Enchantment | 5 Questions for Guy Kawasaki
March 16, 2011 by admin · Leave a Comment
Guy Kawasaki is the co-founder of Alltop.com, an “online magazine rack” of popular topics on the web, and a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures. Previously, he was the chief evangelist of Apple. Kawasaki is the author of ten books including his recently released (and reviewed by yours truly) Enchantment. Other books include Reality Check, The Art of the Start (my personal favorite), Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.
While I knew of Guy for his standing and prominence in Silicon Valley and the tech world, I know him personally from the ice rink. He is a frequent teammate and opponent in pick-up hockey games. Whether friend or foe, he always seems to find joy in slapping the puck in my general direction.
1) What was the inspiration for “Enchantment”?
Many people at my ice rink know me only in the context of my limited hockey ability. I decided to write a book that hopefully becomes a bestseller so that they’ll be in a bookstore someday and see my book and say, “I play hockey with that guy.” This will change the dynamics of my relationship with them.
Fanminder | 5 Questions for Paul Rosenfeld & Tracy Grover
I met Paul Rosenfeld last year when he came to pitch Savvy Cellar Wine Bar & Wine Shop before it opened in Mountain View, CA on the merits of his new mobile marketing service called Fanminder. Always being one to extend and try new things and wanting to dip our toe into the mobile world, I said yes (plus Paul is very passionate and convincing). He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Fanminder. He spent about 15 years working for two of the best companies catering to small businesses — American Express and Intuit. At American Express Paul helped lead its first gift card program for merchants and worked in the Small Business Services division. At Intuit, he was General Manager QuickBooks Merchant Account Service; QuickBooks Online Edition; and led development of the FinanceWorks online banking suite.
Tracy Grover is Co-Founder and COO of Fanminder. Most recently, Tracy was Vice President of Product Management for AccountNow. Previously she served as Director of Marketing for LoopNet, which automates online marketing tools for small real estate businesses to help them compete with the big guys. Before that Tracy built, launched, and marketed online banking solutions for small businesses (for Bank of America & Silicon Valley Bank), a secure mobile application used by doctors & public officials (Certicom) and the first mass market online credit card, NextCard.
I recently sat down with Paul and Tracy and fired off 5 questions for them . . . .
1) What was the genesis of Fanminder?
Paul: Tracy and I started Fanminder literally in the teeth of the recession, in October 2008. We had very good paying jobs – I was the Chief Marketing Officer and Tracy was the VP Product Management for a local start-up. We saw how all the larger, Fortune-sized retailers were rushing into mobile and social marketing but when we “walked down main street” we didn’t see any local businesses doing anything.
KinKast | 5 Questions for Raul Mujica
January 6, 2011 by admin · 2 Comments
Raul Mujica is CEO of KinKast, a recently launched startup looking to “take social engagement to the next level by making it effortless, impulsive and visceral”. Raul is a former colleague of mine at Netscape and AOL. He has been building products and brands at leading companies and start-ups for more than 17 years, including Untangle, Elance, AOL, Netscape, and Hewlett Packard. Raul holds a B.S. in Finance from Georgetown University and an MBA from New York University (but I don’t hold either of those things against him). He lives in Los Altos, CA and is an avid skier, digital photographer and coach of his sons’ sports teams.
1. What is KinKast?
KinKast is the fastest and easiest way to privately share video. On the iPhone you can record a moment and share it with two taps. There’s no waiting or size limits. (Or, upload video from any camera to the website.) Your friends will receive an email with links to a private website and they won’t have to create an account. Our goal is to make video sharing easy, fast and safer.
Innovation Games | 5 Questions For Luke Hohmann
I’ve been blessed over the course of my 12 years in Silicon Valley working for Netscape, AOL and Apple and consulting for countless software and Internet companies to have met many bright, creative and high-impact people. Today I kick off a new blog series highlighting some of those people. As Jim Barksdale, CEO of Netscape, would explain: “every great list has either 3 or 5 things on it. If you got 4 on your list, you either got 1 too many or need to add 1 more.” I’ve opted for 5 questions on my “list” and blog series!
Luke Hohmann is software product expert, author, coach, entrepreneur, innovator, teacher and friend. He is the author of “Journey of the Software Professional: A Sociology of Software Development”, “Beyond Software Architecture: Creating and Sustaining Winning Solutions”, and “Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play”. He is a former faculty member of the UC Berkeley and Santa Cruz (Extensions). Luke is on the board of the Agile Alliance and is a member of the ACM, IEEE, and PDMA. Luke is the Founder & CEO of Enthiosys, an Agile Product Management Consultancy. I caught up with him recently to talk about his latest venture, Innovation Games Online.
1. What are Innovation Games Online?
Innovation Games® online are web-based versions of some of our most popular games. They provide the same kind rich interaction and collaboration of our in-person versions of the games at a web-scale.
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