Live From Inbox: Don’t Let the Bozos Get You Down, Kawasaki Says

Direct marketers have their 40/40/20 rule. Guy Kawasaki has his 10/20/30 rule, and both are aimed at helping craft better pitches.

But rather than a benchmark for which elements of a direct marketing campaign determine its success, Kawasaki’s rule is for PowerPoint pitching. In order for a slide presentation to be successful, it should use no more than 10 slides, take 20 minutes to present, and all copy should be in 30-point type.

The rule was one of a series the managing director of venture capitalist firm Garage Technology Ventures offered attendees on how to innovate during an entertaining luncheon keynote at The Golden Group’s Inbox e-mail conference in San Jose yesterday.

The No. 1 goal for an innovator should be to “make meaning” rather than make money, said Kawasaki. Most entrepreneurs pitching Garage Technology Ventures say within the first five or 10 minutes their goal is to make money, said Kawasaki.

“They think they’re saying what a venture capitalist wants to hear. It’s the opposite of what we want to hear,” he said. That attitude “typically attracts MBAs and consultants and those are the worst two people for a start-up.”

An innovative product or service that has meaning to people will likely automatically result in money for its creators, he said.

Innovators should also “jump curves,” he said. “Don’t tell us you’re going to fight spam better than the next guy. Tell us you’re going to fight spam 10 times better than the next guy,” he added.

Also, rather than rely on a person’s education and work history to decide whether to hire them, an innovator should hire “infected people,” he said.

“Hire people with the infection of love for what you do,” he said. The reason Kawasaki was successful as an evangelist for Macintosh computers even though he had just a bachelor’s degree in psychology, had dropped out of law school and was working for a jeweler counting diamonds when he was hired was: “I was infected with love for the product from the moment I saw it.”

Another piece of advice: “Don’t worry. Be crappy.” The first Apple computer, according to Kawasaki, “was a piece of crap, but it was a revolutionary piece of crap” and the company succeeded despite the first model’s flaws.

The lesson: If the product or service is truly revolutionary, don’t wait for perfection to bring it to the market. “When you have a revolutionary product that is not 10% better, but 10 times better, the market will forgive you for elements of crap,” said Kawasaki.

Kawasaki added that marketers should not be afraid to polarize prospective audiences. “The temptation is to reach every demographic,” he said. “If you set out with that kind of a goal, you will create a very mediocre product.”

The holy grail of marketing, according to Kawasaki, is to “niche thyself,” or offer a product or service of high value to prospects that others will have difficulty duplicating.

Lastly, Kawasaki said, “don’t let the bozos get you down. … They will tell you it can’t work, that it shouldn’t work.”

Kawasaki said it’d easy to dismiss the guy who wears a pocket protector and drives a rusty car as a loser. “The dangerous bozo is the guy wearing black, driving a German car … This guy is rich; therefore he’s smart,” he said.

As examples of “dangerous bozosity,” Kawasaki offered a series of quotes from successful people who were spectacularly wrong. For example: “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home,” said Digital Equipment Corp. founder Ken Olson in the 70s.

Kawasaki saved the best example of dangerous bozosity for last: “It’s too long to drive, and I don’t see how it can be a business.” The company in question: Yahoo!. The person quoted: Kawasaki himself when he was asked if he wanted to join the company when it began.

“The art of innovation is about trying to make meaning despite what the bozos tell you,” he said

Meanwhile, according to Denise Miller, vice president of marketing and conferences for The Golden Group, not counting this year’s walk-ups, attendance is up from 432 people last year to 515 this year.