I admit it, I do read Guy Kawasaki’s blog on a regular basis. Sometimes I find his posts to be slightly off topic (at least for me), but other times I find them to be incredibly insightful. His latest post, “The Top Ten Stupid Ways to Hinder Market Adoption“, provides a pretty good summary on surefire ways to slow down / hinder / eliminate market adoption of your product (provided that it is a web based product, but I am sure you can extrapolate out some of these and apply them to your product if it is not). For the details, read the article, but here is the high level summary so you get the gist (reader’s note: he actually lists 14 ways even though the article is titled 10…)

1. Enforced immediate registration
2. The long URL
3. Windows that don’t generate URLs
4. The unsearchable web site
5. Sites without Digg, del.icio.us, and Fark bookmarks
6. Limiting contact to email
7. Lack of feeds and email lists
8. Requirement to re-type email addresses
9. User names cannot contain the “@” character
10. Case sensitive user names and passwords
11. Friction-full commenting
12. Unreadable confirmation codes
13. Emails without signatures
14. Supporting only Windows Internet Explorer

This is an interesting twist on the whole social networking space. It provides users with a place to place and manage small, friendly wagers. Not only can you browse interesting bets, but you can also make a bet, create a new bet, as well as a whole host of “given” social network activities.
This is how it works: Users set up bets, either for actual money or for the Gottabet currency (called “peanuts”) which have no cash value (but give bragging rights). Gottabet (UK based) is also a social network - all users have a profile page. Users are rated not only by how many peanuts they gather but also on their reputation.
If you are in to friendly wagers, then this site is worth checking out!

As I stated in a previous blog entry on the blogs that I read, Guy Kawasaki always has interesting insights and thoughts on business. His most recent post, “Is a Business Plan Necessary“, delves into the debate on whether or not a business plan is necessary in order to be successful. The post is his two cents in regards to the article in the Wall Street Journal discussing a recent study done by Babson College on the subject matter. The study analyzed 116 businesses started by alumni who graduated between 1985 and 2003. Comparing success measures such as annual revenue, employee numbers and net income, the study found no statistical difference in success between those businesses started with formal written plans and those without them. Very interesting indeed, however, Guy makes the point that if it is your intent to raise funding (which these days a lot of people need), you will need to craft a business plan. He does offer hope though, that instead of it being a dissertation and taking you a year to produce, it should be no longer than 10-20 pages and should not take you more than a couple of weeks. For more details on Guy’s approach to business plans, click here.