12 lessons for entrepreneurs that Steve Jobs taught Guy Kawasaki
Guy Kawasaki is well-known in the entrepreneurial world as an author and speaker, and he often seasons his speeches and texts with stories about his times at Apple. I say "times" because Kawasaki often claims that he's one of the only people who ever worked for Steve Jobs twice and survived. Inc. posted an article today a speech that Kawasaki gave the day after Steve Jobs died — he was supposed to talk about "enchanting customers" at the Silicon Valley Bank's CEO Summit, but changed the topic to "12 Lessons I Learned From Steve Jobs that Can Be Applied to Entrepreneurs".
The speech is well worth watching, and we've included it below. But if you only have time to quickly scan a list of bullet points, here are the dozen points that Steve Jobs taught Guy Kawasaki that should be picked up on by entrepreneurs:
- Experts are useless
- Customers cannot tell you what they need
- Biggest challenges beget the best work
- Design counts
- Big graphics. Big font.
- Jump curves, not better sameness
- "Work" or "Doesn't Work" is all that matters (or "Changing your mind is a sign of intelligence")
- "Value" is different from "Price"
- A players hire A players
- Real CEOs demo
- Real entrepreneurs ship
- Some things need to be believed to be seen
Inc's Justin Bariso added his comments to these points in the original article, and I found both those comments and the original video to be well worth viewing to gain a bit more insight into the brain of Steve Jobs and the philosophies that still govern the way that Apple does work.