startupi

The year is off to a great start! Besides posting here, w are wrapping up a new project to present to you and are helping organize Social Media Week, which takes place the first week of February. On top of that Campus Party is starting, and there will be some posts covering that event.

I recently reread some passages from “The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything,” which Guy Kawasaki wrote in 2004. It was published in Brazil by BestSeller under the title “A arte do começo: o guia definitivo para iniciar o seu projeto.” I’ve noted below some key parts.

The most noted phrase is found in the introduction: “Doing, not learning, is the essence of being an entrepreneur.”* This is not a book for strategists or planners, but for doers and makers - creators of startups or leaders of projects and products within businesses, or even people creating institutes, foundations, entities and NGOs.

Of course the entrepreneur, as a “doer,” cannot think that planning and organizing are unnecessary. On the contrary, what Kawasaki presents are specific and fundamental  tips that cannot be overlooked, though of course you will have additional things to do when starting a project.

Great Ideas for Starting Something

• be important
• create a mantra
• rock the boat: be ambitious, find partners, polarize people, do something different, use prototypes to test the market
• define your business model: be specific, not complicated; copy someone
• have milestones, assumptions and tasks: prove the concept, make a complete specification for the project, build a finished prototype, raise capital, take a version to consumers for testing, balance your budget.

I found a video of a talk by Guy that is subtitled in Portuguese by Camilo Telles (of Bahia Angels) and Jacque Chicourel (from Competição Unifacs).

*Editor’s note: references in this post translated from the Portuguese version of the book.