Guy Kawasaki, famed Apple evangelist and managing director of Garage Technology Ventures took a little time out of his day to talk to How To Split An Atom about his latest venture, Truemors.

Guy

Guy Kawasaki is the co-founder of Truemors and a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures. He is also a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine. Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of eight books including The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh
Way. He has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

What is Truemors?

I am sure most people know “what” Truemors is, but tell us something about how the idea came about. What problem were you trying to solve?

Guy Kawasaki: I’m sure most people don’t know what Truemors is, actually. My goal is to further democratize information, so that people don’t need to even own a website or blog to “tell the world.” They certainly don’t need to own or work for a publication of any sort.

Truemors started as citizen journalism to an extreme because you can post via email, text message, voicemail, and online form. There is no approval process–you submit, it’s posted. However, this doesn’t mean a crappy post will remain. We vigorously delete crap, and we’re proud of it.

We solve two very real problems. For posters, we enable people to express themselves and spread information. For readers, we enable people to be more interesting because they are more informed. If you read Truemors, you will be able to break the ice, carry one interesting conversations, and generally be in the know across a wide range of subjects including business, science, politics, cars, technology, and entertainment.

To put it in tactical terms, you’d be a helluva more interesting date. If you’re married, you’d have a lot more to talk about to your spouse. And your schmooze capacity would double or triple in most social settings.

All Press Is Good Press

Truemors has received a pretty substantial amount of press both good and bad. Tell me, what suggestions have been most surprising to you? If you had to pick the single most valuable criticism you have received, what would it be?

Guy Kawasaki: This is an exaggeration. Press wasn’t “both good and bad.” It was all bad. Most of the suggestions were anatomically impossible for someone of my age. I didn’t get any valuable criticism; generally the blogosphere said that Truemors was a stupid idea poorly implemented.

My goal is to prove the naysayers wrong. There’s probably a ten percent chance that I’ll succeed, but that’s still ten percent more of a shot of building a successful company than an angry little blogger who’s still living with his parents who can only tear down, not build up.

Consuming Information

Guy, Truemors seems to be your answer to a question that everyone from mass media to Kevin Rose has tried to answer, so let me ask you explicitly. What do you believe is the future of news delivery? How do you think that we will be consuming information in 3 years time.

Guy Kawasaki: I’m not a futurist or visionary. I believe in democratization and empowering people. I’m also an evangelist, and I love to evangelize things that I like. My passion can be misplaced, but that’s my business and my problem.

I’ve learned that the key isn’t user generation–it’s user editing. There are hundreds of people and places who are already producing great content. What’s needed is great filtering–that is, a methodology to glean the best of the best.

Digg et al are solving this with the wisdom of mass. We’re solving it with the wisdom of class–that is, a small community of “truemorists” who have great taste in information. If you want to see what I mean, go to Truemors and look for the postings where names of the posters are in green. Those are the “truemorists.”

The Burning Question

I try to ask all of the entrepreneurs that I interview this. As entrepreneurs, do you have any advice for people who have an idea but just don’t know where to start or how to get it off the ground?

Guy Kawasaki: The answer is very simple. (a) Do not write a business plan. (b) Do not create a PowerPoint pitch. (c) Do not try to raise money. (e.) Do build a prototype. That’s the way to get off the ground because if you can’t build a prototype, a business plan, a pitch, and trying to raise money is just self-flagellation.

Web 2.0 Roundup

Thanks for talking with us Guy. If you want to learn more about Truemors, be sure to visit the site. If you are interested in what else Guy Kawasaki has been up to, be take a look at his blog or visit Garage Technology Ventures.

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