Travels from California, USA
Guy Kawasaki's speaking fee falls within range: Over $75,000
Silicon Valley legend, Guy Kawasaki is one of the most sought-out innovation experts thanks to his decades of experience, down-to-earth relatability, and a keen talent for teaching aspiring entrepreneurs and established companies how to create meaning and sell value.
Kawasaki’s career took a leap forward in 1984 with Apple, where he was in charge of marketing the Macintosh, Apple Inc.’s first mass-market personal computer with a graphical user interface and mouse. Since then, he has played major roles as a marketing guru and adviser at Nike, Audi, Google, Microsoft, and Mercedes-Benz.
Currently the chief evangelist of Canva, a free online graphic design tool, Kawasaki has helped the Australian-based company gain 10 million users worldwide, growing the start-up to an estimated value of $1 billion.
Kawasaki’s credibility and frequent insightful postings on entrepreneurship and innovation have gained him a massive global audience including 7 million followers on Google+, a half million on Pinterest, and 1.47 million on Twitter. He is the best-selling author of 13 books including The Art of the Start 2.0 and How to Drive Your Competition Crazy. He is an executive fellow of the HAAS School of Business at UC Berkeley.
Chief Evangelist, Canva; Former Chief Evangelist, Apple; Brand Ambassador, Mercedes Benz; Best-Selling Author of 13 Books With Over Ten Million Social-Media Followers
Guy was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1954. His family lived in a tough part of Honolulu called Kalihi Valley. They weren’t rich, but he never felt poor because his parents made many sacrifices. His mother was a housewife, and his father was a fireman, real estate broker, state senator, and government official during his long, distinguished career.
Guy attended Iolani School where he graduated in 1972. Iolani is not as well known as its rival, Punahou because no presidents of the U.S. went there, but he got a fantastic and formative education there. (Punahou is “USC,” and Iolani is “Stanford.”) Guy owes his writing career to Harold Keables, his AP English teacher. Keables taught him that the key to writing is editing. The fact that Guy has written thirteen books (or one book thirteen times) would shock and delight Harold Keables.
After Iolani, Guy matriculated to Stanford. He graduated in 1976 with a major in psychology which was the easiest major he could find. After Stanford, Guy attended the law school at U.C. Davis because, like all Asian-American parents, his folks wanted him to be a doctor, lawyer, or dentist. He only lasted one week because he couldn’t deal with the law school teachers telling him that he was crap and that they were going to remake him.
The following year Guy entered the MBA program at UCLA. He liked this curriculum much better. While there, he worked for a fine-jewelry manufacturer called Nova Stylings; hence, his first real job was counting diamonds. From Nova, its CEO Marty Gruber, and his Jewish colleagues in the jewelry business, Guy learned how to sell, and this skill was vital to his career.
Guy remained at Nova for a few years until the Apple II removed the scales from his eyes. Then he went to work for an educational software company called EduWare Services. However, Peachtree Software acquired the company and wanted Guy to move to Atlanta. “I don’t think so” was his reaction because he couldn’t live in a city where people call sushi, “bait.”
Luckily, his Stanford roommate, Mike Boich, got Guy a job at Apple. So one could make the case that Guy owes Mike everything. When Guy saw what a Macintosh could do, the clouds parted and the angels started singing. For four years Guy evangelized Macintosh to developers. He also met his wife at Apple during this timeframe–Apple was very good to Guy.
Around 1987, Guy’s job at Apple was done because Macintosh had plenty of software by then, so he left to start a Macintosh database company called ACIUS. It published a product called 4th Dimension. To this day, 4th Dimension is a great database.
Guy ran ACIUS for two years and then left to pursue his bliss of writing, speaking, and consulting. He wrote for MacUser, Macworld, and Forbes. Guy calls these the “Wonder Years” as in “I wonder why I deserve such a good life.”
In 1989, Guy started another software company called Fog City Software with three of the best co-founders in the world: Will Mayall, Kathryn Henkens, and Jud Spencer. They created an email product called Emailer and then a list server product called LetterRip.
In 1995 Guy returned to Apple as an Apple fellow. At the time, according to the pundits, Apple was supposed to die. (Apple should have died about ten times in the past twenty years according to the pundits.) Guy’s job on this tour of duty was to maintain and rejuvenate the Macintosh cult.
In 1997, Guy left Apple to start an angel investor matchmaking service called Garage.com with Craig Johnson of Venture Law Group and Rich Karlgaard of Forbes. Version 2.0 of Garage.com was an investment bank for helping entrepreneurs raise money from venture capitalists. Today, version 3.0 of Garage.com is called Garage Technology Ventures; it is a venture capital firm and makes direct investments in early-stage technology companies.
In 2004, Guy worked at Garage and then he began writing and speaking. Eventually he started another company with Will Mayall and Kathryn Henkens. This company created a website called Alltop–for “all the topics.” It aggregates RSS feeds and organizes them into topics such as photography.alltop.com, Macintosh.alltop.com, and social-media.alltop.com. It also publishes human-interest stories that elicit the reaction, “Holy kaw!”
Then in 2013, Guy became a special advisor to the CEO of the Motorola division of Google. In 2014, Guy resurrected the title “chief evangelist” and joined a Sydney-based company called Canva. This company provides an online, graphic-design service. Its goal is to democratize design. If you need graphics for social media, flyers, posters, infographics, business cards, or book covers, check it out.
In 2015 Guy was appointed to the board of trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation. He joined Wikimedia in order to help democratize knowledge. What could be cooler than democratizing computers, design, and knowledge?
In 2015 Mercedes Benz USA retained Guy as brand ambassador. Seriously, he’s not making this up. Somebody’s got to fill these positions and they don’t all have to be world-class golfers and tennis players.
Apple and Google veteran, Guy Kawasaki takes us through his "Top Ten List" to mastering the art of innovation. He encourages everyone to start with the goal of creating meaning, citing that companies primarily driven by this urge are in the long-run the most successful.
Apple, for example, became a household name not because the founders wanted to become billionaires, but because they had a mission to turn computing power into a tool that people could utilize in their own homes. Likewise, Google sought to organize the world wide web so that information would be much more accessible to the average internet surfer.
“Making meaning means that you’ll change the world. And I think you’ll notice that if you happen to change the world, you’ll also probably make money,” Kawasaki notes. “But if you start off with the sole desire to make money, you probably won’t make money, you won’t make meaning, you won’t change the world, and you will probably fail.”
Guy Kawasaki’s no-nonsense keynotes deliver as much information as you can get in one hour on how to create innovative products, build a team, raise money, and evangelize your service or product. He keeps audiences pulled in with his calm but magnetic energy as he flows from one concrete piece of advice to the next. His presentations are packed with applicable takeaways organized into easy-to-follow top ten formats.
The Art of Innovation This speech explains how to create innovative products and services using tactical and practical techniques. It is best suited for organizations that want to jump to the next curve. It is Guy’s most popular speech.
The Art of the Start The speech about how to create a new company. It reflects the knowledge Guy has gained from Apple, starting multiple companies, working as a venture capitalist, and advising dozens of companies. His book by the same name is the de facto standard for books about entrepreneurship.
The Art of Enchantment The speech explains how organizations and individuals can change people’s hearts, minds, and actions. Enchantment was a New York Times bestseller.
The Art of Social Media Guy demystifies social media in this speech and makes social media a useful and powerful marketing tool. Many people believe that Guy’s book by the same name is the best book ever written about social media.
The Lessons of Steve Jobs Guy is one of the few people in the world who can credibly give this speech. He draws from his experience working for Steve and applies these lessons to business practices.
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The Art of the Start 2.0: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything
Whether you’re an entrepreneur, intrapreneur, or not-for-profit leader, there’s no shortage of advice on such topics as writing a business plan, recruiting, raising capital, and branding. In fact, there are so many books, articles, and Web sites that many startups get bogged down to the point of paralysis, or they focus on the wrong priorities and go broke before they discover their mistakes. The Art of the Start 2.0 solves that problem by distilling Guy Kawasaki’s decades of experience as one of the most original and irreverent strategists in the business world. Since late 2004, The Art of the Start has been the essential guide for anyone starting anything, from a multinational corporation to a church group. From raising money to hiring the right people, from defining your positioning to creating a brand, from driving buzz to buzzing the competition, this book will guide you through an adventure that’s more art than science-the art of the start.
The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users
By now it’s clear that whether you’re promoting a business, a product, or yourself, social media is near the top of what determines your success or failure. And there are countless pundits, authors, and consultants eager to advise you.
But there’s no one quite like Guy Kawasaki, the legendary former chief evangelist for Apple and one of the pioneers of business blogging, tweeting, Facebooking, Tumbling, and much, much more. Now Guy has teamed up with Peg Fitzpatrick, who he says is the best social-media person he’s ever met, to offer The Art of Social Media—the one essential guide you need to get the most bang for your time, effort, and money.
With over one hundred practical tips, tricks, and insights, Guy and Peg present a bottom-up strategy to produce a focused, thorough, and compelling presence on the most popular social-media platforms. They guide you through steps to build your foundation, amass your digital assets, optimize your profile, attract more followers, and effectively integrate social media and blogging.
For beginners overwhelmed by too many choices as well as seasoned professionals eager to improve their game, The Art of Social Media is full of tactics that have been proven to work in the real world. Or as Guy puts it, “great stuff, no fluff.”
Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions Enchantment, as defined by bestselling business guru Guy Kawasaki, is not about manipulating people. It transforms situations and relationships. It converts hostility into civility and civility into affinity. It changes skeptics and cynics into believers and the undecided into the loyal. Enchantment can happen during a retail transaction, a high-level corporate negotiation, or a Facebook update. And when done right, it’s more powerful than traditional persuasion, influence, or marketing techniques.
Kawasaki argues that in business and personal interactions, your goal is not merely to get what you want but to bring about a voluntary, enduring, and delightful change in other people. By enlisting their own goals and desires, by being likable and trustworthy, and by framing a cause that others can embrace, you can change hearts, minds, and actions.
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