Top all-time · #1902
Guy Kawasaki
Personal blog · guykawasaki.comstartupsbusiness
Guy Kawasaki's personal blog at guykawasaki.com covers startups and business. Since 2008, 39 different Hacker News readers have linked it 42 times, most often “Guy Kawasaki: The Only 10 Slides You Need in Your Pitch”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-28, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (21) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Guy Kawasaki's blog mainly as a citation for startup and pitch-deck advice, including the 10/20/30 slide rule and The Art of the Start, and for his views on Silicon Valley and Steve Jobs.
- Recommended for · 2 comments
- One commenter says "Read this book" for The Art of the Start; another calls his pitch deck "really good examples" of the format.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 21 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Guy Kawasaki is a Silicon-Valley based author, speaker, entrepreneur, and evangelist.
Most-linked posts?
- Guy Kawasaki: The Only 10 Slides You Need in Your Pitch6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-02-28
- The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-11-06
- How to Prevent a Bozo Explosion2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-03-22
- /the-art-of-the-start/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-04-12
- /what-i-learned-from-steve-jobs/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-07-02
What Hacker News says?
Guy Kawasaki once had a post that states the reason why, but in a different angle - it's a post basically on why Silicon Valley is successful: >> https://guykawasaki.com/how_to_kick_sil/ High housing prices. If houses are cheap, it means that young people can buy housing sooner and have kids. When they have kids, they can’t take as much risk and don’t have as much energy to start companies. (I have four kids—I barel…
Comment linking /how_to_kick_sil/
on “Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads”Submitted How to Prevent a Bozo Explosion as a story · 6 points
HN discussionI'm a consultant as well. You go through enough companies and you can see how much of a problem this actually is. As much as I did not particularly care for the management style of Steve Jobs, as far as I know, he was the one that first used the term. https://guykawasaki.com/what-i-learned-from-steve-jobs/ Edited to add: This just happened recently. Maybe you'll appreciate it. 15 years ago or so (before the term "te…
Comment linking /what-i-learned-from-steve-jobs/
on “Dear Agile, I’m Tired of Pretending (2018)”Submitted Guy Kawasaki: The Only 10 Slides You Need in Your Pitch as a story · 5 points
HN discussionLimit presentations to 10 slides. This works for VC pitches. It should probably work for anything. Guy Kawasaki even has his 10 20 30 rule [1]. 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point font. I had a writing assignment once in college. The limit was 1000 words. And then there was a list of points we had to address. Enforced brevity was the challenge. On the other end of the spectrum, there's David Byrne I Heart Powerpoint [2]…
Comment linking /the_102030_rule/
on ““One Damn Slide After Another”: PowerPoint at Every Occasion for Speech (2016)”Submitted The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint as a story · 3 points
HN discussionMarketing: noun, the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising. The keywords there are "action", and "promoting". The first 4 items you list are not marketing. They are preparing for the market. The only thing there that is actually marketing is "They increased awareness and trial of their product via word-of-mouth" and that only barely counts because…
Comment linking /
on “How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing”Submitted The Only 10 Slides You Need in Your Startup Pitch as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis is a tarted up version of Guy's 10/20/30 rule of PowerPoint: 10 slides -- because that's the max a viewer will hold in their head 20 minutes -- because that's the max people will pay attention 30 point font size, minimum -- because people can read it, and you won't cram too much on These guidelines are useful for all kinds of presentations because it imposes some structure and some constraint on material. Like…
Comment linking /the_102030_rule/
on “Your Startup's Pitch Needs Only These 10 Slides”Submitted What I Learned from Steve Jobs (2011) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionNo. Many companies have hiring rate of 10% [1] which means hiring 1 candidate may cost you 10 person-days assuming full day interviews for each candidate [2]. You can probably double that to cover the cost of phone screens, so let's say 20-person day of work per good hire. Assume you had 4 false negatives just because you are so aggressive and so a good hire ended up costing you 100 person days instead. This cost is…
Comment linking /how_to_prevent_/
on “The Terrible Technical Interview”Submitted My Advice to 22 Year-Olds as a story · 3 points
HN discussionStrangely similar to Guy Kawasaki's https://alltop.com/ https://guykawasaki.com/alltop-version/
Comment linking /alltop-version/
on “Show HN: Top Links from Hacker News, Reddit, Techmeme, PH on a Single Page”Submitted The Art of Evangelism as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe title doesn't quite fit, it's more like hundreds of thousands, as explained in this recent podcast interview. Guy Kawasaki's Remarkable People https://guykawasaki.com/jeff-hawkins/
Comment linking /jeff-hawkins/
on “A Browsable Petascale Reconstruction of the Human Cortex”Submitted The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint as a story · 2 points
HN discussionNice! Bookmarking. 2 typos: Rule 10 ("it's" s/b "its") and 14 ("marke" s/b "mark"). Brings back memories of this: https://guykawasaki.com/the-only-10-slides-you-need-in-your-...
Comment linking /the-only-10-slides-you-need-in-your-pitch/
on “Presentation Rules”Submitted The Venture Capital Aptitude Test (VCAT) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionTake this advice ! The people that are actually suffering from the problems your business solves are (usually) not managers, CEO, or anyone at the top. It is the people in the middle or bottom. They are usually also so happy to have something that solves their problems, that they will act as an internal champion for you during the sales process. It's cliche, but Art of the Start http://www.guykawasaki.com/the-art-of…
Comment linking /the-art-of-the-start/
on “Ask HN: Tips/secrets for partnering with large businesses?”Submitted How to Enchant Users by Guy Kawasaki at Stanford as a story · 2 points
HN discussion1. Nobody cares how hard you work. Results — not effort — are the only things that matter. 2. It's infinitely easier to produce excellent results when you like the job you're in. You may never find "The perfect job" but the closer the match to your skills, the better. 3. You'll be amazed at how few people give a sh*t about your new startup. 4. Paychecks are addictive. Then often essential. If you want to start your…
Comment linking /the_big_dip_ten/
on “Ask HN: What insight was key to growth of your career or startup?”Submitted Guy Kawasaki: Reality Check as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThey have written books on the subject: http://guykawasaki.com/you_have_to_lov/
Comment linking /you_have_to_lov/
on “Female Founders Conference – Live Stream [video]”Submitted Core Memory-Computers Are Sensual as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIt’s not clear to me whether you’re characterizing that as trenchant business advice or cynical bullshit. Meta has had several rounds of layoffs now so it surely can’t be the former. Also Guy Kawasaki probably isn’t the first to say this, but I’d guess he predates Zuckerberg: https://guykawasaki.com/the_art_of_the_/
Comment linking /the_art_of_the_/
on “Layoffs at Block”Submitted The Venture Capital Aptitude Test (VCAT) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSeriously from all the articles I read I am an expert when knowing what not to do. So now I am looking for an article that says what to do. Anybody have some other good read to share? http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0976470705 http://steveblank.com/category/customer-development-manifest... http://steveblank.com/category/customer-development/ http://www.guykawasaki.com/the-art-of-the-start/
Comment linking /the-art-of-the-start/
on “Bad assumptions new tech entrepreneurs tend to make”Submitted Adam Curry on Guy Kawasaki’s Remarkable People as a story · 1 points
HN discussionhttp://www.popurls.com http://www.guykawasaki.com
Comment linking /
on “Great collection of UI blogs and resources”Submitted Julie Packard Interviewed by Guy Kawasaki as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
