Kawasaki's Top Ten Entrepreneur Lies

When lecturing at Cambridge University recently, my attention was happily re-drawn to venture capital guru Guy Kawasaki.

Seven years ago he wrote this seminal blog on the delusions of people that pitch him their new business idea.

These eleven traps must be absent from your business plan. And of course, their cousins similarly removed from your sales pitch.

At first, I was reminded how one of the big five failings of selling a new product is that the claims made of it are considered by the audience as both outlandish and unproven.

There are a number of sure-fire ways to wind up a prospect in this regard. Here’s a dozen that occurred to me straight away;

Payback Size

Payback Speed

Implementation Ease

On-Costs Irrelevance

Change Impact

Lack of Alternatives

No Worse-Case

Unknown References

Absolute Uniqueness

False Urgency

Supply Continuity

Contract Flexibility

Sanity check your latest pitch. Any of these appear? If they do, you likely need a re-write…