What do you mean? He started at least two after Apple, ACIUS (makers of 4D) and Fog City Software. That's two startup software firms he started before he went to Garage.
What I don't like about him is his Donald Trump all-go, no-quit, big brass juevos approach to business. That may work if you want to be the second coming of Larry Ellison, not so much if you want to be the next Sergey Brin.
"He started at least two after Apple, ACIUS (makers of 4D) and Fog City Software."
I don't know anything about Fog City Software (so this probably makes me partially wrong), but he did not start ACIUS. He took over as CEO from one of the founders (chronicled in The Macintosh Way -- and just to prove I'm not a Guy-hater, I have a signed copy of that book). :-) He did start garage.com, so I suppose you could count that as a startup. But he was already rich by the time he did all that stuff (AAPL stock), so in my book, it doesn't really count. He didn't have that feeling of almost-desperation that a lot of us have. He could have just spent his life yachting if he had wanted to.
"not so much if you want to be the next Sergey Brin"
Yeah, I think that's really what bugs me, too -- the Trumpish thing. A lot of his posts seem to suggest "the rules" on how you get a job, how you run a business, how you do a startup, etc. And I don't tend to agree with him -- or I end up finding his point-of-view sort of elitist. "Here's the right way to do X, except the right way is something you probably cannot do because you a) don't know the right people, or b) don't already have tons of cash." That type of thing.
Or maybe he means really well but just rubs some people the wrong way.
The book The Halo Effect makes some interesting points on selective attributions for success and failure.
Not to say that he doesn't know how to make a business successful, but I'm skeptical when people look back at what they've done and start declaring that these are the rules for winning, more so if they've only been involved with a small number of operations. I'm unconvinced that they are accounting for all the little details and matters of chance.
Red flag: he wrote it on the way to and from Stockton.
Seriously: you can't dislike Guy, but does anyone else find his posts less-than-insightful? Am I the only one who thinks he writes like a high-schooler doing a term paper?
The thing that usually bugs me the most is when he writes about how to make it as a startup. He's never done that in his life; he was a last-minute addition to the original Mac team as the marketing guy. Not even the main marketing guy.
And yes, he runs garage.com. But what qualifies him as a startup expert? Certainly not experience.
What I don't like about him is his Donald Trump all-go, no-quit, big brass juevos approach to business. That may work if you want to be the second coming of Larry Ellison, not so much if you want to be the next Sergey Brin.