Guy Kawasaki is so charmingly self-deprecating. At last week's MySQL conference, he retold the tale of one of his biggest career misses. The San Francisco tech guru was offered the job of chief executive of a small startup called Yahoo, down in the Valley. His response to Mike Moritz, the internet directory's financial backer? "It's too far to drive, and I don't see how it can be a business," he recalled, in his presentation to the database geeks. Funny. Except sad: self-deprecation is best practiced from a position of subsequent triumph, which has rather eluded Kawasaki in his own investing career.

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