Guy Kawasaki: Tell a Story and Plant Many Seeds

You need to tell a story.

Most people particularly into technology

are horrible at telling stories

You need to tell a story.

Why did you start eBay?

Why did you start Google?

Why did you start Apple?

You can even make up the story, after the fact

One of the great legends of Silicon valley

is that eBay was because of

Pierre Omidyars' girlfriend wanted to sell

pez dispensers.

Okay. The truth is that he really wanted to

create a perfect market where demand and

supply cross each other. The perfect market

And to have a perfect market, you need to

eliminate geography.

The story of the pez dispenser

is after the fact.

Now, I'm not encouraging you to lie

but I am telling you a story is

-much more powerful when you launch.

Why you two in a garage knew there was a

-better way to search.

Or you wanted to bring personal computers

-to more people.

Or you wanted a place where people could

upload videos of people dropping menthos

into Diet Coke.

(laughter)

Whatever it is, tell a story

The next thing is

you need to plant many seeds

This is completely contrary

to classic marketing.

Classic marketing is you plant a few seeds,

because you know exactly who is going to

embrace your product

and you water and fertilize just those seeds.

You focus.

I think that's just completely wrong

In the old days, you would focus on

the A-Listers and the top tier journalists.

I.E, Wall Street Journal

New York Times

Business Week

Fortune and Forbes.

What you did is, you sucked up to them

because you hoped in these

great oracles of wisdom and knowledge

would embrace your product

and tell the hoi polloi

and the great unwashed masses to embrace

your product.

Okay, so you sucked up to them.

If you didn't have time to suck up to them,

you hired a PR firm and paid them

ten thousand bucks to suck up for you.

Then, the PR firm would hire an

oriental art history from Wellesley to do the

sucking up for you.

Okay, this doesn't work anymore

because the world has been inverted.

The world has been inverted.

And now, for you to reach critical mass

with a product, it's not because the

Wall Street Journal or the New York Times

blessed your product. It's because

lonelyboy15 embraced your product.

and lonelyboy15 told his twenty friends,

who told their twenty friends,

who eventually told Tiffany517

and lonelygirl to also embrace your product.

And what happens- this is how Twitter

and how Facebook happens.

It's not because the New York Times

saw Facebook, or Twitter

on the first day they launched and said

"Ha ha, we have seen the future

-we know with total certainty some day

Facebook will have more members

than every other country except

China and India.

Show me a New York Times, Business Week,

Fortune, or Forbes article that

predicted the success of Twitter or Facebook.

or Apple! or Yahoo!

Pick any of the success stories, none of them.

So what you need to do

is plant many seeds.