Steve Jobs: "Startups, the secret is not the idea but perseverance"

Pure perseverance and teamwork 

In this short excerpt from the famous "Lost Steve Jobs Interview" Part 1991, interviewer Bob Cringley, at the end of the long conversation 70 minutes, brings the talk to startups, asking Jobs a question of dramatic relevance. This, in essence: “Can a startup of 4 young people ever penniless in jeans and a t-shirt, make it into the battle of ideas and in the competition   withbelieve large groupsi which they control, as one girl, il business of technology?”. in 1991 They were called HP, Sun, Oracle, IBM; Microsoft today they are called Google, Facebook, NetflixAmazonMicrosoft and so on. And maybe this is the look more very important  is must weigh anyone who intends to start an innovative business in this area if his intention is not develop a business whose exclusive purpose is that of being acquiredo from one of these mammoth semi-monopoly groups. In this case, everything is relatively simple, even if the exit is not guaranteed at all. 

The answer, also philosophical, by Jobs to this question, leave some hope to those who intend to challenge them seriously. We were in 1991 when Jobs spoke with Cringley, However, her words not they seem not at all affected by the wear and tear of time which is particularly corrosive when applied to technology and its models of business. 

Bob Cringley: Let's talk about startups. If we look at your company or what you've always said, covenants are literally written on the walls. You are allied with Hewlett-Packard, Sun, Oracle and Digital and all system integrators. Communication companies are merging with IT companies, they are becoming one. Do you think a big new start-up will be able to develop by focusing on the most important applications and software? Will there ever be another? 

Steve Jobs"I think so. Out of desperation one could say no, but I think so and the reason is that the human mind looks at the world in a schematic way, it has always been like this and it probably always will be. 

I've always thought that death is life's greatest invention. I'm sure that in the beginning life developed without death, finding that without death life didn't work very well, because it didn't make room for young people. We didn't know what the world was like fifty years ago or twenty years ago. You saw it in the present, without preconceptions, dreaming that this was the starting point. We are not satisfied with the results obtained in the last thirty years. We are dissatisfied because the current situation does not match the ideal goals we set for ourselves. If there were no death, progress would be much slower. 

One of the things that happens to organizations as well as people is that they fit a worldview and are satisfied with it. The world changes, continues to evolve and new potentials emerge, but those accustomed to this vision do not see it. This is why startups have a huge advantage. The point of view of large companies is the more sedentary one. 

Also, large corporations typically lack effective communication pathways between the people closest to some of these changes at the lowest level of society and those at the top level, where the people who make important decisions are. There may be people down below who see the changes coming, but it can take up to ten years for the concept to reach the decision makers. Even when society does the right thing at the lowest echelons, usually the upper echelons screw up somehow. IBM and the personal computer industry are good examples. 

I think that if human beings can overcome the human characteristic of adapting to a single vision of the world, young people and new companies will always be able to innovate, this is how it should be”. 

This was supposed to be my closing question before I let you free associate. I would like to talk about the young people who look up to you as a role model. Do you think there are still opportunities for innovation? What are the factors that determine the success of young people nowadays? What should they avoid doing? What advice would you give to young entrepreneurs? 

“They ask me very often and by now I have a standard answer. Many come to me and say “I want to be an entrepreneur”. I'm like, "Wow, great, what's your idea?" and they say, "I don't have one yet." So I say, "Well, you should get a job like driving buses until you find something you're really passionate about, because it's very tiring." 

I'm convinced that half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from unsuccessful ones is sheer persistence. It's really difficult, it means dedicating your whole life to it. There are such bad moments in time that I think most people would throw in the towel. I don't blame them, it's really hard and consumes you. If you have a family and you just started a business, I can't imagine how you would manage it. Certainly there are those who have done it, but it is very difficult. For a long time, people continued to work eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. Unless you have a real passion, you will not be able to survive, you will give up. So you have to have in mind an idea or a problem or a wrong thing that you want to correct and that you are passionate about, otherwise we will not have the perseverance to commit ourselves. I think half the battle is that." 

What matters most to you in product development? Is it the idea or the execution? 

“Many think that the idea constitutes 90% of the product and that it is enough to tell people “That's the idea” to make sì let it happen! The problem is that it takes one immense amount of work to make a great product out of a great idea. 

There are some things that electronics they can't do, there are things that plastic, glass and robots can't do. And when you decide to design a product, you need to have 5000 different things in mind. Then you have to put them together, combine them in different ways to get what you want. And every day you always discover something new, a new problem or an opportunity that leads you towards a different result. The magical aspect is the process”. 

Explain this magic thing better.

“To describe a group that does something they believe in, I always use an episode from when I was a kid. There was a gentleman who lived at the end of my street. He was about 80 years old and monstrous lookingoI know, but slowly I learned to know him better. One day he said to me: “come to my garage I want to show you something”. And he brought out an old man gizmo dusty. It was a beat-up coffee grinder motor, a motor he had strapped aa can with a string. “Come out with me” he told me. We went to collect some rocks and put them in the can with a po' di oil and a handful of abrasive powder. We closed the can, he started the engine and he told me to come back the next day. The can made a great noise with the stones that they rolled and rubbed in the container tin. I came back the next day and we opened the can. Inside were some beautiful polished stones. The stones malfatti by dint of rubbing against each other they had turned into beautiful polished stones. It has always stuck with me as a metaphor to describe a team of people working on something they're passionate about. It's all about the team longed in a group of talented people, arguing, clashing, arguing. By working together they improve and the result is splendiddand polished stones. 

So a good product is not something that a single individual can do. I'm seen as a leader, but Mac is born out of teamwork. I've built much of my success by hiring really gifted people, solo people of A league. All extraordinarily talented people. I think what made the Mac great is that our collaborators have been musicians, artists, poets, writers before purchasing, yet to be the greatest developers of the world. But if it wasn't for thea passion for computers, they would still have done great things in other fields”.

Your speech made me think of another aspect of the matter. You mentioned passion, but what do you think about power? What do you have to say about the responsibilities that come with power after you've achieved a certain level of success? 

"Candies? What does it mean?".

It takes passion to build a company like Apple or IBM or any other big company. Once you have taken the passion to that level, you have built a company and you are in the position of Bill Gates of Microsoft or anyone else, you, for example, what are the responsibilities of someone who has been successful and has economic and social power ? I mean, you changed the world, what are the responsibilities that follow? 

“This question can be taken on various levels. Of course, whoever runs a company has a series of responsibilities, but I don't think that an entrepreneur has responsibilities as an individual. I think the work speaks for itself. I don't think people have special responsibilities just because they have done something that others like or dislike. I think the work speaks for itself. 

I think people can choose to do things if they want to, but we're all going to die soon, that's how I see it. Someone once told me “Live each day as if it were your last and for sure one day you will be right”. I do so. You never know where you'll end up, but you'll be gone very soon. If you leave anything behind it will be your children, a few friends and your job. So that's what I tend to worry about. I don't think about responsibilities. Sometimes I like to pretend I don't have any. I try to remember the last time I had nothing to do that day or even the next day when I had no responsibilities. It's been decades. I pretend to still be like this, when I want to feel that way. I don't think in those terms. I think everyone has a responsibility to do their job well and produce things that people can use and make sure they can build on your back and make better and better things.” 

So the responsibility is to yourself and your standards. 

“In our field a person can no longer do anything by himself. You create a team of people around you. You have a working integrity responsibility to that team and everyone is trying to be their best.”

Any other comments or concluding thoughts on what we said or something else? 

“No, I wouldn't say. Time frame is an interesting concept when thinking about the past. I think when people look back on this period a hundred years from now they will see it as a very important period in history and especially in this field, believe it or not. If we think about the innovation that came from this place, the   Valley and the whole Bay San Francisco area, we have the invention of the integrated circuit, the microprocessor, semiconductor memory, the modern hard drive, the modern floppy disc drive, which was invented by IBM, and its commercialization, the invention of the personal computer, genetic engineering, object-oriented technology, graphical user interfaces invented by PARC, later also developed by Apple, and finally the connection of network. All of this happened in the Bay Area, it's incredible."

Why do you think it happened right here in this place? 

“Well, these are special places. For two or three reasons. You have to go back a bit in history. San Francisco was the birthplace of beat generation, that's kind of interesting, there were hippies. It was the only place in America where Rock 'n Roll really caught on, right? Most of the American bands, Bob Dylan in the 60s, they all came from here. I think about Joan Baez, Jefferson Airplane, i Grateful Dead. They were all from here, Janis Joplin, Jimmy Hendrix, everybody. How did it happen? There's also Stanford and Berkeley, two fantastic universities that attract smart people from all over the world and deposit them in this nice, clean, sunny place where there are so many other smart people and the food is very good. And there's also a lot of drugs sometimes and there's a lot of other fun stuff. That's why they stayed, there is an immense human capital that continues to pour here. There are really smart people. Here people seem much smarter and more open-minded than in the rest of the country. I think it's a very unique place and its history has shown that, that's why it continues to attract people. I think that, in the end, everything this depends largely on the universities, Stanford and Berkeley”.