By Pratap John
Guy Kawasaki
Global economic recession provides significant opportunities for entrepreneurs who wish to make use of the falling costs, said Guy Kawasaki, a world renowned Silicon Valley venture capitalist.
“This may not be the best time in terms of sales…but in terms of costs, this is probably one of the best times ever,” said Kawasaki, previously chief evangelist of Apple.
He was one of the Apple employees originally responsible for marketing the Macintosh in 1984.
“Because of various factors, it is cheaper now to start a company than ever before. In a recession, people are cheap..marketing is by Twitter, Facebook and blogs. As far as the infrastructure is concerned, you no longer buy servers… you put it up in the cloud. All the tools are open source,” said Kawasaki while speaking to Gulf Times here yesterday.
Kawasaki is the co-founder of Alltop.com, an ‘online magazine rack’ of popular topics on the web, and a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures. Kawasaki is here as a keynote speaker at the QITCOM2011, now being held at the Doha Exhibition Centre.
He said technology has shortened the distance to the extent that one no longer requires an office to function. “You have people spread all over the world,” Kawasaki said.
“A key element for an entrepreneur’s success is courage”, said Kawasaki who is the author of 10 best selling books including Enchantment, Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. “If you have courage, now is the time,” Kawasaki advises would-be entrepreneurs.
He said, “If you are waiting for the recession to end to start your company, you may take another one year to finish, whatever you do.”
Kawasaki said entrepreneurs must understand there could be failures in their ventures.
“I now live in California, where failure is acceptable. So, it definitely does not ruin you, even if you fail. Failure is very much accepted in California. That encourages people to take risks, because it is not a big deal, failing. That way California is vastly different from other states in the US and other countries of the world,” Kawasaki said.
On the emergence of China and India as IT giants, Kawasaki said, “This provides both opportunities and challenges for the US. That’s how it is…”
Asked whether the human element would get further eliminated with technology driving the world, he said, “Technology is okay…but then it is absolutely essential people meet face to face. If I have done a speech this morning via the satellite, it would not have been the same.”
Born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1954, Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.
