#390 Rare Steve Jobs Interview

0:00 I read this interview with Steve Jobs right after reading Jeff Bezos' shareholder letters for the fourth or fifth time, and something jumped out at me. Something that both Bezos and Jobs had in common is this relentless pursuit of To work with the very best people. From his very first shareholder letter. Jeff emphasized the importance of having the very best team. He wrote

0:19 Setting the bar high in our approach. To hiring has been. And will continue to be the single Most important element of Amazon's success. Bezos' focus on talent is just like this quote from Steve Jobs that happened in an interview Steve gave

0:33 That very same year, he said. I think I've consistently figured out who the really smart people were to hang around with. You must find extraordinary people. The key observation is that in most things in life The dynamic range between average quality and the best is at most

0:48 Two to one. But in the field that I was interested in, I noticed that the dynamic range between what an average person could accomplish and what the best person could accomplish was fifty or a hundred to one. given that you're well advised to go after the cream of the cream.

1:04 You need to build a team. That pursues. The A. players, and that is exactly what Ramp did. Ramp is the presenting sponsor of this podcast and Ramp has the most talented technical team

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1:47 The more efficient your company becomes in the end of that interview. Steve Jobs added something. He said A small team of A plus players can run circles around a giant team. Of B and C Players.

2:00 What kind of products Can a team of A plus players build? A product that creates so much value for their customers that the customers never leave. Ramp is an example of that. Last year. twelve thousand and fifty nine businesses signed up for ramp.

2:14 And only eight. Of the twelve thousand and fifty nine businesses decided to ramp Wasn't for them. That is a success rate. of ninety nine point nine three three four percent

2:26 I run my business on ramp and so do most of the other top founders and CEOs. That I know Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to ramp.com to learn how they can help your business today. That is ramp. Dot com. So I want to talk to you about this rare Steve Jobs interview that he gave all the way back in nineteen eighty five when he was just twenty nine years old.

2:43 gave the interview to Playboy magazine. I've probably read the interview I don't know, ten times. So I wanna jump into right into the introduction and then we'll get into most of most of uh what you and I will talk about today will be Steve in his own words. So it says Apple joined the ranks of the Fortune five hundred in just five years. Faster than any other company in history. Jobs as company introduced personal computing into the American home and workplace.

3:06 Apple's rise was meteoric. From sales of just two hundred thousand dollars the first year in Jobs' garage. The company has grown into a giant firm with one point four billion dollars in revenue in nineteen eighty four. With an estimated net worth. Oh.

3:20 four hundred and fifty million dollars. Mostly in Apple stock. Jobs. Was by far The youngest person on Forbes list of the richest Americans.

3:30 For several years running. It is also worth noting That of the hundred Americans named by Forbes. Jobs is one of only seven. Who made their fortunes on their own.

3:42 But to hear jobs tell it. The money isn't even half the story. Especially since he does not spend it lavishly, and indeed claims To have very little time for a social life. He is on a mission.

3:53 Preaching the gospel of salvation through the personal computer. He's an engaging pitch man. And never loses an opportunity to sell his products. Eloquently describing a time when computers will be as common as kitchen appliances. And as revolutionary

4:10 In their impact. Has the telephone. Or the internal combustion engine again. If you go back and read You know, interviews and media from the time.

4:19 People Made fun of him for this. And he was Dead right. On both those accounts. There are now more than

4:25 Two million. Apple computers are another way to think about this is Before Steve Jobs is thirty years old. He sold more than two Million.

4:34 Computers. The Macintosh was released with a twenty million dollar advertising campaign. And it was build as a computer for the rest of us. It was also criticized as being too much of a toy. Unsuitable.

4:47 For business use. The interviewer and Steve Jobs were at this party together in New York City. And the interviewer was talking about the fact that you had all these famous people here, they were all looking at the Apple computer, so you had like people like Andy Warhol and Keith Herring. And yet

5:02 he found that Steve was most interested in showing the young kids that were there, specifically a young boy That was there, how to use the computer, and this is a perfect way to end the introduction. But more revealing was the scene after the party. Well after the other guests had gone home.

5:17 Jobs stayed to tutor the boy on the fine points of using the Mac. Later I asked him why he had seemed happier with the boy. Then with the two famous artists. His answers seemed unrehearsed to me. Older people sit down and ask.

5:31 What is it? But the boy asks, What can I do with it? So then the interview starts. Before I get to that, I just wanna go back and reference a few things that jumped out to me when I was reading this introduction. It was the fact that

5:43 The interviewer's like, Hey, this guy's worth like half a billion dollars. And he doesn't s want to talk about money at all, he doesn't seem all that interested in it. I wanna tie that to something that you and I talked about last week. Jeff Bezos would bring this up in his shareholder letters. And so when Jeff was Thinking about

5:59 working with or buying a company, he would always try to assess whether the person leading the company, whether it was a founder or the CO, are they a missionary or a mercenary. And what Bezos said about this was really interesting because he he noticed the paradox. He says I'm always trying to figure out One thing first and foremost. Is that person a missionary or a mercenary? The mercenaries are trying to flip their stock.

6:18 The missionaries love their product. or their service and they love their customers and are trying to build a great service. By the way The great paradox here. is that it's usually the missionaries Who make more money.

6:31 The second part that jumped out. fact that they said he's an engaging pitch man and jobs is always he never loses an opportunity to sell his products. We t you and I talked about Bezos. We talked about Ken Griffin, who built the most successful hedgephone of all time. Over and over again in that talk, he says if we're going to eat

6:48 Someone's got to sell. You are always selling, and if you don't like to sell, here is my advice. Get over it. You have to sell your customers, you have to sell employees, you have to sell investors. You have to be able to sell your vision. And I think the best founders are also you'll see a high overlap between really great founders and really great they're really great salespeople as well. And then I just wanna pull out one other thing.

7:10 before I move on, where jobs describes His product will be as revolutionary as the telephone or the internal combustion Engine. Great entrepreneurs, great inventors.

7:21 They're always able to place their inventions in a historical context. James Dyson, who's one of my heroes, talked about this. He said, I have a an interest Verging on obsession. With the past. For God's sake, did you know that James Dyson wrote a book?

7:37 The title of that book is called The History of Great Inventions. You will see that trait over and over again. They're able to put their work in historical context. I'm gonna jump right into the interview. And they start with the fact that You know, you had all this money, you're worth almost a half a billions. This is just remarkable. And jobs is kind of flippant.

7:54 And he's actually laughing. He's like I actually lost two hundred and fifty million in one year when the stock went down, and he starts laughing. And the interviewer's like, Wait, you can laugh about this. He's like, I'm not gonna let it run my life. My main reaction to the money thing is that it's humorous. All the attention to it.

8:10 Because it's hardly the most insightful or valuable thing that has happened to me. In the past ten years. It makes me feel old sometimes. Because I go speak at the campus. And I find

8:20 What students are most in awe of is the fact that I'm a millionaire. Jobs' point obviously is what he's most interested in is in the excellence of The invention, the excellence of the product that he is building. And jobs immediately steers the discussion to what he thinks is most important. This is one of the most impressive things that he's ever said. And it's remarkable that he is twenty nine years old. He says we're living in the wake

8:40 Of the petrochemical revolution of a hundred years ago. The petrochemical revolution gave us free energy, free mechanical energy. It changed the texture of society in most ways. This revolution The information revolution is a revolution of free energy as well. But of another kind.

8:58 Free intellectual energy. It is very crude today. Yet our Macintosh computer takes less power than a hundred watt light bulb to run. And it can save you hours a day.

9:09 What will it be able to do ten? Or twenty years from now. Or fifty years from now. This revolution will dwarf The petro

9:18 Chemical revolution. We're on The forefront. Keep in mind what is most remarkable about that. Is not only the clear thinking.

9:26 The remarkable communication skills. The very next section which I'm skipping over At this point in history, people didn't even understand what a computer was. So you literally have to in every conversation you're going into with the media, with potential customers, you have to break down what a computer is. Jobs is so early, and yet somehow had a very clear understanding. Of how powerful these tools could be.

9:47 And that is exactly what he refers to them over and over again. says humans are tool builders. The computer is the best tool we've ever built. I'm going all in. I'm dedicating my life to doing this. And he explains why. This is excellent. I hope you read the whole interview, but if not, definitely save some of these highlights and reread them. They're so important. This is what he says A computer is the most incredible tool we've ever seen. It can be a writing tool, a communication center, a super calculator, a planner, a filer, and an artistic instrument all in one just by being given new instructions or software.

10:17 To work from. There are no other tools that have the power and versatility Of a computer. We have no idea. How far it's going to go.

10:27 That's something he repeats over and over again. I know this is the next big thing. I can't predict. No one can predict. how this thing is going to unfold. He says this a few paragraphs later. You don't know exactly what's going to result. But you know it's going to be something very big and very good.

10:41 And then immediately he does the exact same thing. He puts the work that he's doing in historical context. The hard part of what we're up against. N is that people ask you about specifics and you can't tell them. A hundred years ago if somebody had asked Alexander Grimbell What are you going to be able to do with the telephone?

10:56 He wouldn't have been able to tell him. All the ways the telephone would affect the world. He didn't know that people would use the telephone to call up and find out the movies. while movies are playing night, or to order some groceries, or to call a relative on the other side of the globe. And then in the middle of the section, Jobs does something that's absolutely brilliant. He's a he's going to

11:14 Turn the conversation and introduced another historical analogy. So his point that he's saying here is hey. You think about how wonderful the invention of a telephone was, think about what preceded the telephone. It was the telegraph. Right now, before Apple The personal computer was in the telegraph stage.

11:30 We're gonna turn it into the telephone stage. This is remarkable. Says but remember That the first public telegraph was inaugurated in eighteen forty four. It was an amazing breakthrough in communications. You could actually send messages from New York to San Francisco in an afternoon. People talked about putting a telegraph on every desk in America.

11:49 To improve productivity. But it wouldn't have worked. It required that people learn this whole sequence of strange incantations. Morse code. Dots and dashes to use the telegraph.

12:02 It took about forty hours to learn. The majority of people would never learn how to do this. So fortunately in the eighteen seventies, Bell invented the telephone. It performed basically the same function as the telegraph. But people already knew how to use it.

12:19 That is an excellent point. If people need forty hours of instruction Before they can use a tool. A tiny tiny tiny fraction. of humans will ever do that. The telephone

12:31 One out over the telegraph. Because everyone already knew how to talk and listen. How do I use a telephone? I pick it up and I speak into it. A main theme from Steve Jobs' career from the very first thing he made when he was twenty one. Up until the day he died. There's a great line from this book called Insanely Simple.

12:49 I covered it all the way back on episode three forty nine. I think the title of that episode is How Steve Jobs Kept Things Simple. There's a quote in that book that says Steve's most important concern. was making things easier for the customer. Less versions to choose from. Less prices to consider. Turn it on and it just works.

13:05 No hassle. If he found a hassle, he would eliminate it, turn it on, and it just works. Sounds a hell of a lot. Like a telephone. And he talks about this the fact that Even the not only the the machines that we're making in the you know, at the time

13:18 Way too complicated. But the software that we're making is way too complicated. One of the most popular software programs was this at the time was this program called The Ward Star. And th this is jobs and his You know, his geni the genius way he's able to communicate. He says the manual for Ward Star Which is the most popular word processing program.

13:37 It's four hundred pages thick. To write a novel You have to read a novel. And a short while later the interview is picking up on just how good Jobs is at communicating at salesmanship. He says, We were warned about you. Before this interview began, someone said, We're about to be snowed by the best. It said Steve Jobs smiled.

13:54 He says we're just enthusiastic. About what we do. And they talk about the fact that they just launched a new computer and along with a new product, a new computer. Jobs believed in supporting it.

14:04 With massive ad campaigns. Great marketing and great education. It says add campaigns, this is jobs now. Ad campaigns are necessary for competition. Good PR educates people. That is all it is. You cannot con people in this business.

14:20 The products speak for themselves. In this interview, I don't think I'm gonna include it, but they talk about the fact that jobs had previously flown Uh to Japan. He had spent time with the founder of Sony, one of his heroes, Akeo Marita. I just covered Akio Marita's autobiography again a few weeks ago. This sounds exact what he just said.

14:37 Good PR educates people, that's all it is. You can't calm people into business, product speaking themselves. That sounds like he is parroting Marita. Marita talked about marketing is just a form of communication. You must invest in educating The market Akeo believed in this so much that when You know, he he launched a new product, he put a lot of marketing dollars behind it. I've told the story before, but I think it's hilarious.

14:57 He's going back and forth and the guy that was working for him that was running the product. Try to Cut the budget. This went on for several weeks to the point where Keyo couldn't sleep. Wakes up in the middle of the night one time, calls a guy and says, If you don't spend two million dollars on this, you're fired.

15:09 That's how important it was to O'Key's. See this with Steve Jobs and you also see with Steve Jobs here, Edwin Land. Go back and listen to the episodes that didn't Edmund Land, how much money he put into the marketing and advertising. and launching new products. It'll blow your mind. Now Steve has asked the question. Does it take insane people to make insanely great

15:28 Things. This is his response. Making an insanely great product has a lot to do with the process of making the product. How you learn things and adopt new ideas and throw out old ideas. But yeah, the people who made the Mac are on the edge. And he describes this. This is one of the greatest things that Steve has ever said. It's obvious from reading this that and

15:48 Now we know what happened for the rest of his career. He had soul in the game. Excellence was the goal. We didn't build Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren't going to go out and do market research.

16:03 We just wanted to build the best thing we could build. When you're a carpenter Making a beautiful chest of drawers. You're not gonna use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall, and no one will ever see it. You'll know it's there. So you're going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back.

16:19 For you to sleep well at night. The aesthetic. The quality has to be carried all the way through. And so this is one of my favorite things. He's also funny. When you read these interviews.

16:30 And so at the time. His main competitor is IBM. And they they released this product which uh Steve Jobs I think affectionally referred to as shit. Yeah. And it's called the P C Junior.

16:40 And so he's asked right after he had this beautiful thing, like we're you know, we're excessive quality for me to sleep at night has to be the best thing I can possibly build. And so the follow up question, are you saying that the people who made the P C Junior don't have that kind of pride in their product. Job says if they did, they wouldn't have made The P C Junior.

16:59 They hoped. That if they build it. Lots of people would buy them and they'd make lots of money. Those are different motivations. The people in the Mac group wanted to build the greatest computer

17:09 That is ever Sim. And then Steve gives some great advice on how to think about building great products. He says your thoughts construct patterns Like scaffolding in your mind.

17:19 In most cases, people get stuck in those patterns. Just like grooves in a record, and they never get out of them. It's a rare person who etches grooves that are other than a specific way of looking at things. A specific way of questioning things. And so Steve would always be like, Well, why does it work that way? Okay, is there a way we could do it better?

17:36 Is there a new technology we can introduce? In fact I I read this interview that James Dyson gave, and there's an excerpt from the interview that I think is really great, and it's really a description of how James Dyson's mind works and I think The way James thinks is the way that Steve Jobs thinks. I think a lot of founders think this way. And says and so James says, Whenever I look at anything, I wonder how it works and then I wonder how it could work better.

17:58 Could I make it work better? Is there a technology I could use? Is there a way I can reconfigure it? Is there a radical breakthrough I could do by lateral thinking? That would make a huge difference.

18:07 So I just think like this all the time, I think Steve Jobs. was exactly the same way. And the problem that he was talking about was like well when you're young and malleable, that's why a lot of people come up when they're younger. They come up with a lot of interesting and and odd, you know, unique ways and and inventions and think uh ways to look at the world.

18:23 And As you get old. You don't really see, you know, fifty or sixty or seven year olds you know inventing new things. And the same process is the way that a a person ages and gets kinda stuck in their ways. companies do too. And so he actually has a warning about this.

18:38 Which is really interesting'cause again, he he's gonna get kicked out of the company'cause the company is going to kinda calcify. and become, you know, not the same startup that it used to be. And we saw what happen what will happen over the next thirteen years with Apple once he leaves. Companies as they grow to become multi billion dollar entities somehow lose their vision. They insert lots of layers of middle management between the people running the company And the people doing the work.

19:00 They no longer have an inherent feel or passion about the products. The creative people. Who are the ones who care passionately Have to persuade five layers of management to do What they know is the right thing.

19:13 What happens in most companies is that you don't keep great people under working environments where individual accomplishment is discouraged. rather than encouraged. The great people leave And you end up with mediocrity. I know because that's how Apple was built.

19:28 Apple is an Ellis Island company. Apple is built on refugees from other companies. These are the extremely bright individual contributors. Who were trouble makers. at other companies and then he goes right into

19:43 Talking about one of his favorite troublemakers, Edwin Lan, who is the patron sate. Of Founders podcast. If there was one person that embodies, you know, what we're trying to do here and who we're trying to admire. It would be the person of Steve Jobs admire. Along many other entrepreneurs, but Steve Jobs being the most, you know, famous and well known, was obsessed with Edwin Land.

20:03 You know, doctor Edwin Lan was a troublemaker. He dropped out of Harvard and founded Polaroid. Not only was he one of the great inventors of our time, but more important, he saw the intersection of art and science and business and built an organization to reflect that. Polaroid did that for some years, but eventually Dr. Land, one of those brilliant troublemakers, was asked to leave his own company. Which is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. The man is a national treasure.

20:30 I don't understand why people like that Can't be held up as models. This is the most incredible thing to be. Not an astronaut, not a football player. But this.

20:40 And so he goes into the importance of having a company that makes sure you a attract these troublemakers, these really talented people. Also says something later on. Much later on, I think he's probably in his forties or fifties when he said this, but the fact that people are package deals that you have to learn to take the good with the bad. A lot of the talented people are gonna have weird things, they're gonna be hard kind of hard to manage. But if you wanna work with the most talented people, then you have to deal with the bad that comes along with that. We attract a different type of person. A person who doesn't want to wait five or ten years To have someone take a giant risk on him or her.

21:11 Someone who really wants to get in a little over his head and make a little dent in the universe. We are aware that we are doing something significant. We're here at the beginning of it, and we're able to shape how it grows. Everyone here has a sense. That right now is one of those moments.

21:28 When we are influencing the future. He is talking about having a mission bigger than himself. He's talking about having a mission bigger than Apple, he continues, Neither you or I made the clothes we wear. We don't make the food or grow the food we eat. We use a language that is developed by other people. We use another society's mathematics. Very rarely. Do we get a chance to put something back into that pool?

21:49 I think we have that opportunity now. And no We don't know where it will lead. Remember he repeats that over and over again. We just know there's something much bigger.

21:59 than any of us here. There is one of my favorite quotes. really should print this quote out and hang it on the wall. Because this is the quote that came to mind when I read this section. It says a human life by its very nature has to be devoted to something or other. to a glorious or humble enterprise, an illustrious or obscure destiny.

22:18 This is a strange But inexorable condition of things. And so then he's asked the question, you're competing directly with IBM? How are you going to be able to beat IBM in the business market? And again, jobs has a wonderful answer to this. The business market has several sectors.

22:33 Rather than just thinking of the Fortune five hundred, which is where IBM is strongest. I like to think of the Fortune five million. Or the Fortune Fourteen Million. There are fourteen million small businesses in this country. I think that the vast group of people who need to be computerized includes that large number

22:51 of medium and small businesses. We are going to try to be able to bring some meaningful solutions to them. How, he's asked. Our approach. Іс то твоем на бізнес. But as collections of people.

23:05 And then we see another demonstration of one of his gifts. He immediately places this is just an excellent way. To place his work in historical perspective. And then tie it back. To why you should buy his product. And not IBM's because at the time he's being criticized. It's like why aren't you making Apples? Compati this should just be one universal

23:23 Uh system. For computers. You're Now splitting this because they should all just be compatible with IBM. That was the you know, the basic criticism of what's going on at this point. In Apple's history.

23:33 says one of the experts in the field says that this industry is For this industry to really flourish. And to benefit the consumer, one standard has to prevail. Jobs. That is simply untrue.

23:43 Insisting that we need one standard now is like saying that the we needed one standard for an automobile in nineteen twenty. There would have been no innovations such as the automatic transmission, power steering, and independent suspension if they believe that. The last thing we want to do is freeze technology. With computers. Macintosh.

24:02 is revolutionary. There is no question. That Macintosh technology is superior to IBMs. There is a clear need for an alternative to IBM. And then he continues the attack. IBM is full of business people. They don't actually care. They're number crunchers. They just wanna make money. He says, We are a team of missionaries. We love what we're doing. The product vision that drives this company.

24:26 We think that computers are the most remarkable tools. that humankind has ever come up with. And we think that people are basically tool users. So if we can just get lots and lots of computers to lots and lots of people, it will make some qualitative difference in the world. What we want to do at Apple is make computers into appliances.

24:46 and get them to tens of millions of people. That is simply what we want to do. And he sees this as a war as two very different competing philosophies on shaping the personal computer market. Now. You can't get everything right.

24:59 Talking about okay, this is just gonna be a fight between IBM And Apple, no one else is gonna get to the scale to make computers. He says I think the scale of the business has gotten large enough so it's going to be very difficult for anyone to successfully launch into anything new. So he's asked no more billion dollar companies hatched in garages.

25:16 For making computers that is. Jobs goes, No, I'm afraid not in computers. Listen, you can't get everything right. You and I know this because we just talked about this a few weeks ago. Michael Dell's excellent, excellent, excellent autobiography. Dell launched the year before. Not in a garage.

25:31 Put in a dorm room. So then he goes back to the computers that he's working on right now. He says we wanted to make sure it was great because it may be the last chance that any of us get. to make a clean break. He was he he was very intent. In fact. About shaping the industry. About playing a role.

25:47 about putting forth what how he feels these things should work, how they should be designed. There's another thing that in addition to rereading and taking notes on This article. There's this I if you want a resource, an excellent resource on Steve Jobs.

26:00 Steve Jobs widow made this thing called the Steve Jobs archive. And it's Yeah, it's just online. You can read it. There's videos, there's they they created a whole book. Everything's for free. And there's a great talk on that website where I think the year after this interview, Steve goes to the Aspen Design Festival.

26:15 And He gives a talk. He says something very similar to that's that's in this interview. That the market is demanding personal computers. that the market will be satisfied and will be filled no matter what. That's the The market pulls so strong.

26:29 And so the machines Even if the machines are inferior and ugly. The market will demand like they will be bought. They will be created. And he goes to the Aspen Design Festival to ask for help. He's like, I want to make these beautifully Easy to u beautiful to look at, beautiful to use, easy to use.

26:45 And he says we have the opportunity to shape. The direction of entire industry. And I think it's very similar to what he's saying in this interview. We wanted to make sure it was great because it may be the last chance that any of us get to make a clean break. So then he goes into some formative experiences he had when he was a young man. How influential were your parents in your interest in computers? They encouraged my interest. My father was a machinist and he was sort of a genius with his hands. He can fix anything and make it work.

27:09 and take any mechanical thing apart and get it back together. That was my first glimpse of this. I started to gravitate More towards electronics. And he used to get me things I could take apart and put back together.

27:22 He was transferred to Palo Alto When I was five. That is how I wound up growing up in the valley. that circumstance was beyond his control, the fact that when he was five years old, he m he grows up, he lives in Palo Alto in the valley. that changes the trajectory of his life and he knows that because he uh knows the history of the area.

27:37 And he starts talking about some of the important things he learned from studying this. Before World War Two, two Stanford graduates named Bill Hewler and David Packer created a very Innovative electronics company, Hewlett Packer. Then the transistor was invented in nineteen forty eight by Bell Telephone Laboratories. One of the three co inventors of the transistor, William Shockley, decided to return to his hometown of Palo Alto to start a little company called Shockley Labs. He brought with him about a dozen of the best and brightest physicists.

28:03 And chemist of his day. Little by little People sort of breaking off and forming competitive companies. Like those flowers or weeds that scatter seeds in hundreds of directions when you blow on them. And that's why the valley is here today.

28:17 The follow-up question to that is what was your introduction to computers? A neighbor down the block named Larry Lang was an engineer at Hewlett Packard. He spent a ton of time with me. Teaching me stuff. The first computer I ever saw was at Hewlett Packer. They used to invite maybe ten of us down every Tuesday night and give us lectures and let us work with the computer.

28:35 I was maybe twelve years old the first time. I remember that night. They showed us one of their new desktop computers and let us play on it. I wanted one badly. And he's asked why. Like did you have a sense of its potential? It wasn't anything like that. I just thought they were neat. I just wanted to mess around on one. And then there's a famous story that Jobs actually went and got a job, a summer job.

28:55 at Hewlett Packard when he was like twelve or thirteen. They're like, Well how did this happen? And job says when I was twelve or thirteen, I wanted to build something and I needed some parts. So I picked up the phone and I called Bill Hewitt. He was listed in the Palo Auto phone book. He answered the phone and he was real nice. He chatted with me for like twenty minutes. He didn't know me at all, but he ended up giving me some parts and he got me a job that summer working on the Hewlett Packard line assembling frequency counters. And then he continues to recount some events from his early life.

29:19 He does say something here that's that is really interesting. I've heard him talk about this uh in other interviews. He believed the fact that he had a broad set of life experiences. That I that actually made him make better products. In fact that was one of his con um his criticisms of Bill Gates, you know. The fact that he thought Microsoft made Unbelievably

29:38 Ugly and and you know just not well designed products. And he thought that because Bill Gates lived a very narrow life where Steve had a a much broader in in Steve's opinion. had a much broader set of experiences. And he talks about this. He says uh you know he's high school, college age around this time. I wasn't completely in any one world for too long. There was so much going on between my sophomore and junior years, I got stoned for the first time.

30:00 I discovered Shakespeare. Dylan Thomas. I read Moby Dick. And it went back And started taking creative writing classes.

30:07 By the time I was a senior, I'd gotten permission to spend about half my time at Stanford taking classes. California has a sense of experimentation. And a sense of openness. Openness to new possibilities.

30:19 And so then Steve starts talking about the fact that when he was a teenager He built his friendship. with Steve Wozniak. I think Wozniak was about five years older. He's really gifted engineer. And Wozniak would take him to this thing called homebrew. Computer club.

30:31 where these computer hobbyists would meet, they would compare notes. They would share. How the stuff that they're building. And Jobs made this observation. The clubs were based around a computer kit. called the Altair.

30:42 It was so amazing to all of us that someone had actually come up with a way to build a computer you could own yourself. That had never been possible. Remember when we were in high school, neither of us had access to computer mainframe. We had to drive somewhere and have some large company take a benevolent attitude towards us. And let us use the computer. But now

30:59 For the first time. You could actually buy a computer. That is the holy shit moment that's going to lead to the founding of Apple. Holy shit. You can actually own your own computer. And so he talks about Wozniak and what he built.

31:13 He ended up buying a microprocessor and hooking it up to a terminal. and made what was to become the Apple one. Wasn't I laid out the circuit board ourselves. That was basically it. Follow up question. The idea was to just do it.

31:24 Jobs. Yes, sure. And to be able to show it off to your friends. So then he's asked what triggered the next step of manufacturing and selling them to make money. A guy who started one of the first computer stores told us that he could sell them and if we could make them.

31:39 It had not dawned on us until then. The Apple one was built for hobbyists. We sold only about a hundred and fifty of them ever. It wasn't that big a deal. But we made about ninety five thousand dollars.

31:53 And I started to see it. As a business besides just something to do. There's another interview that Jobs does in his lost years in when he's building next, in between, you know, leaving Apple and coming back. And I I say this quote And I review the quote all the time and I think it's a perfect illustration of where we're on the story that is really important.

32:11 And it just really demonstrates this idea that asking for help is a superpower. He says, I've never found anybody that didn't want to help me if I asked them for help. I called up Bill Hewlett when I was twelve years old. He answered the phone himself. I told him I wanted to build a frequency counter and asked him if he had any spare parts I could have. He laughed and laughed. He gave me the parts and he gave me a summer summer job. I have never found anyone who said no or hung up the phone. I just ask.

32:33 Most people never pick up the phone and call. And that is what separates the people who do things. Versus the people who just dream about them. You have to act. And so when Steve Jobs is telling the story of this part of his life, remember he's a twenty nine year old man. He's only looking it's a decade

32:49 But he's only looking back ten years. He remembers what it was like, I don't know how to run a company. I don't know how to raise money. I don't know how to recruit people. I don't know how to get parts. I don't know how to sell anything. Here's a question. Were you both thinking how big it could get and how computers change the world?

33:04 Steve's answer, no, neither of us had any idea that this would go anywhere. I I I get off I get asked a lot. People are always like, Hey Do they know how big things would get? The answer I have is almost exactly like the one.

33:19 That Steve Jobs escaped. No. Neither of us had any idea that this would go anywhere. And if you look at the numbers and the immediate success, how could you possibly expect him To be able to predict this. Steve says we did about two hundred thousand dollars when our business was in the garage.

33:33 That was nineteen seventy six. In nineteen seventy seven we did seven million. And I thought that was phenomenal. And in seventy eight, we did seventeen million. In seventy nine, we did forty seven million. In nineteen eighty we did a hundred and seventeen million.

33:46 In eighty one, we did three hundred and thirty five million. In eighty two, we did five hundred and eighty three million. Last year we did nine hundred and eighty five million and this year will be one point five billion. And then he spends a bunch of time talking about what a computer is today, what it can do, how to think about it. But this is one of my favorite sections. 'Cause he has a deep understanding, you know, maybe better better than almost anybody else at this point in his industry, at this time in history.

34:11 And so from there, if you just thought about it a lot, you kind of have an idea. It's like okay, well I can kind of see the horizon of what might be possible. So he's asked. Where do you see computers and software going in the future? He says, Thus far we've been pretty much using our computers as good servants. We ask them to do something, we ask them to do some operation like a spreadsheet.

34:29 We ask them to take all of our keystrokes and make a letter out of them. And they do that pretty well. And you'll see more and more Perfection of that computer as servant. But the next thing is going to be computer as guide or agent. And what that means is that it's going to do more in terms of anticipating what we want

34:47 And doing it for us. noticing connections and patterns in what we do. Computers will take certain actions. And then inform us after the fact. And to be able to take advantage of that as a company, he knew.

35:01 Those ideas are high li highly likely to come from people outside the industry. People not working in Apple for ten or fifteen years. People to have a different way of looking at things, and it's so hard. For an established successful company to have the patience and bring build the culture to have these small and fragile ideas grow into the next big thing.

35:22 And he talks about that. I think that's one of Apple's challenges. When two young people walk in here with the next thing Are we gonna embrace it and say this is fantastic? Are we gonna try to explain it away? And then I absolutely love what he says here.

35:36 He's asked the question and thinking about your success, did you ever get to the point Where you slapped your head and asked yourself what was happening. Says I used to think about selling a million computers a year. But it was just a thought. When it actually happens, it's a totally different thing.

35:48 So it was a holy shit, this is actually coming true. This does not feel like overnight for me. Next year will be my tenth year. I've never done anything longer than a year in my life. Six months for me.

36:02 Was a long time when we started Apple. So this has been my life since I've been sort of a free willed adult. Each year. Has been so robust with problems and successes. And learning experiences and human experiences that a year is a lifetime at Apple.

36:17 So this has been ten lifetimes. So then he's asked the question. Do you know what you want to do with the rest of this lifetime? And keep in mind, we know how this ends. Steve when he was twenty nine year years old did not know That unfortunately he only had twenty five years left.

36:32 He only had twenty five years left of life from this point. And so he says. There's an old Hindu saying that comes to mind. For the first thirty years of your life, you make your habits. For the last thirty years of your life, your habits make you.

36:46 As I'm going to be thirty in February, the thought has crossed my mind. And I'm not sure. I'll always stay connected with Apple. I hope that throughout my life I'll sort of have the thread of my life and the thread of Apple weave in and out of each other. Like a tapestry.

37:01 There may be a few years when I'm not here. But I'll always come. Back. And that is where I'll leave it. Highly, highly recommend. Like I said before, I probably read this interview ten times. I I'll leave a link, you should read the entire thing. I'll also leave my highlights. I probably made I don't know like twenty highlights

37:19 If you want to read through my highlights as well, I'll leave them in the show notes and they'll be available at thunderspodcast.com. I really like doing these rare interview episodes. So if you're looking for something else and you haven't listened to them yet, highly recommend you listen to episode three seventy four. Rare Jeff Bezos interview. And three fifty five. Rare Bernard or No interview.

37:37 And that is three hundred and ninety books down. One thousand ago. And I'll talk to you again soon. There's something in this interview that Steve Jobs said. That

37:45 Wasn't in the episode you just heard, but is related to this tool that I built. And he talks about What's really incredible about a book is that you can read what Aristotle wrote. You can read exactly what Aristotle wrote. This is all Steve Jobs Wars, by the way. That direct transmission of thoughts and ideas is one of the key building blocks of why we are where we are as a society. But the problem with the book is that you can't ask Aristotle a question.

38:07 I think one of the potential of the computer Is somehow to capture the fundamental underlying principles of an experience. So I would consider this what me and you are during our founders. We're trying to capture fundamental underlying principles of how these b people built their businesses and their lives.

38:24 Back to what Job said. What computer programming can do is to capture the underlying principles. the underlying essence, and then facilitate thousands of experiences based on that underlying principle. And he continues, what if we could capture Aristotle's worldview? the underlying principles of his worldview. Then you could eventually

38:43 Ask Aristotle a question someday. We can capture an Aristotle. or an Einstein or an Edwin Land. Imagine Вот так били фор.

38:54 That is the end of Steve Jobs quote. And when I read that That sounds a lot like this tool that I built for myself. Founders Notes has all of my notes and highlights for every single book that I've read for the podcast. Almost, you know, I'm gonna hit four hundred. Biographies and autobiographies. Uh read soon.

39:10 And all the transcripts for every episode that I've ever made. And you know, that's gonna be almost four hundred episodes as well. So then I put everything into this giant searchable database and then I built an AI assistant on top of that that it lives in founders notes that I call Sage. And Sage answers questions for me. Based on all those notes. All those highlights and all those transcripts.

39:31 So asking Sage a question is like asking me a question. But Sage has better memory and makes connections In fact, Uh, many times when my friends will call me or text me. And they'll ask me something.

39:46 About something they heard on the podcast. or about a person that I've covered in the past or a problem that they have in their business and they ask like how would history some of history's grace entrepreneurs handle that. I now tell them just to ask Sage. So if you want access to this tool, the same the very same tool. that I use. In fact that the version of Sage and Founders Notice that you see.

40:06 Is the exact same version. that I see. It's the same version that I use myself. You'll hear me reference it on many uh podcast all the time where I'm like, oh I was reading something in the book. Then I asked Sage to elaborate on this. And then I just read from Sage into the podcast. So if you want access to the exact same tool that I use, you can go to foundersnotes.com And subscribe. Founders notes will give you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge. of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. I highly recommend

40:33 that you use it to supplement the decisions that you make in your work. You can get access by going to founders notes. Dot com that is founders. With an S just like the podcast. Thank you very much for the extra support and thank you very much for listening and I'll talk to you again soon.

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