Timeliness Counts

More than 400 people attended the sold-out VentureNet conference held by the Software Council of Southern California on Thursday in Costa Mesa, with keynote speaker Guy Kawasaki underscoring what software veterans already knew: Shipping a product on time counts more than shipping a perfect product.

“If the software industry were honest, what we would tell you is that we ship to test,” said Kawasaki, chief executive of the Palo Alto-based garage.com and one of the architects of Apple Computer Inc.’s Macintosh computer.

Making a dig at Xerox Corp.’s famed Palo Alto Research Center, which is widely credited with creating, but not exploiting commercially, numerous computer innovations, Kawasaki joked that “that’s the difference between Xerox PARC and Apple. Apple ships on time.

“Xerox PARC couldn’t sue on time, never mind ship,” said Kawasaki, referring to the belief held by some that Xerox could have sued Apple and Microsoft for appropriating technologies such as the graphical user interface and the mouse for the Macintosh and Windows operating systems.

The conference featured 25 cash-hungry start-up firms, most from the Southland, making pitches to venture capitalists from around the country. The five Orange County firms participating were MAZ Technologies, Illumea Corp., LeadingWay Corp., Paramax Inc. and LanguageForce Inc.

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Jonathan Gaw covers technology and electronic commerce for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-7818 and at jonathan.gaw@latimes.com.