Evangelism, Enchantment and Dotcom Bubbles
Entrepreneur Country Meets Guy Kawasaki
“Empowering entrepreneurs”, the personal mantra of one the worlds most successful and influential thought leaders. Last month, Entrepreneur Country met Guy Kawasaki the former Apple evangelist, author, investor and social media guru whose passion for business and people has made him one of the most respected and enchanting business personalities of his generation.
I met Guy on his whistle-stop tour to London back in April, a day which I followed on twitter as the prolific social media guru posted dozens of photo’s of his family taken during their tour around London. As the audience gathered for his keynote speech at the launch of his new book Enchantment you could track his imminent arrival as the endless stream of tourist photo’s snaked towards Tottenham Court Road.
When you first meet Guy and it is immediately evident that he is as warm and engaging in person as he is through his blogs and tweets. His beaming smile lights up a rather dreary venue and with great pride he shares with the audience pictures of his family and anecdotes about his entrepreneurial background.
Family features prevalently throughout his speech and our interview. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1954 he grew up in what he describes as the “tough part of Honolulu” called Kalihi Valley; the son of a housewife and fireman turned government official whose career evolved as Guy and his sister grew older.
After leaving high school in the early 1970’s he briefly pursued the expected course of academic studies that would have seen him become
a doctor or lawyer- initially enrolling at Stanford where he majored in psychology, although he lasted just one week at the post-graduate law school there before dropping out to enter the MBA program at UCLA.
It was during his time at UCLA, whilst working for a jewellery manufacturer that Guy first began to experience the world of business and developed his entrepreneurial spirit. These formative years were to shape his business mantra, “empowering entrepreneurs is the heart of everything which I seek to do, be it through my investment activities, my business ventures or through the way in which I transfer knowledge as a speaker, author or through various social media tools.”
Guy’s career defining moment came when an old university friend Mike Boich, a member of the original Macintosh development team secured him a job at Apple. At a time when IBM had world-wide market domination, Guy found himself as part of new band of ‘Apple evangelists’ promoting Macintosh to software and hardware developers and selling a largely experimental brand.
Kawasaki has become synonymous with the term ‘evangelist’- a term that doesn’t always conjure
positive
reaction and I was
“The single biggest factor I can see for success in venture capital is sheer luck!”
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