Comments on: Why Kawasaki at the Nasscom Product Conclave ?

By: Pravin

Pravin — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 03:26:37 +0000

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.

By: sameer

sameer — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:26:51 +0000

Good effort and nice to see the candid feedback presentation

By: Anuj Rathi

Anuj Rathi — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:36:35 +0000

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.

By: Mahesh

Mahesh — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:31:22 +0000

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.

By: Vijay Rayapati

Vijay Rayapati — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:21:39 +0000

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 .

By: Anuj Rathi

Anuj Rathi — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:14:52 +0000

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.

By: guru

guru — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:36:14 +0000

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…

By: Ashish

Ashish — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 03:57:29 +0000

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.

By: sameer

sameer — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 03:16:46 +0000

@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

By: Anuj Rathi

Anuj Rathi — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 02:36:50 +0000

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.

By: Shashi

Shashi — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:39:21 +0000

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

bulls eye..

By: Mayank

Mayank — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:26:14 +0000

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.

By: Karthik S

Karthik S — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:01:19 +0000

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