Steve Jobs' 3 Success Moves Before Apple

TL;DR

Three tactical moves drove Steve Jobs' success: build something you desperately want, treat your startup like a maze rather than a straight line, and feed your weird curiosities. He and Woz built the blue box and Apple 1 because they couldn't afford alternatives, pivoted after failures, and let random interests like calligraphy reshape products.

Transcript

Before Steve Jobs was Steve Jobs, he was a phone hacker. Yeah, you heard that right. At 12, a not yet teenager Steve Jobs cold called Bill Hulet, the actual founder of HP, and talked his way into getting free computer parts. At 19, he and W were building illegal devices to hack AT&T's phone network. Here's what nobody tells you, the DNA of Apple. E... Read More

Key Insights

• Building something you desperately want beats chasing market demand, because people don't know what they want until you show it to them. Jobs and Woz built the blue box and Apple 1 simply because they wanted them and couldn't afford alternatives.
• The blue box was a formative lesson in leverage: two kids in a Los Altos garage discovered they could bend the rules of AT&T, a company with billions in global phone infrastructure, teaching them that massive systems could be hacked.
• The Apple 1 economics proved the desperately-want principle works: Jobs and Woz hand-assembled each unit in 40 to 50 hours, sold their first 50 to a local computer shop for $500 each, and earned $25,000 from something built out of personal need.
• A startup is a maze, not a straight line, and hitting a wall means you're inside the maze rather than that you failed. The tactical response is to back up and find another route instead of staring at the wall.
• Success isn't permanent, and copying past paradigms is a common mistake. Jobs admitted Next tried to repeat what worked at Apple without realizing the world was changing underneath his feet.
• Not being afraid to fail is a coachable skill: many people get protective after failure and refuse to risk falling on their face again, which Jobs considered a big mistake since you never achieve what you want without failing a few times.
• The Next failure became Apple's solution: the $10,000 Next cube flopped, but its software was so good that Apple bought Next for $400 million in 1997 to get it, and that software became MacOS.
• Combining unrelated skills is a competitive advantage, because your unique mix of everything you know becomes a lens for seeing problems differently. Jobs called himself a humanities person who liked electronics and refused to narrow into one specialty.

Questions & Answers

Q: What are Steve Jobs' three moves for success before Apple?

According to the video, Jobs used three tactical moves. First, build something you desperately want rather than what the market or investors want. Second, treat your startup like a maze, not a straight line, and find a new path when you hit a wall. Third, stop being a specialist and feed your weird curiosities, because your unique combination of knowledge becomes a competitive advantage. These aren't feel-good platitudes but tactical moves anyone can steal right now.

Q: What was the blue box that Steve Jobs and Woz built?

The blue box was a little illegal device that Jobs and Woz built at around age 19 that allowed you to make free phone calls everywhere by hacking AT&T's phone network. They built it not from market research but because they thought it was cool, and used it for mischief like prank calling the Pope and calling friends in other countries for free. The experience taught them that two kids in a garage could bend the rules of a company with billions in infrastructure.

Q: How did Steve Jobs and Woz fund the first Apple computer?

In 1975, when computers cost $40,000 and filled entire rooms, Jobs and Woz couldn't afford one, so they built their own. They dumpster dived for parts, sweet talked suppliers, and sold their most prized possessions. Woz sold his HP65 calculator for $500 and Jobs sold his VW van for $1,500. Each Apple 1 took 40 to 50 hours to hand assemble, and they sold their first 50 units to a local computer shop for $500 each, earning $25,000.

Q: Why did Steve Jobs start Next after leaving Apple?

After Apple fired Jobs, he was already worth $200 million and could have retired, but instead he started Next to build the ultimate workstation for universities. The result was the Next cube, a gorgeous machine with a magnesium case, optical storage, and a Unix based operating system. It cost $10,000 and nobody bought it. Jobs admitted his mistake was copying paradigms of past success without realizing the world was changing underneath his feet.

Q: How did the failure of Next end up saving Apple?

Although the Next cube hardware flopped, Jobs pivoted the company to software instead of getting protective about his original hardware vision. Next became a software company with something a lot of people wanted. When Apple was dying in 1997, it bought Next for $400 million just to get that software, which then became MacOS. The thing that failed spectacularly ended up becoming the solution that saved Apple, illustrating the maze mindset of finding new paths.

Q: What does treating a startup like a maze mean?

It means a startup is not a straight line but a maze, and most founders are terrible at mazes because they think admitting they hit a wall means they failed. You can't walk through the walls of the maze; you must change your course to walk it. When you hit a wall, that means you're actually in the maze, and the question is whether you'll stand there staring or back up and try another route. The maze rewards persistence, not perfection.

Q: How did a calligraphy class influence Apple products?

In 1974, Jobs dropped out of Reed College but kept sneaking into classes, including a calligraphy class that seemed totally useless. Ten years later, that class became the Mac's secret weapon, making it the first computer with beautiful typography that Windows couldn't match for years. This illustrated Jobs' point that random interests aren't distractions but ammunition, and that Apple aimed to bring a liberal arts perspective to what had traditionally been a very geeky technology.

Q: Why did Steve Jobs value hiring artists and non-engineers?

Jobs saw himself as a humanities person who liked electronics, and that weird combination changed everything. Apple hired musicians, artists, and writers, not just engineers, which separated it from every other tech company. A lot of companies hire people to tell them what to do, but Apple hired people to tell them what to do, creating a collegial rather than hierarchical culture. His Pixar years, which produced the first computer animated feature film, taught him storytelling that shaped every Apple keynote as a three-act narrative.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• Before Apple, Steve Jobs was a phone hacker who at 12 cold called the founder of HP for free parts and at 19 built illegal blue boxes with Woz to hack AT&T's phone network, using them to prank the Pope and call friends abroad for free. These early hustles contained Apple's DNA.

• Move one: build what you desperately want. In 1975 computers cost $40,000, so Jobs and Woz built their own, dumpster diving for parts and selling Woz's HP65 calculator for $500 and Jobs' VW van for $1,500. They sold 50 hand-assembled Apple 1 units for $25,000.

• Move two: treat business like a maze. After Apple fired him, Jobs started Next, whose $10,000 cube flopped, so he pivoted to software. Apple bought Next for $400 million in 1997, and that software became MacOS. Move three: feed weird curiosities, like the calligraphy class that gave the Mac beautiful typography.