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reality check: kawasaki helps entrepreneurs get real

Guy Kawasaki's new book, Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition, is essential reading for entrepreneurs. Essential. If you're starting up, raising money, trying to make your living on-line, or stretching your marketing muscles, just get this book.

My 5 Favorite bits from REALITY CHECK, {with which I couldn't agree more:}

1. Innovation is a hard, messy process with no shortcuts. It starts with making something that you'd like to use that makes meaning, and it gets both easier and harder from there.
2. Ultimately, the underlying assumptions in your marketing model are the key to the fundability and viability of your start up.
3. Like the sun rising and Canadians playing hockey, you can depend on the greed of venture capitalists.
4. Don't be afraid to polarize people. Most companies want to create the holy grail of products that appeals to every demographic, socioeconomic background, and geographic location. To attempt to do so guarantees mediocrity. Instead, create great products that make segments of people very happy.
5. Judge others by their intentions, and judge yourself by your results.

In typical Silicon Valley style the tone of Reality Check is brash, the wisdom is delivered in bullet points, and it's full of shortcuts. Kawasaki gets a bunch of other big players to contribute chapters on viral marketing, public speaking, social entrepreneurship, and the art of sucking up. The bottom line: Reality Check is an effective, useful book based on the realities of success and failure.