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Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Kawasaki's Rule No. 1: Make Meaning

Guy Kawasaki, managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm out of Palo Alto (and former Apple employee and evangelist) put down on paper everything he learned in 20 years so that others—entrepreneurs and intrepreneurs, product managers, and engineers—wouldn't have to repeat his mistakes.

Kawasaki developed a Top 10 format for all of his speeches/presentations.

The first thing he learned is that the people who change the world—the people who really make a difference—aren't motivated by money. (The people who succeeded were the ones who wanted to make meaning and create products/sevices they themselves would use.)

There are three principle ways of making meaning:

1. The first is to increase the quality of life of your customer.
2. The second way to make meaning is to right a wrong: To take something and look at the marketplace and say, 'You know, there must be a better way to do this.
3. The third way to make meaning is to perpetuate something good. So to make meaning, you must improve the quality of life, fix something that's bad, or perpetuate something that's good.

(Thanks to the Always-On-Network for this recap)

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