 9, 2015.
  14. 1 2 Ostdick, John (November 24, 2009). "Guy Kawasaki: Advice for Making Your Venture Successful". success.com.
  15. ↑ Galant, Greg (October 16, 2006). "VW Show #39 – Guy Kawasaki of Garage Technology Ventures". venturevoice.com. Archived from the original on July 3, 2017. Retrieved September 12, 2011.
  16. ↑ Brogan, Daniel (July 12, 1987). "Seeking 4th Dimension? Take Heart, Its Now in Town". The Chicago Tribune .
  17. ↑ Kawasaki, Guy. The Beauty of Metaphor. Forbes . August 25, 1997.
  18. ↑ Kawasaki, Guy (August 11, 2003). "Wise Guy: The Goal of a New Machine". Macworld.com.
  19. ↑ "Emailer Licensed to Claris". TidBITS . April 3, 1995.
  20. ↑ Furchgott, Roy (October 18, 1998), "Private Sector; Financier to the Garage Start-Up", The New York Times
  21. ↑ Engst, Adam C. (May 18, 1992). "More Utilities, By GUM". TidBITS . Retrieved June 2, 2018.
  22. ↑ Engst, Adam C. (August 10, 1992). "CPU". TidBITS . Retrieved June 2, 2018.
  23. ↑ "Computer Age 5". The Age . Melbourne, Australia. February 9, 1993. p. 36. Retrieved June 2, 2018– via Newspapers.com.
  24. ↑ Ostdick, John. Guy Kawasaki: Advice for Making Your Business Successful Archived September 24, 2011, at the Wayback Machine . Success Magazine .
  25. ↑ Pritchard, Stephen (August 28, 2000). "Guy Kawasaki: The garage culture comes to Britain". The Independent .
  26. ↑ Arrington, Michael (July 10, 2008). "Guy Kawasaki's Truemors Gets Acquired by NowPublic". Washington Post .
  27. ↑ "Apple Evangelist's Advice For Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs". Asian Week . July 1, 2008. Archived from the original on August 3, 2008. Retrieved July 2, 2008.
  28. ↑ "Guy Kawasaki: Truemors and the $12,000 start-up". thebusinessmakers.com. June 2, 2007.
  29. ↑ "Interview: Not Just an Experiment: Guy Kawasaki's Alltop.com". itworld.com. April 1, 2008. Archived from the original on July 13, 2011.
  30. ↑ "Google Disses Motorola Products – And Hires Guy Kawasaki". ReadWrite . March 1, 2013.
  31. ↑ de Vreede, Jan-Bart (March 24, 2015). "Wikimedia Foundation welcomes Guy Kawasaki as board member". Wikimedia Foundation . Retrieved March 24, 2015.
  32. ↑ Rajan, Amol (April 25, 2017). "Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales creates news service Wikitribune". BBC . Retrieved April 25, 2017.
  33. ↑ Gulker, Linda (March 1, 2019). "Guy Kawasaki pens Wise Guy to share the wisdom he's learned over the years". InMenlo. Retrieved March 4, 2019.
  34. ↑ "Guy Kawasaki's Remarkable People Podcast". August 26, 2021.
  35. ↑ Kawasaki, Guy (2008). Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition. Penguin Books. ISBN   9781591842231.
  36. ↑ Kawasaki, Guy (February 26, 2019). Wise Guy: Lessons from a Life. Penguin. ISBN   978-0-525-53862-2.
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