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20 Things I\u2019ve Learned from Steve Jobs<\/b> \u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
1. Build stuff that you love, then ask people to buy that stuff so you can keep building more.<\/b> In 1974, Steve Jobs invited Steve Wozniak to join the Homebrew Computer Club. Woz wanted to keep it a hobby. Jobs convinced Woz to start a company. In 1976, they sold the first fifty Apple I computers. \u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
2. Don\u2019t be afraid to ask for what you want.<\/b>
At age 13, Steve Jobs called up the head of HP and asked for free computer chips\u2026and got them. \u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
3. Even if you don\u2019t graduate, you can still keep learning.<\/b> Jobs dropped out of Reed College, but kept auditing classes. (I learned to write BASIC on an Apple II.) \u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
4. If you lose your job, stay focused on what you\u2019ll do next.<\/b> In 1985, Steve Jobs was fired from Apple, the company he\u2019d help found, and replaced by John Sculley. Jobs promptly founded a new computer company, NeXT. “I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life.”<\/i> \u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
5. Sometimes it takes reaching the bottom before you can soar to infinity and beyond.<\/b> Steve Jobs turned Pixar from a software company into a movie studio, which produced the first full-length computer-animated feature, \u201cToy Story,\u201d the first many box office hits. He sold Pixar to Disney in 2006 for $7.4 billion. \u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
6. Even if your ship is sinking, point it in the right direction.<\/b> In 1997, Jobs returned to Apple as CEO. \u201cI\u2019m actually convinced that if Steve hadn\u2019t come back when he did \u2014 if they had waited another six months \u2014 Apple would have been history. It would have been gone, absolutely gone.\u201d<\/i> \u2013 John Sculley<\/p>\n
7. Don\u2019t be too proud to accept help, even from a former enemy.<\/b> He turned to long-time rival and founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, for money to help Apple survive. \u201cWe have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose. We have to embrace a notion that for Apple to win, Apple has to do a really good job.\u201d<\/p>\n
8. Don\u2019t be trapped by dogma \u2014 which is living with the results of other people\u2019s thinking. Think different.\u00a0<\/b>
Rashmi Bansal was so moved by Steve Jobs\u2019 commencement speech she quoted him in the titles of her two books on India\u2019s entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n
9. If you find something you like to wear, hey, just go for it.<\/b> \u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
10. People don\u2019t know what they want until you show it to them.<\/b> \u00a0<\/i>
\u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean we don\u2019t listen to customers, but it\u2019s hard for them to tell you what they want when they\u2019ve never seen anything remotely like it. Take desktop video editing. I never got one request from someone who wanted to edit movies on his computer. Yet now that people see it, they say, \u2018Oh my God, that\u2019s great!\u2019\u201d <\/i>Fortune, January 24 2000<\/p>\n
“I didn\u2019t know I wanted a portable multimedia platform that would permit me and my kids to hurl angry birds out of a slingshot at thieving pigs. But Steve Jobs did.” <\/i>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n