Why Kawasaki at the Nasscom Product Conclave ?

October 29, 2009

By sameer

Bangalore played host to the Nasscom Product Conclave over the last couple of days, and it was a brilliantly organized event. The best part of it, imo, was the cross section of participants the event was able to pull in. Such major industry events usually get a little intimidating for the smaller, just starting out guys – but this conclave easily avoided that.

The sessions were useful, deeper than usual, and because of these reasons, packed. The networking was very very active, and I pretty much caught up with everyone I’ve met and come across over the last four years!Amidst the relevance, interactivity and focus of the event, Guy Kawasaki – as a keynote speaker and twitter specialist – added the superstar touch for many folks. Guy’s a great speaker with ready wit and humour, and very, very approachable. He’s also a persistent marketer.

However, I do think he wasn’t the best choice for the keynote. Also, the session he conducted was as much a distraction from the theme of the event as it was an attraction for many. Why do I think so?

Guy Kawasaki @ Nasscom 2009 , Bangalore

View more presentations from bloggersrikanth.

The keynote presentation above was not the most relevant to the ground reality in India. At all.
We do NOT get people for free here – not that much of a resession after all.
We also are awesome “value” creators and it often makes sense for a large chunk of startups (especially as they learn about business) to start in the lower right quadrant – a small chunk of startups can shoot for uniqueness, and especially building a business around it. Execution, value hold they key to getting a shot at stage 2.
Twitter as a marketing tool in India ? Hmmm. I’d almost say a large chunk of active Tweeters were actually in that room I exaggerate, but you get the idea.
We need a couple of home-grown superstars who, like Guy, are great speakers and approachable, and are less jargon-laden than anyone who gets to some level of success has a tendency to become. Entrepreneurs building products need stellar examples they can relate to, as well as understand!
The Twitter 101 was a little too basic for a lot of the crowd. Some of the ideas shared both in the keynote as well as the sessions would be very very useful in a college, or what-do-I-need-to-know before I start out crowd, but a lot many attendees have progressed beyond that. We needed Marketing 102, or Sales 102, etc. more than this.
I’m completely guessing – but it must’ve been expensive
The Indian product space needs a little more grunt and grassroots and less superstardom-aspirations – and getting a major star like Guy can reinforce the wrong message. Too many folks already confuse the superstar dreams for passion.

Apart from this, though, I had a terrific time at the event. Made connections, and started out on my journey to understand the fascinating world of real world marketing and sales (I’m still in Kindergarten wrt those, especially sales). The CIO session was very useful (wow, people who really spend money on software ) though one always would love more direct, straightforward and precise ideas about how the real world operates (no discussions on size difference related issues, kickback-demand handling, etc)

Nasscom has taken a very conscious step towards supporting product creation out of India. And from the evidence at hand, its at most an iteration or two before the geeks really connect with the biz folks, and magic happens.

[ From the original post here. ]

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Karthik S on October 29, 2009 at 7:31 pm

Good point – I agree, Guy K was not the most relevant speaker they invited and as you note, he perhaps seriously underestimated the level of awareness of his audience in India. It did create huge buzz for the event online, however.

Also note the change in attitude towards his presence on Day 1 vs Day 2. Times of India had a gushing piece over his Day 1 session, while Liveadda started tweeting that his Day 2 session was getting monotonous.

He had a couple of points that he repeated endlessly, much like his famous ‘multi-repeat tweets’ theory,
a. that he has 184K followers,
b. that he loves the fact that he has 184K followers,
c. he consciously repeats his tweets and
d. he doesn’t use twitter like others do

Mayank on October 29, 2009 at 7:56 pm

I perfectly agree with you here. Infact he was a big let down in my opinion. If you have watched any one of his presentation/keynote earlier (either personally or a video on internet), you will realize that most of his talk is quite repeatative.

The bozo’sity that he was talking towards the end is so cliche now, I wonder why he keeps repeating that in his keynote.

Shashi on October 29, 2009 at 8:09 pm

“…before the geeks really connect with the biz folks, and magic happens.”

bulls eye..

Anuj Rathi on October 30, 2009 at 8:06 am

Just wanted to make a couple of points:

a) You wrote, “The session he conducted was as much a distraction from the theme of the event as it was an attraction for many.”
Maybe now, pluggd.in could understand the discomfort of people coming to a startup themed blog only to find “Solar Energy”, “3G Auctions” articles here.

b) Guy Kawasaki was a well thought choice, being a VC and an entrepreneur and having written “The art of the start” and other books on starting up. Having said that, maybe the NASSCOM guys didn’t realize that for the last couple of years, all he has been doing is evangelizing twitter wherever he speaks. I would be surprised if he didn’t speak of “alltop.com”(his own company aggregating top articles) as well there.

sameer on October 30, 2009 at 8:46 am

@Anuj

Yes, AllTop was the most frequently used term by him through the two days

As for solar energy, its quite straightforward:

a) Its technology (more than scaffolding-enabled-products-on-rails)
And there’s a ton of innovation left to do.
b) Its high impact
c) There’s a bunch of entrepreneurs in the space
d) Its a major potential sunrise sector

A blog about technology and entrepreneurship around this covering Solar Energy related startups etc is quite on the money, I’d say!

- Sameer

Ashish on October 30, 2009 at 9:27 am

Frankly..I’d like ppl to come out of their web2.0 comfort zone and see some ‘real’ stuff. If you ignore solar/wind and several other opportunities (and don’t even wanna know about them), you are seriously missing something…esp if somebody is interested in indian startups.

- Anuj Rathi on October 30, 2009 at 11:44 am
  
  Ashish, Solar/wind and other such opportunities are definitely very important, and no one wants to miss the news or relevant analyses on those. And I wouldn’t mind reading it on blogs/news sites who focus on that.
  I believe pluggd.in is in a niche site, which focuses on startups in particular(At least your logo and ‘about’ section suggests that – in my opinion, you should read it once again). If you had positioned your site as a general tech blog then maybe Solar energy/3g auctions would make more sense.
  If you really think discussions on Solar Energy belong here, IMO you should also include articles/discussions about other upcoming technologies. One such example would be biotech, which is quite neglected.

guru on October 30, 2009 at 10:06 am

great article – all the points are pretty relevant.. when we talk about startups, US where Guy Kawasaki comes from and India are poles apart, and thus, while he might be good to listen to, might not have too much relevance…

Vijay Rayapati on October 30, 2009 at 12:51 pm

Pretty candid remarks, however NASSCOM itself has put together a presentation with “Feedback From Twitter World” on NASSCOM Product Conclave 2009 at http://www.slideshare.net/amnigos/nasscom-product-conclave-2009-feedback-collected-using-twitter .

sameer on October 30, 2009 at 3:56 pm

Good effort and nice to see the candid feedback presentation

Mahesh on October 30, 2009 at 2:01 pm

Guy is a theoretical entrepreneur..ppl simply waste time of visiting his blog and reading his book..blog like this[pluggd.in] has real taste..books from founders is worth reading..books from ppl who gets hand dirty and has faced hard time in real life experience is worth reading and worth talking with them..ppl like khosla worth meeting what he says.

Anuj Rathi on October 30, 2009 at 2:06 pm

Don’t forget that Guy is also a Venture Capitalist, who funds (or at least used to) fund startups till recently. He knows a thing or two about starting up a new company, especially in the web domain.
I think his book ‘Art of the Start’ was really good, but recently he has gone a little haywire with alltop and twitter. Especially if you follow him on twitter, your twitter stream will be spammed left, right and center.

Pravin on November 1, 2009 at 8:56 am

I also experience same problem after following Guy on twitter. Only mesgeas about alltop. Finally I stopped following.
Guy may not be right choice for keynote addres. I felt same when I read my friend’s notes about product conclave. Guy was great marketer but he does not understand India well, he is becoming repeatitive nowadays. His bozo speech was great but one do not want to listen to same always. Guy is VC but right now no plans for India. We should have tried people from seed fund or similar organizations or product entrepreneurs with decent success.