>> Announcer: Live from the Computer History Museum,
in Mountain View, California, it's theCUBE!
Covering DevNet Create 2018, brought to you by Cisco.
>> Hello and welcome back to theCUBE's exclusive
live coverage here in Mountain View, California,
the heart of Silicon Valley at the
Computer History Museum for Cisco's DevNet Create.
I'm here with Lauren Cooney, the analyst,
for the Wikibon team and our next guest is
I'm proud to have Guy Kawasaki here on theCUBE.
Guy is, goes without mentioning, a legend in the industry.
Currently, the chief evangelist for Canva
author of Art of the Start,
a real pioneer in entrepreneurship,
tech entrepreneurship, tech evangelism.
Guy, great to see you, thanks for joining us.
>> Thank you.
>> Among other things, you've done a lot of amazing things.
Thanks for joining us.
>> What better place to be.
>> The tech culture now is so mainstream.
You're seeing Facebook CEO draw in more audience
than a Supreme Court justice.
>> More people watched the Senate hearings yesterday--
>> He probably has more impact
than a Supreme Court justice.
>> He's running the world.
The tech culture has really grown to be
a mainstream...in the early days
the computer industry when it was really
the beginning of the revolution, the PC revolution,
Macintosh and the PC, you were there.
So much has happened.
I mean, as you look back, I mean
looked out at the young guns coming up,
what's your view, what's your reaction to all this?
You have these (mumbles) moments.
>> What's your take on all this?
>> I suppose many people would say,
we never thought it would get to this point.
It's turned destructive and negative and all that.
But it's a short snapshot of time and,
first of all, can we put the genie back in the bottle?
No, so it doesn't really matter.
But, all things considered,
the democratization of computing,
everybody has a computer,
whether it's a phone or a computer.
The democratization of the transfer
of information, obviously some information
may be faint, may be not what you like.
But would we go back to a time
where we send things by fax machines?
Not at all, I mean all things considered,
>> it's a great time to be alive.
>> Democratization goes through these waves,
democratization with the PC,
democratization with the internet,
democratization of web 2.0 and social media.
The beginning of social media,
about 15 years, maybe 10, whatever way
you might want to mark it.
And now democratization with data and AI is interesting.
So you're having these waves of democratization.
It's going to take some time to sort out.
I mean, as you look at the tech trends,
how do you make sense of it,
or what do you get excited about?
How do you surf that wave? (chuckling)
If you're going to surf the wave, the big wave coming,
which some say is block chain and cryptocurrency
and decentralization.
What's the wave that you're on, that's the question?
>> To use a surfing analogy,
if we're going to go down that rat hole,
a good, experienced surfer knows
where to sit, can look out and say,
I'll take the fourth wave.
And I'll sit in the right place,
turn around at the right time,
paddle at the right time, you know, all that.
And then there's people like me.
We sit in the same place,
and every 15 minutes,
the right wave comes along and catches us.
Those are the two theories.
>> I think if only predicting tech trends
were as easy as predicting surfing.
>> Interviewer: Timing's everything.
>> Timing is everything, luck is a lot to do with it.
We only learn about the Apples and the Googles
and the Ciscos and the Facebooks
and the Pinterests and the Instagrams.
I think you think, well, there are these
really smart people and they can
predict the trend or cause a trend.
I think it's more the game of big numbers
where if you have enough surfers in the water,
somebody's going to catch a wave. (chuckling)
And then you can say, yeah, I knew he was the best surfer.
>> But really, right place, right time.
>> And you got to know what a wave looks like.
>> Guy: Well, yeah.
>> You got to be, like, okay, am I in a tide pool
>> or am I on a boogie board.
>> And to your point, you've got to be in the water.
[John] Yeah, yeah.
>> You can't be standing on the shore,
saying I'm going to catch a wave.
You have to be in the water,
and if you're in the water,
>> nine times out of ten you're going to get crushed.
(chuckling)
>> If you're not out in front of that next wave,
you're driftwood.
In surfing, people will jump and try to take your wave,
this sounds like the tactic of the whole industry.
>> Guy: Exactly, right, right.
>> What waves do you see that are coming, in your mind.
You've seen a lot of waves in your day.
I mean, right now, what wave is exciting you right now.
>> If you look at the waves, what's out there?
>> What I learn about that is,
you can only declare your intelligence
and victory after the fact, right.
I can tell you the internet of things is big.
I can tell you that social media is big.
I can tell you that computing is big.
Problem is I could tell you that
because I know it's big now.
Can I tell you what's in the future, no.
If I could...first of all I wouldn't tell you.
(chuckling)
So I think in a rare moment of humility
it's the law of big numbers.
Infinite monkeys typing at keyboards,
somebody's going to come up with Beethoven.
>> I want to ask you a question
because I get asked this question a lot,
Hey, John, you've been around a while.
I want to catch that next big wave,
I want to be in the next Google,
I want to be rich on stock options.
(Guy chuckling)
I said, a lot of times the best companies
where you take the most advantage of
is when no one else wants to work there
or no one yet knows it.
We really can't say, Oh, I'm going to get rich on that company
because by that time it's either too late
and people are chasing the wrong thing.
>> Guy: Absolutely.
>> How do you give that same advice to someone?
>> Listen, you're talking to a guy who quit Apple twice
and turned down Steve once.
So how smart could I be? (John chuckling)
Now we can say Apple is the most
valuable company in the world,
you should have stayed there.
Well, thank you very much,
thanks for tell me now.
I think it's really...
I don't want to be too dramatic,
but I could almost build a case
that you should invest in or work for
the most dumb-ass idea you heard of.
Because at any given point--
>> Airbnb, we're going to rent out mattresses
>> and give out cereal.
>> Very good example, Airbnb.
Let's face it, if somebody told you Airbnb,
before there was Airbnb, you would say,
So you're telling me that I'm going to rent a room
from somebody I met on the internet,
and I'm going to sleep in that person's house,
hoping he's not a murderer or pedophile.
On the flip side, you're saying,
I'm going to rent out my room to someone who
I hope is not a pedophile or an ax murderer.
Or ebay...I'm going to buy this printer from 3000 miles away
and I'm going to assume it works.
Or I'm going to sell my good printer to someone
3000 miles away and assume that he's
not going to say he never got it
or that it didn't work and he wants a refund.
So if you go down the line of all these ideas,
you'd have to say at the time, nobody.
Even take an extreme:
Zappos.
If you told me that women would buy shoes
without trying them on, seeing them,
smelling them, and touching them,
I would tell you you're crazy.
You'd buy a book that way.
You'd buy a CD that way, you'd buy a DVD.
Would you buy shoes, would you buy shoes
without trying them on.
>> I totally would.
(laughing) Now I can say that.
>> To Zappos's credit, some of the way it made that work
is it offered shipping back for free.
So there was really no risk.
But I would have been a skeptic about Zappos.
>> Well, it was one of those things for me, Zappos,
where they shipped in one day
so I could get them immediately,
try them on and if they didn't work,
I could ship them back and get a different size.
It was no big deal, it was very low overhead.
So that's one of the reasons that that worked.
But I think when you mention
all of these great things like
Ebay and Airbnb, it's really part of the sharing economy
with people really wanting to share
the goodness of their goods
with other people that need them.
>> It's just really connecting those folks.
>> Places like Oakland and San Francisco,
where there are certain streets
where you line up and you just get in
the next car with a stranger,
and you go to San Francisco with them.
>> Lauren: Yeah.
>> And it's not computerized or anything.
It's just trust.
>> I did that once and it was frightening. (laughs)
You never know who the driver is going to be
or how they're going to drive.
>> But you did it.
>> I did it.
>> People do it every day.
>> I know.
>> I'm amazed.
>> I did it once, but...
(laughing)
>> Let's ask you a question.
What's the craziest idea that you've seen
that worked and the craziest idea that didn't work.
>> Let's start with the easy one.
I had a company called garage.com,
and we were a venture capitalist investment bank,
so we got pitched all the time.
One day, a guy comes in and says,
I'm going to build...
A dirigible hotel over San Francisco.
So you stay in the dirigible.
Another person said, We're going to build
a geodesic dome over Los Angeles.
And I can't remember if it was to
keep the air pollution in or out.
I'll just tell you one really great one.
These people were from Seagate
so they had Cray, they worked for Seagate.
And they say, We have this patent-pending,
curb-jumping, patent-pending whatever technology
so that if you drop your laptop
with your hard disk, the head won't crash
into the hard disk and ruin the hard disk.
And at the time, this was 15 years ago,
that was a great idea, right.
It wasn't solid state.
Heads crashing into hard disks.
>> Moving parts.
>> Seagate, so this is a great idea.
Every hard disk in every laptop should be like it.
So we get in the car, we go to their office,
and the receptionist says, Oh, they're running late
because they're on the phone with IBM.
IBM is really interested in using this technology
for the IBM PC laptop.
Keep us waiting, keep us waiting.
And they get out, and, Yeah, IBM was really,
they're so excited, they're ready to move.
And I, like, we're really excited.
And finally I said, Give me the jist,
what is your technology, is it like some
special chip that detects gravitational fall,
it's too fast, it's got to be hitting the ground
so it parks the head because it recognizes
motion or whatever.
And I swear to God, I swear to God,
he brings out this piece of foam
and he says this is military spec foam.
So we take your hard disk, we put this
foam thing around it, and we put it in the laptop.
And I swear to God, I was having an
out of body experience.
>> You're telling me--
>> I drove all the way here--
>> That your proprietary technology
is putting foam around the hard disk,
and IBM is excited by this foam.
So welcome to my life.
>> So what are you up to now.
Talk about your evangelism.
I know you're a (mumbles) Mercedes.
You have a bunch of things going on.
You've been very prolific in social media.
You were on the suggested user list from day one on Twitter.
>> No, I wasn't.
>> Oh, no, you weren't, that's right.
But you have a zillion followers.
>> That's why I have never forgiven Twitter for that.
>> I thought they put you on. >> Guy: No.
>> Okay, I stand corrected.
>> You had to be an actress.
>> Some tech people got on there, I know.
>> Guy: Yeah.
>> But I was not on.
>> There you go.
>> Measly 20,000 or so.
But you got a million and a half followers active.
You've really been prolific in a good way.
(laughing)
Engaging with communities. >> Yeah.
>> What have you learned and how do you view
this next generation of social
because you're seeing the Facebooks,
you're seeing LinkedIn.
There's siloed platforms.
Is there hope?
What's your take on it, is it going to grow?
>> I've come to the point where I always believe
things are never as good or as bad as they seem.
So I don't think it's as bad as people say.
If these social media sites are selling my data,
they're going to go broke selling my data. (laughs)
I don't know how you could look at my data.
First of all, I never look at ads,
so go ahead, sell my data.
I'm not going to look at the ad anyway.
It doesn't matter.
I think the ability to spread ideas,
arguably good or bad, the ability to spread ideas
with social media, all things considered, is better.
It's going to be abused and all that.
My father was a state senator in Honolulu,
and we were into banner ads way before anybody else.
Banner was literally a piece of cloth
with his name on it that you staple
to the side of a building, saying
Vote for Duke Kawasaki.
That was the nature of banner advertisement back then.
Do I think that social media targeting
and all that for sales is a good thing?
Yes, I do.
If you're a real estate broker,
and you wanted to reach people
who live in Silicon Valley, age 50 to 70,
female or male or whatever,
in such-and-such an income bracket,
how else can you do it but Facebook?
>> It's good and bad.
>> That's why Facebook is so successful.
>> The metadata is all about the clan and the culture,
and I think putting ideas out there is a way to send your
ideas into the ether, make it happen.
So, that's key.
Now, we're here at a developer conference,
so one of the things that's also
a big part of this community is the notion
of how open source has become a tier one citizen,
and it's really running the world.
Which is also grounded in community as well.
You have this ethos of community,
ethos of software open.
>> I believe in open source.
I believe that the more intelligent people
pounding on your stuff, the better it is.
I'm an author, and what I do is,
speaking in the sense of open source.
So right now I'm about 80% done with my book.
I put out a post on social media saying
anybody that wants to review my book,
test my book, send me your information.
So I do this, I cut it off at about 280 people.
I send them the Word document,
the entire Word document of my book.
Does that mean they can take it
and publish it in China tomorrow, yes.
But, from that, I get hundreds
and hundreds of comments.
>> John: Wisdom of the crowds, self-editing.
>> Yeah, and they point out stuff
that I never would have noticed
because I'm too close to at this point.
So is there a downside, yes.
Is there piracy, yes.
Arguably, would those pirates have bought the book anyway?
No.
>> Our content's all free.
We're really big in China because
they actually take it and translate it
in the native language.
>> Guy: Which you would never have done.
>> With all the jargon, you can't hire a--
>> Guy: You would never have done that.
>> Yeah, exactly.
>> Guy, great to catch up with you.
Thanks for coming on.
What are you working on now, you mentioned
the book, what's the book about?
>> The book is called Wise Guy,
and it's a compilation of the stories
that have influenced my life.
So it's not an auto-biography.
It is not a memoir.
Have you ever heard of the book
Chicken Soup for the Soul?
>> John: Yeah, yeah.
>> You know, it's inspirational stories.
This is miso soup for the soul.
(laughing)
So I'm working on that, TV evangelism with Canva
is just going gangbusters.
Brand ambassadors for Mercedes Benz.
I'm on the board of directors of a company called
Cheeze with a zee.
It's an anti-social photo-sharing
and vidoo-sharing app.
And that's it.
>> You've been an inspiration to many,
great job of the year has been a big fan of your work.
Thanks for coming on theCUBE.
Really appreciate it.
>> Thank you.
>> Guy Kawasaki here inside theCUBE.
We're at Devnet Create.
This is Cisco's cloud developer conference.
Different from their core Devnet Cisco Networking
developer, and this is all about dev ops open source.
And this is theCUBE bringing you
all the action here in Mountain View, California.
We'll be right back with more after this short break.