Russell Beattie

I was just going back over that presentation I linked to before, and I realized that though it was written by Tom Peters, it was actually hosted on another site called Change This, the brain child of Seth Godin (who else?). I guess it was started this past summer and is collecting a series of "manifestos" in that neat presentation format I was admiring before. There's even a manifesto about their reason for being..

The image above is from a presentation based on Guy Kawasaki's "Art of the Start" which I just happened to buy today (along with another copy of Getting Things Done). Since I'm most likely going to skim through the book rather than read every word, I wish I found this earlier, since it seems to really capture the essence of his ideas. I found it amazing that a few days ago I was writing "just go with the prototype" and then today I find two presentations that say just that. Very interesting.

I have to say that I've been annoyed with Kawasaki ever since I realized how much of a scam Garage.com was. Remember when it started and had all this hype and you could submit your business plan using this long-drawn out web-form they had (have?). And then... nothing. No feedback, no response, nothing. Just a black-hole for suckers like me to send their ideas to. Okay, so my biz plan sucked. Fine. But it would've been nice to know why. And I guess I assumed back then they'd have some sort of model to link up early stage investors, but it seemed they were just cherry picking. Months went by and there didn't seem to be any announcements, and I realized that it was just like every other VC firm, just with a cooler name. Anyways, that's all long past and judging by Garage's portfolio, Kawasaki's definitely been involved with a lot of startups. Plus, hey, the book cover had lots of quotes saying nice things. ;-)

Oh yeah... Yes, yes, I know. Blogging is not particularly conducive to getting shit done. Today was a sort of "recharge the battery" day where I went down to B&N and wandered around the business books for a while, thumbed through some new technology books and generally thought about what I'm doing. I'm probably going to sit down and work through Kawasaki's book this evening and then I can start in on some serious programming now that I've got a bigger picture in my head. If I say this same thing tomorrow, please by all means, jump on me.

Oh, I'll have to read Getting Things Done again too... I'll put that on my to do list and get to it eventually. ;-)

-Russ