In this interview, Guy Kawasaki recounts his early days at Apple, explaining how the term “evangelist” was coined to describe the mission‑driven promotion of the Macintosh as a tool for creativity and freedom against the “totalitarian” IBM and Microsoft. He introduces “Guy’s Golden Touch,” the idea that the key to successful evangelism is to champion products that are already great, because great products sell themselves. Kawasaki reflects on his own career, emphasizing that luck placed him in the right place at the right time, but hard work and a growth‑mindset—ideas popularized by Carol Dweck—were the real drivers of his success. He warns against praising intelligence over effort, especially when raising children. When a product turns out to be mediocre, he admits he has failed and discusses the difficulty of predicting which early versions will evolve into winners, highlighting the role of luck and the challenge of knowing when to “pull the ripcord.” Kawasaki contrasts stories of relentless persistence (e.g., Google’s early days) with stories of strategic pivots, noting that hindsight makes any decision look obvious. He uses a “spaghetti on the wall” metaphor to describe venture capital’s trial‑and‑error approach, citing both successful investments (Google, YouTube, Facebook) and failures (Webvan). Finally, he recommends watching the HBO series Silicon Valley as an educational glimpse into the culture he describes.
Chapters
Okay, so selling has been an incredible skill that you picked up along the way.
Well, since I can't make it, yeah, what else is left?
Right. So tell me about the early days at Apple. Like, you joined, you managed to convince them somehow that, I mean, you got into the technology.
Yeah, that's a whole other story.
Right?
Yeah, well.
So tell me about, like, this was what, '84?
'83.
'83, okay.
How many of you were not born in '83? Oh, shit.
It's basically the same proportion. It's like almost everyone here born after '83 internationally. All right. All right. So what did that mean to be an evangelist?
Not 1983, right?
Yeah. What did that mean at the time to be an evangelist? I think you were one of the first evangelists I'd ever heard.
Well, there was Jesus before me.
No, I mean, in a company.
And John the Baptist, yeah. Yeah. So evangelism comes from Greek words meaning bringing the good news. So with the Macintosh division, rather than looking at Macintosh as another personal computer that would compete with the IBM PC or Apple II, it was more of a religion. It was more of a mission. It was more of a cause for us. And the enemy in this case was George Orwellian 1984 totalitarian IBM thought police, Microsoft domination of the world. So this was an epic struggle against totalitarianism, against, you know, 1984, Orwellian. This was to preserve freedom, to preserve creativity and productivity. It was a very, very emotional sell. And so we, the evangelists of Macintosh, were bringing the good news of Macintosh that would make people more creative and more productive. And that's what an evangelist does. And so many people want to know what's the key to evangelism. And the key is called Guy's Golden Touch. So Guy's Golden Touch is not whatever I touch turns to gold because that is simply not true. I wish that was true. Guy's Golden Touch is whatever is gold Guy touches. So what I'm trying to communicate to you is that the key to evangelism is that you create what affiliate yourself or go to work for a company that has something great because it's very easy to evangelize something great and it's very hard to evangelize crap. That's the bottom— that's the key to evangelism, knowing what to evangelize.
So, do you think that you were very smart or did you got very lucky when you decided you wanted to work in tech and wound up at Apple?
I don't consider myself that smart. I don't consider myself—
You must have seen something in it though that made you think—
I was just going to say I just got lucky. If I had a choice between being smart or lucky, I would pick lucky, honestly. I was in the right place at the right time. I worked very hard. I think the key to my success in life is that I'm willing to work hard. There are people who are much smarter than me. There's some people who can work harder than me, but not too many people can work harder and be smarter than me. So it's— for me, it's all about grinding it out. I love to grind it out. I can grind it out. And I've, you know, there's a great book by a woman named Carol Dweck, D-W-E-C-K, about the mindset. And she says that, you know, people with a growth mindset who believe in hard work and grinding it out, They can accomplish different things. But if you don't believe in the growth mindset, that you have this kind of set mindset, you get stuck. And you can even be a great student, straight A's, 2400 SAT, all the good stuff, but you could still have a kind of a stuck mindset because you believe that people have been telling you you're so smart all your whole life. that you become risk-averse. Because if someone tells you you're smart, you don't want to try something new because what if you fail? Then you'll burst the bubble, you'll ruin your self-image. So her advice to people, and I think this applies to entrepreneurship, and I tell this to my kids all the time, the key is not to be the smartest. The key is to work the hardest. Because I think hard work is the key, basically.
And they say that about raising kids. If you praise them for working hard—
As opposed to being smart.
As opposed to that. You're so smart. Yeah, they'll start to assume that it's also something they do.
Have I not convinced you that working hard is the key?
Say yes. Once again, putting the kids on the spot. So, it's easier to sell something or easier to evangelize something that's really great.
Yes.
What have you done when you found yourself in a position where you're trying to evangelize something and realized that it actually was kind of crap?
I failed. I mean, it's hard to evangelize crap. I can't say that I evangelized great stuff my whole career. I made a lot of mistakes. It's just much harder. There's a level of complication here in that, how do you know that something— because very few things start off great in version 1. So how do you know version 1.1 or 2.0 will become great?
Wow.
And that's where it gets really hard because it's It's so hard to figure out what will evolve and become better and what will simply die. That's where luck comes in, I think. That's where luck comes in.
And I guess you have to kind of know when to pull the ripcord, I guess.
Well, knowing when to pull the ripcord is one of the hardest things because much of what you read and much of what you hear from people who you think know what they're doing is so anecdotal, right? It's not scientific per se, right? I mean, how would you do a scientific experiment? You take 2 products of equal potential with equal teams and you only change one variable to prove, you know, that this is the variable that matters. That's scientific research. Nobody can do that. So, you know, if you— you can read stories where the entrepreneur believed against all naysaying that you know, this product, this service was going to succeed and everybody told him or her to quit and give up and pivot and all that, but he or she believed and at the last possible moment this order came in or something happened or, you know, somebody picked them and they succeeded. So the lesson is never give up. And then you'll also hear stories that say, you know, Google started as a consulting firm and they pivoted to become a search engine, so the key is to pivot. So which one do you believe? I don't know. It's very hard to figure. And so the way— the reason why you hear these stories is because retroactively you can say you knew what to do, right? So we knew we should have pivoted. That's why we are a billion-dollar company today. Or we knew we should have stuck it out because it was right. And that's why we're a billion-dollar company. So basically I'm telling you for an insight for you who are not too familiar with Silicon Valley. What we do here is we throw lots of things against the wall, very few things stick, then you go up to the wall and you paint the target around it and you say, I hit the bullseye. That's how it works. I can guarantee you how to hit the bullseye. Throw the thing first.
And you do not talk about all the spaghetti on the wall.
No, I mean, if you're a venture capital firm and somebody says, well, you invested Google and YouTube and Facebook and all these kind of things.
Pretty smart, right?
Yeah, you're pretty smart. And you say, well, then why did you invest in Webvan from the same firm? And you say, well, I told my partners not to do that. That's how it works. All of you should watch Silicon Valley on HBO. That is such a true— I mean, that is— The reason why it's funny is because it's true.
I mean— How many of you watch Silicon Valley?
You have got to watch that.
Okay, good. It's very educational. I think that's part of your education here.
All you need to understand America, you just watch Silicon Valley and House of Cards. That's it. That's all you need. That's all you need.
