"Simple and to the point is always the best way to get your point across"
About this Quote
In a business culture that loves decks, frameworks, and “thought leadership,” Guy Kawasaki’s line reads like a polite slap. “Simple and to the point” isn’t just a style preference here; it’s a strategy for power. The subtext is that clarity wins not because audiences are virtuous, but because they’re busy, skeptical, and drowning in noise. If your message can’t survive compression, it probably wasn’t a message yet - it was a mood board.
Kawasaki’s background matters. Coming out of the Silicon Valley ecosystem (Apple, venture capital, evangelism), he’s speaking from a world where attention is the rarest resource and decisions get made in the gaps between meetings. In that context, verbosity isn’t intellectual; it’s expensive. Every extra clause is cognitive tax. The quote flatters efficiency, but it also contains a quiet indictment: people often use complexity as camouflage. Jargon can signal belonging, hedge risk, and give the speaker room to retreat when reality shows up.
The repetition of “point” is doing work, too. It’s a reminder that communication isn’t self-expression; it’s transfer. You don’t get credit for having an idea if the listener can’t carry it. Kawasaki’s intent is almost operational: reduce friction, sharpen the pitch, respect the audience’s bandwidth. It’s not anti-intellectual so much as anti-obfuscation - a rule of thumb for anyone trying to persuade in a crowded market, where the simplest sentence is often the most competitive product.
Kawasaki’s background matters. Coming out of the Silicon Valley ecosystem (Apple, venture capital, evangelism), he’s speaking from a world where attention is the rarest resource and decisions get made in the gaps between meetings. In that context, verbosity isn’t intellectual; it’s expensive. Every extra clause is cognitive tax. The quote flatters efficiency, but it also contains a quiet indictment: people often use complexity as camouflage. Jargon can signal belonging, hedge risk, and give the speaker room to retreat when reality shows up.
The repetition of “point” is doing work, too. It’s a reminder that communication isn’t self-expression; it’s transfer. You don’t get credit for having an idea if the listener can’t carry it. Kawasaki’s intent is almost operational: reduce friction, sharpen the pitch, respect the audience’s bandwidth. It’s not anti-intellectual so much as anti-obfuscation - a rule of thumb for anyone trying to persuade in a crowded market, where the simplest sentence is often the most competitive product.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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