Entrepreneurship’s 10 Commandments by Guy Kawasaki

1. Make meaning, not money. Entrepreneurs should focus on making their product or service mean something beyond the sum of its components—and the money may very well follow.

2. Make a mantra, not a mission statement. Keep it short and define yourself by what you want to mean to consumers. To get everyone internally and externally on the same page, explain why your organization exists and how it meets customers’ needs and desires.

3. Jump curves. Innovating is harder than just staying a little bit ahead of competitors on the same curve.

4. In product design, “roll the DICEE.” That’s an acronym. “D” is for deep, which to Kawasaki means thinking about features that go beyond the norm. One of his favorite “deep” ideas: Fanning Reef sandals, which have a bottle opener built into the sole. “I” is for intelligence, as seen in the design of Panasonic’s BF-104 flashlight, which uses batteries of three different sizes to accommodate the random mix of extra batteries many people have around the house. “C” is for complete—or being not just a product, but including support and service. The first “E” is for elegance: Beauty matters, according to Kawasaki.

5. Don’t worry, be “crappy.” This doesn’t mean ship a bad product, but “your innovation can have elements of crappiness to it,” Kawasaki said. Twitter has a litany of flaws, but it is changing people’s habits. The first Mac had plenty of room for improvement, but it made a statement about the future of personal computing, and it did not need to wait.

6. Polarize people. Try to be all things to all people and you often ship mediocrity, Kawasaki said.

7. Let 100 flowers blossom. You never know where the flowers will emerge, so let them grow. Innovations may attract unexpected and unintended customers. It’s a lot easier than asking people who aren’t interested ‘why not,’ and trying to change their minds.”

8. Churn, baby, churn. Always improve. Listen to customers for ideas. Even if people say it can’t be done.

9. Niche yourself. Find your place, Kawasaki urged. He showed a simple X-Y graph, with the usual four quadrants mapping the variables “Uniqueness” and “Value.”

10. Follow the 10-20-30 rule when pitching to venture capitalists. That means no more than 10 PowerPoint slides, a limit of 20 minutes for the pitch and using a 30-point font size in the presentation (to keep it simple). The goal of such pitches isn’t to walk home with a check, he said, it’s to “not be eliminated” from consideration.

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