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Rules for Revolutionaries

Rules for Revolutionaries

Guy Kawasaki
1999
T3 206 pages · about 3h 26m to read Open Librarygoodreads

Summary

Kawasaki wrote this as a guide to creating and launching genuinely new products, drawing on his experience at Apple during the Macintosh introduction and afterwards as an investor and evangelist.

His organising structure has three parts. Create like a god, meaning build something that is qualitatively different rather than incrementally better, jump to the next curve rather than optimising the current one, and be willing to make a product that does not fit existing categories. Command like a king, meaning make decisions, define the enemy clearly, and put the product in front of customers early rather than perfecting it. Work like a slave, meaning that the launch and the evangelism are more work than the creation and that most products fail at this stage rather than at the design stage.

The specific tactics include: eating your own product before shipping it; identifying and cultivating the small number of early enthusiasts who will do the persuading for you; making the product easy to try and to talk about; not competing on the incumbent's chosen dimension; and treating the first version as a learning instrument rather than as a finished product, which he states as the instruction to ship then test.

The book is from 1999 and its technology examples are dated. It has no evidence base and consists of assertions supported by anecdote. The evangelism material, which is Kawasaki's actual expertise, is the most useful part and anticipated much of what later became standard practice in product launch and community building.

Key takeaways 7

  1. Build something qualitatively different rather than incrementally better, because incremental improvement competes on the incumbent's chosen dimension.
  2. Jumping to the next curve produces advantages that optimising the current curve cannot, and incumbents optimise because their assets are on the existing curve.
  3. Ship the first version and learn from it rather than perfecting it, since the information needed to perfect it only exists after customers use it.
  4. A small number of early enthusiasts do the persuading, which makes identifying and equipping them more valuable than mass marketing.
  5. A product must be easy to try and easy to describe to someone else, or the enthusiasts cannot do their work.
  6. Defining the enemy clearly gives a team something to organise against, which is more motivating than a positive goal.
  7. Launch and evangelism require more work than creation, and most products fail at that stage rather than in design.

Who should read it

Founders launching genuinely new products who want tactical advice on early adopters, evangelism and shipping before perfection.

About Guy Kawasaki

Chief evangelist at Canva; earlier Apple's Macintosh evangelist and a co-founder of Garage Technology Ventures.

The Art of the Start breaks early-company work into concrete tasks - pitching, positioning, recruiting, bootstrapping, partnering - for founders with no prior company behind them. The Macintosh Way and Selling the Dream document how Apple built developer and customer evangelism into a product launch, which is where the modern practice of developer relations comes from.

Canva, Apple, Garage Technology Ventures

Guy Kawasaki’s page →Canva →Apple →Garage Technology Ventures →

Who recommended it 1 · 1 direct

Mohnish PabraidirectSource

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Where it sits in the reference 4

Guy Kawasaki
Founders
Management and Organisational Design
Business themes
Innovation, disruption and platforms
Business themes
Innovation and Disruption
Business themes

Topics

Entrepreneurship and StartupsBusiness and Management