Evangelism and the Future of AI. The Look Back welcomes Guy Kawasaki, who famously entered the tech world as Evangelist on Apple’s original Macintosh team hand picked by Steve Jobs. After an epic run with Apple, Guy ran and mentored several startup companies, wrote many books that supported his perspective at the intersection of Entrepreneurship X Evangelism.  Oh, and wait til he shares his ideas on the future of AI. This was one of my favorite discussions.

Happy New Year!

Keith

On YouTube @ https://www.youtube.com/@TechStartupNetwork/featured

https://guykawasaki.com/books/think-remarkable/
The Macintosh Way (1990) ISBN 0-06-097338-2.

Selling the Dream (1992) ISBN 0-88730-600-4.

The Dean of the Personal Technology product review was Walt Mossberg and now he joins The Look Back and reviews his early days in journalism to the transition into the most followed column @WallStreetJournal that instantly became a MUST READ for everyone in the PC industry. 

Walt shares his approach to proper product reviews and also reflects on his work on All Things Digital and ReCode, home of the famous Code Conference he ran with Kara Swisher. Currently Walt is serving on the Board of News Literacy Project  https://newslit.org/  - working with educators and journalists to give students the skills they need to discern fact from fiction and to know what to trust! (please review the site as they need donations). Help Journalism Stay Free! (now more than ever)

On the 50th Anniversary of the e-game Pong, from Atari, The Look Back on the Tech Startup Network welcomed legendary entrepreneur Nolan Bushnell to the podcast. Here from an amazing entrepreneur share his journey and how he views the opportunities in gaming and AI today and the skills required to become a truly successful entrepreneur. Give a listen and share with a fellow entrepreneur and founder. 

The Look Back welcomes Jim Hamilton to the program. Jim came out of the Tandy workshop back in the day, probably most known for its Radio Shack stores, which Charles Tandy and Team bought in 1962 for $300K and grew to 8000 stores. He  was also an exec with Tandy offshoots Computer City and Incredible Universe - and efforts like Motorola Mobility, Get It Now.gr, and PowerMat. He's been a Professor of Entrepreneurship for the past 8 years at the University of Dallas and shares some wonderful stories from the PC era and lessons for today's entrepreneurs.

Laura McCann is the Founder, CEO and Chief Mood Builder of Adoratherapy, a vertical brand disrupting the aromatherapy category. The former actress and artist turned master brand builder and multi-channel marketer, shares her personal journey that has led her to many exciting (and successful pivots) that provide useful instruction to entrepreneurs across many industries. Please listen and share! 

Max founded PeopleConnect in 2000 to help early-stage co's find top talent across technology, biotech, cleantech, apps, services, medical devices, and consumer products. PeopleConnect provides traditional contingency searches. Other ongoing projects I’m involved in that also support the startup community:

The Founder of Ancestry joins The Look Back for a review of one of the coolest Co’s that came out of Internet 1.0 - and lived to tell about - but it was quite a story! Come learn the genealogy while also learning about Paul’s NewCo Soar AI, a venture studio where he’s incubating some 15 AI companies to uplift humanity at work and in life. As a bonus he shares many invaluable Founder/Startup insights. Give a listen and track your success from this point on!

We recently welcomed Aytekin Tank, the Founder and CEO of Jotform, from his home base of Turkey, to The Look Back with Host Keith Newman. For those not aware of the amazing backstory, Jotform is one of the great SaaS app success stories, having recently crossed the 25M users plateau - and more than 600 employees - and what's as impressive (almost) is he has done it all with No Funding (VC or Debt). He has some great Founder lessons for Super Founders in SaaS, Software and almost any bootstrapper looking to blitzscale! Give a listen and share with a few friends! 

Back in the day #GameStop CEO Gary Kusin opened one of the first software only stores in a brick and mortar world. He brought his deep understanding of marketing and retailing with a slim background in software and took the plunge. Hundreds of millions in sales, hundreds of stores and hundreds of stories followed. We chat up everything from the good and bad at the helm of what would become the icon for a meme stock era along with his stories running an innovative cosmetics co and a turnaround of the iconic Kinko's brand only to sell to Fedex. Gary has also written a fantastic new book: "Always Learning" - some great stories along with lessons from a savvy business leader. #Babbages #GameStop #Kinkos #LauraMercier 

Welcome back to the podcast @Tiffani Bova - My first encore guest! Tiffani, a former exec at @Gartner and @Salesforce, who has met with seemingly every top CMO/CEO in the Fortune 500, has just dropped a new book “The Experience Mindset” (changing the way you think about growth) and I found it so kool and insightful I had to bring her on the program to discuss the ideas of working to break down silos, making it easier for employees to have success and taking a bigger view of Go To Market. 

A chat that every co can find value. Please enjoy and let me know what you think.