he’s considered the father of the
digital revolution a master of
innovation and a design perfectionist he
had a net worth of over 8 billion
dollars in 2010
he’s one of my personal favorite
entrepreneurs of all time he’s Steve
Jobs from Apple and here are his top 10
rules for success the thing I would say
is when you grow up you tend to get told
that the world is the way it is and your
your life is just to live your life
inside the world try not to bash into
the walls too much try to have a nice
family life have fun save a little money
but life that’s a very limited life life
can be much broader once you discover
one simple fact and that is everything
around you that you call life was made
up by people that were no smarter than
you and you can change it you can
influence it you can you can build your
own things that other people can use and
the minute that you understand that you
can poke life and actually something
will you know if you push in something
will pop out the other side that you can
you can change you can mold it that’s
maybe the most important thing is to
shake off this that this erroneous
notion that life is is there and you’re
just gonna live in it versus embrace it
change it improve it make your mark upon
it I I think that’s very important and
however you learn that once you learn it
you’ll want to change life and make it
better because it’s kind of messed up in
a lot of ways once you learn that you’ll
never be the same again
people say you you have to have a lot of
passion for what you’re doing and it’s
totally true and the reason is is
because it’s so hard that if you don’t
any rational person would give up it’s
really hard and you have to do it over a
sustained period of time so if you don’t
love it if you’re not having fun doing
it you don’t really love it you’re going
to give up and
that’s what happens to most people
actually if you really look at at the
ones that ended up you know being
successful unquote in the eyes of
society and the ones that didn’t
oftentimes it’s the ones that are
successful loved what they did so they
could persevere when it you know when it
got really tough and and the ones that
didn’t love it quit because they’re
saying right who would want to put up
with this stuff if you don’t love it so
it’s a lot of hard work and and it’s a
lot of worrying constantly and if you
don’t love it you’re gonna fail so you
got to love it you got to have passion
we had absolutely no idea what people
were gonna do these things when we
started out
matter of fact the two people it was
designed for was was in my society
because we couldn’t afford to buy it a
computer cannot market
so we liberated some parts from Hewlett
Packard and Atari and worked on design
for about six months and decided that we
would build our own computer so we built
and once was up till 4:00 in the morning
for many moons and we got it working we
showed some of our friends immediately
everybody wanted one and it turned out
to take about forty hours to build one
of these things and about another 20 30
40 50 bucket and we had a lot of friends
at work that similar companies who could
liberate the parts also helping our
friends to build computers and it was
just getting to be a tremendous drain on
our on our lives so we got the idea one
day that we could make a printed circuit
board without the parts and sell you
blank printed circuit boards to our
friends and probably cut the assembly
and debug time down to you know 5 10
hours so woz SOLAS hp6
calculator and I sold my van we got
1,300 bucks together and we pay our
friend of ours who is this PC board
layout person 1,300 bucks to do us a
layout and decided we’d sell printed
circuit boards twice what it costs to
build them and hopefully recoup our
calculator and transportation assembly
so that’s what we did and I was out
trying to peddle PC boards one day and
walked into a bike shop the first bike
shop in Mountain View and Paul Terrell
then owner of the bike shop said he
would like to take 50 of these computers
and I saw dollar signs in front of my
eyes and but he had one catch which was
if he wanted them fully assembled and
tested ready to go which is a new twist
so we spent the next five days on the
phone at distributors and convinced the
electronics parts distributors around
here to give us about ten thousand
dollars worth of parts on thin air
this time enthusiasm so we got the parts
and we built a hundred computers and we
sold 50 of them for cash in 29 days paid
off the distributor and that’s how we
got started so we got 50 computers left
over while that meant we had to sell so
then we started worrying about marketing
worrying about distribution got on the
phone to the other computer stores
around the country and gradually the
whole thing began to build momentum and
at that point in time we had some
feeling that we were on to something but
the feeling was so different than the
experience of actually seeing it happen
right now it’s entirely different and
sometimes a lot of a lot of people ask
what did you know it was gonna much
relate to this phenomenon and you could
say yeah you know we planned it out we
have led on a piece of paper but
different than the experience of seeing
500 people working at Apple Computer
it’s very different than the experience
of seeing a five-year-old kid who really
understands what he’s the tool that he’s
gotten from when you first got the job
as CEO you got a call from Steve Jobs
and he offered you some advice well he
didn’t call to offer me advice but we
had worked together on a Nike Apple
collaboration called Nike plus so we
took what Apple knows what Nike knows
and you know brought a new technology to
the market anyway
long story short he said hey
congratulations it’s great you’re gonna
do a great job I said well do you have
any advice and he said no no you’re
you’re great and then there was a pause
and it goes well I do have some advice
because Nike makes some of the best
product in the world
I mean product that you lust after
absolutely beautiful stunning product
but you also make a lot of crap he said
just get rid of the crappy stuff and
focus on the good stuff and then I
expected a little pause and a laugh but
there was there was a pause but no laugh
at the end and he was absolutely right
greatest people are self-managing they
don’t need to be managed you if they
know what if once they know what to do
they’ll go figure out how to do it they
don’t need to be managed at all
what they need is a common vision and
that’s what leadership is what
leadership is is having a vision
being able to articulate that so the
people around you can understand it and
getting a consensus on a common vision
we wanted people that were insanely
great at what they did but work we’re
not necessarily those seasoned
professionals but who has on at the tips
of their fingers and in their passion
the latest understanding of where
technology was and what we could do with
that technology and who wanted to bring
that to lots of people so the neatest
thing that happens is when you get a
core group of you know ten great people
that it becomes self policing as to who
they let into that group so I consider
the most important job of someone like
myself is recruiting agonized over
hiring we had interviews I could go back
and look at some of the interviews
agenda they would start at 9:00 or 10:00
in the morning and go through dinner a
new interviewee would talk to everybody
in the building at least once maybe a
couple times and then come back for
another round of interviews and then
we’d all get together and talk about it
at least to my mind was when we finally
decided we liked them enough to show
them the Macintosh prototype and then
you snap them down in front of it and if
they just kind of were bored or said
this is a nice computer we don’t want it
we wanted their eyes to light up and
then to get really excited and then we
knew they were one of us and everybody
just wanted to work not because it was
work that had to be done but it was
because something that we really
believed in that was just gonna really
make a difference and that’s what kept
the whole thing going we all wanted
exactly the same thing instead of
spending our time arguing about what the
computer should be we all knew what the
computer should be and we just went and
we went through that stage and Apple
we went out and we thought oh we’re
gonna be a big company let’s hire
professional management we went out and
hired a bunch of professional management
it didn’t work at all most of them were
bozos they they knew how to manage but
they didn’t know how to do anything and
so well if you’re a great person why do
you want to work for something you can’t
learn anything from and you know what’s
interesting you know who the best
managers are there are the great
individual contributors who never ever
want to be a manager but decide they
have to be a manager because every no
one else is going to be able to do as
good a job as them after hiring two
professional managers from outside the
company and firing them both jobs
gambled on Debbie Coleman a member of
the Macintosh team 32 years old an
English literature major with an MBA
from Stanford
Debbie was a financial manager with no
experience in manufacturing I mean
there’s no way in the world anybody else
would give me this chance to run this
kind of operation and I don’t kid myself
about that this is an incredible high
risk both for myself personally and
professionally and for Apple as a
company that put a person like myself in
this job I mean they’re really betting
on a lot of things we’re betting that my
skills and organizational effectiveness
you know
override all of you know lack of
technology lack of experience lack of
you know time and manufacturing so it’s
a big risk and I’m just an example in
every single person on the Mac team all
most of your you know entry-level person
you could say that about this is a place
where people were afforded incredibly
unique opportunities to prove that they
could do because they could write the
book again inscribed inside the casing
of every Macintosh unseen by the
consumer are the signatures of the whole
team this is Apple’s way of affirming
that their latest innovation is a
product of the individuals who created
it not the corporation it’s very
interesting I was worth about over a
million dollars when I was 23 and over
ten million dollars from I was 24 and
over a hundred million dollars when I
was 25
and it wasn’t that important because I
never did it for the money I I think
money is wonderful thing because it
enables you to do things
it enables you to invest in ideas that
don’t have a short-term payback and
things like that but especially at that
point in my life it was it was not the
most important thing the most important
thing was the company the people the
products we were making what we were
gonna enable people to do with these
products so I didn’t think about it a
great deal you know I never sold any
stock and just really believed that the
company would would do very well over
the long term our goal is to make the
best personal computers in the world and
to make products we are proud to sell
and would recommend to our family and
friends and we want to do that at the
lowest price as we can but I have to
tell you there’s some stuff in our
industry that we wouldn’t be proud to
ship that we wouldn’t be proud to
recommend to our family and friends and
we can’t do it we just can’t ship junk
so there’s there’s a there are
thresholds that we can’t cross because
of who we are but we want to make the
best personal computers in the industry
the industry that wants that – and what
you’ll find is our products are usually
not premium priced you go what you go
and price out our competitors products
and you add the features that you have
to add to make them useful and you’ll
find in some cases they are more
expensive than our products the
difference is we don’t offer
stripped-down lousy products you know we
just don’t offer categories of products
like that but if you move those aside
and compare us with our competitors I
think we compare pretty favorably and a
lot of people have been doing that and
saying that now for the last 18 months
yeah
mr. jobs you’re a brightening watching
man here it comes
sad and clear that on several counts you
discussed you don’t know what you’re
talking about I would like for example
for you to express in clear terms how
state Java in any of its incarnations
addresses the ideas embodied and opened
up and when you’re finished with that
perhaps you could tell us which you
personally have been doing for the last
seven years
you know you can please some of the
people some of the time but one of the
hardest things when you’re trying to
affect change is that people like this
gentleman are right in some areas I’m
sure that there are some things opendoc
does probably even more than I’m not
familiar with that nothing else out
there does and I’m sure that you can
make some demos maybe a small commercial
app that demonstrates those things the
hardest thing is what how does that fit
in to a cohesive larger vision that’s
going to allow you to sell eight billion
dollars ten billion dollars a product a
year and one of the things I’ve always
found is that you’ve got to start with
the customer experience and work
backwards to the technology you can’t
start with the technology and try to
figure out where you’re going to try to
sell it and I’ve made this mistake
probably more than anybody else in this
room and I got the scar tissue to prove
it and I know that it’s the case and as
we have tried to come up with a strategy
in a vision for Apple it started with
what incredible benefits can we give to
the customer where can we take the
customer not not starting with let’s sit
down with the engineers and and figure
out what awesome technology we have and
then how are we going to market that and
I think that’s the right path to take
I remember with the laserwriter we built
the world’s first small laser printers
you know and there was awesome
technology in that box we have the first
canon laser printing cheap laser
printing engine in the world in the
United States here at Apple we had a
very wonderful printer controller that
we designed
we had Adobe’s PostScript software in
there we had Apple talk in there just
awesome technology in the box and I
remember seeing the first printout come
out of it and just picking it up and
looking at anything you know we can sell
this because you don’t have to know
anything about what’s in that box all we
have to do is hold that something good
you want this and if you remember back
to 1984 before laser printers it was
pretty startling to see that people went
wow yes and that’s that’s where Apple’s
got to get back to and you know I’m
sorry that opened Doc’s a casualty along
the way and I readily admit there are
many things in life that I don’t the
faintest idea what I’m talking about so
I apologize for that too
but there’s a whole lot of people
working super super hard right now at
Apple you know avi John Marino Fred I
mean the whole team is working burning
the midnight oil trying to and and
people you know hundreds of people below
them to execute on some of these things
and they’re doing their best and I think
that what we need to do and some
mistakes will be made by the way some
mistakes will be made along the way
that’s good because at least some
decisions are being made along the way
and we’ll find the mistakes we’ll fix
them and I think what we need to do is
support that team going through this
very important stage as they work their
butts off they’re all getting calls
being offered three times as much money
to go do this that the valleys hot none
of them are leaving and I think we need
to support them and see them through
this and write some damn good
applications to support Apple out in the
market that’s my own point of view
mistakes we made
people will be pissed off some people
will not know what they’re talking about
but it’s I think it is so much better
than where things were not very long ago
and I think we’re going to get there
to me marketing is about values this is
a very complicated world it’s a very
noisy world and we’re not going to get a
chance to get people to remember much
about us no company is and so we have to
be really clear on what we want them to
know about us now Apple fortunately is
one of the half-a-dozen best brands in
the whole world right up there with Nike
Disney Coke Sony it is one of the greats
of the greats not just in this country
but all around the globe and but but
even a great brand needs investment and
caring if it’s going to retain its
relevance and vitality and the Apple
brand has clearly suffered from neglect
in this area in the last few years and
we need to bring it back the way to do
that is not to talk about speeds and
fees it’s not to talk about myths and
magazines it’s not to talk about why
you’re better than windows the dairy
industry tried for 20 years to convince
you that milk was good for you the lie
but they tried anyway and the sales were
going like this and then they tried got
milk and the sales are going like this
got milk the thing to talk about a
product that focuses on the absence of
the product
but but what’s the best example of all
and and one of the greatest jobs of
marketing in though if the universe has
ever seen is Nike remember Nike sells a
commodity they sell shoes and yet when
you think of Nike you feel something
different than a shoe company in their
ads as you know they don’t ever talk
about the product they don’t ever tell
you about their soils and why they’re
better than Reebok their souls
where’s Nike doing their advertising
they they honor great athletes and they
honor great athletics that’s who they
are that’s what they are about that
we’ll spend a fortune on advertising
you’ve never know it you’ve never known
so when I got here you Apple just fired
the agency we’re doing a competition
with 23 agencies that you know four
years from now we’ll pick one and we
blew that up and we we hired Shaddai the
ad agency that I was fortunate enough to
work with years ago we created some
award-winning work including the
commercial voted the best dad ever made
1984 by advertising professionals and we
started working about eight weeks ago
and what was the question they asked was
our customers want to know who is Apple
and what is it that we stand for where
do we fit in this world and what we’re
about isn’t making boxes for people to
get their job done
although we do that well we do that
better than almost anybody in some cases
but apples about something more than
that Apple at the core its core value is
that we believe that people with passion
can change the world for the better
that’s what we believe and we’ve had the
opportunity to work with people like
that we’ve had an opportunity work with
people like you with software developers
with customers who have done it in some
big in some small way and we believe
that in this world people can change it
for the better and that those people
that are crazy enough to think they can
change the world are the ones that
actually do and so that we’re going to
do in our first brand marketing campaign
in several years is to is to get back to
that core value a lot of things have
changed the markets a totally different
place than it was a decade ago
Annapolis totally different in Apple’s
place in it it’s totally different and
believe me the products and the
distribution strategy in manufacturing
are totally different and we understand
that the values and core values those
things shouldn’t change the things that
Apple believed in at its core are the
same things that Apple really stands for
today and so we wanted to find a way to
communicate this and what we have is
something that I am I’m very moved by it
honors those people who have changed the
world some of them are living some of
them are not but the ones that aren’t as
you’ll see you know that if they ever
use the computer it would have been a
Mac
and the theme of the campaign is think
difference it’s the people honoring the
people who think difference and who knew
this world forward and it’s it is what
we are about it touches the soil of this
company so I’m gonna go ahead and roll
it and I hope that you feel the same way
about it I do here’s to the crazy ones
The Misfits the rebels the troublemakers
the round pegs in the square holes
once you see things
they’re not fond of rules and they have
no respect
you can quote them disagree with them
glorify or vilify them not the only
thing you can’t do
they change things push the human race
forward and while some may see them as
the crazy ones we see genius because the
people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world
thank you I’m honored to be with you
today for your commencement from one of
the finest universities in the world
truth be told I never graduated from
college and this is the closest I’ve
ever gotten to a college graduation
today I want to tell you three stories
from my life that’s it no big deal
just three stories the first story is
about connecting the dots I dropped out
of Reed College after the first six
months but then stayed around as a drop
in for another 18 months or so before I
really quit so why did I drop out it
started before I was born my biological
mother was a young unwed graduate
student and she decided to put me up for
adoption she felt very strongly that I
should be adopted by college graduates
so everything was all set for me to be
adopted at Birth by a lawyer and his
wife except that when I popped out they
decided at the last minute that they
really wanted a girl so my parents who
were on a waiting list got a call in the
middle of the night asking we’ve got an
unexpected baby boy do you want him they
said of course my biological mother
found out later that my mother had never
graduated from college and that my
father had never graduated from high
school she refused to sign the final
adoption papers she only relented a few
months later when my parents promised
that I would go to college this was the
start in my life and 17 years later I
did go to college but I naively chose a
college that was almost as expensive as
Stanford and all of my working-class
parents savings were being spent on my
college tuition after six months I
couldn’t see the value in it I had no
idea what I wanted to do with my life
and no idea how college was going to
help me figure it out and here I was
spending all the money my parents had
saved their entire life so I decided to
drop out and trust that it would all
work out okay it was pretty scary at the
time but looking back it was one of the
best decisions I ever made the minute I
dropped out I could stop taking the
required classes that didn’t interest me
and begin dropping in on the ones that
looked far more interesting it wasn’t
all romantic I didn’t have a dorm room
so I slept on the floor in friends rooms
I returned coke bottles for the 5 cent
deposits to buy food with and I would
walk the seven miles across town every
Sunday night to get one good meal a week
at the Hari Krishna temple I loved it
and much of what I stumbled into by
following my curiosity and intuition
turned out to be priceless later on let
me give you one example Reed College at
that time offered perhaps the best
calligraphy instruction in the country
throughout the campus every poster every
label on every drawer was beautifully
hand calligraphed because I had dropped
out and didn’t have to take the normal
classes I decided to take a calligraphy
class to learn how to do this I learned
about serif and sans-serif typefaces
about varying the amount of space
between different letter combinations
about what makes great typography great
it was beautiful historical artistically
subtle in a way that science can’t
capture and I found it fascinating none
of this had even a hope of any practical
application in my life but 10 years
later when we were designing the first
Macintosh computer it all came back to
me and we designed it all into the Mac
it was the first computer with beautiful
typography if I had never dropped in on
that single course in college the Mac
would have never had multiple typefaces
or proportionally spaced fonts and since
windows just copied the Mac it’s likely
that no personal computer
have them if I had never dropped out I
would have never dropped in on that
calligraphy class and personal computers
might not have the wonderful typography
that they do of course it was impossible
to connect the dots looking forward when
I was in college but it was very very
clear looking backwards ten years later
again you can’t connect the dots looking
forward you can only connect them
looking backwards so you have to trust
that the dots will somehow connect in
your future you have to trust in
something your gut destiny life karma
whatever because believing that the dots
will connect down the road will give you
the confidence to follow your heart even
when it leads you off the well-worn path
and that will make all the difference my
second story is about love and loss I
was lucky I found what I loved to do
early in life woz and I started Apple in
my parent’s garage when I was 20 we
worked hard and in 10 years Apple had
grown from just the two of us in a
garage into a two billion dollar company
with over 4,000 employees we just
released our finest creation the
Macintosh a year earlier and I just
turned 30 and then I got fired how can
you get fired from a company you started
well as Apple grew we hired someone who
I thought was very talented to run the
company with me and for the first year
or so things went well but then our
visions of the future began to diverge
and eventually we had a falling out when
we did our Board of Directors sided with
him and so at 30 I was out and very
publicly out what had been the focus of
my entire adult life was gone and it was
devastating I really didn’t know what to
do for a few months I felt that I’d let
the previous generation of entrepreneurs
down that I had dropped the baton as it
was being passed to me I met with David
Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to
apologize for screwing up so badly
I was a very public failure and I even
thought about running away from the
valley but something slowly began to
dawn on me I still loved what I did the
turn of events at Apple had not changed
that one bit I’ve been rejected but I
was still in love and so I decided to
start over 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 the heaviness of being
successful was replaced by the lightness
of being a beginner again less sure
about everything it freed me to enter
one of the most creative periods of my
life during the next five years I
started a company named next another
company named Pixar and fell in love
with an amazing woman who would become
my wife Pixar went on to create the
world’s first computer animated feature
film Toy Story and is now the most
successful animation studio in the world
in a remarkable turn of events Apple
bought next and I returned to Apple and
the technology we developed it next is
at the heart of Apple’s current
Renaissance and Laureen and I have a
wonderful family together I’m pretty
sure none of this would have happened if
I hadn’t been fired from Apple
it was awful tasting medicine but I
guess the patient needed it sometime
life sometimes life’s going to hit you
in the head with a brick don’t lose
faith I’m convinced that the only thing
that kept me going was that I loved what
I did you’ve got to find what you love
and that is as true for work as it is
for your lovers your work is going to
fill a large part of your life and the
only way to be truly satisfied is to do
what you believe is great work and the
only way to do great work is to love
what you do if you haven’t found it yet
keep looking and don’t settle as with
all matters of the heart you’ll know
when you find it and like any great
relationship it just gets better and
better as the years roll on so keep
looking don’t settle
my third story is about death when I was
17 I read a quote that went something
like if you live each day as if it was
your last someday you’ll most certainly
be right it made an impression on me and
since then for the past 33 years I’ve
looked in the mirror every morning and
asked myself if today were the last day
of my life what I want to do what I am
about to do today and whenever the
answer has been no for too many days in
a row I know I need to change something
remembering that all be dead soon is the
most important tool I’ve ever
encountered to help me make the big
choices in life because almost
everything all external expectations all
pride all fear of embarrassment or
failure these things just fall away in
the face of death leaving only what is
truly important remembering that you are
going to die is the best way I know to
avoid the trap of thinking you have
something to lose you are already naked
there is no reason not to follow your
heart about a year ago I was diagnosed
with cancer I had a scan at 7:30 in the
morning
and it clearly showed a tumor on my
pancreas I didn’t even know what a
pancreas was the doctors told me this
was almost certainly a type of cancer
that is incurable and that I should
expect to live no longer than three to
six months my doctor advised me to go
home and get my affairs in order which
is doctors code for prepare to die it
means to try and tell your kids
everything you thought you’d have the
next 10 years to tell them in just a few
months it means to make sure everything
is buttoned up so that will be as easy
as possible for your family it means to
say your goodbyes
I live with that diagnosis all day later
that evening I had a biopsy where they
stuck an endoscope down my throat
through my stomach and into my
intestines put a needle into my pancreas
and got a few cells from the tumor I was
sedated but my wife who was there
told me that when they viewed the cells
under a microscope the doctor started
crying because it turned out to be a
very rare form of pancreatic cancer that
is curable with surgery I had the
surgery and thankfully I’m fine now
this was the closest I’ve been to facing
death and I hope it’s the closest I get
for a few more decades having lived
through it I can now say this to you
with a bit more certainty than when
death was a useful but purely
intellectual concept no one wants to die
even people who want to go to heaven
don’t want to die to get there
and yet death is the destination we all
share no one has ever escaped it and
that is as it should be because death is
very likely the single best invention of
life its life’s change agent it clears
out the old to make way for the new
right now the new is you but some day
not too long from now you will gradually
become the old and be cleared away sorry
to be so dramatic but it’s quite true
your time is limited so don’t waste it
living someone else’s life
don’t be trapped by Dogma which is
living with the results of other
people’s thinking don’t let the noise of
others opinions drown out your own inner
voice and most important have the
courage to follow your heart and
intuition they somehow already know what
you truly want to become everything else
is secondary
when I was young there was an amazing
publication called the Whole Earth
Catalog which was one of the Bible’s of
my generation it was created by a fellow
named Stuart brand not far from here in
Menlo Park and he brought it to life
with his poetic touch this was in the
late 60s before personal computers and
desktop publishing so it was all made
with typewriters scissors and Polaroid
cameras it was sort of like Google and
paperback form 35 years before Google
came along it was idealistic overflowing
with neat tools and great notions Stuart
and his team put out several issues of
the Whole Earth Catalog and then when it
had run its course they put out a final
issue
it was the mid-1970s and I was your age
on the back cover of their final issue
was a photograph of an early-morning
country road the kind you might find
yourself hitchhiking on if you were so
adventurous beneath it were the words
stay hungry stay foolish it was their
farewell message as they signed off stay
hungry stay foolish and I have always
wished that for myself and now as you
graduate to begin anew I wish that for
you stay hungry stay foolish thank you
all very much I made this video because
card games TV one asked me to so there’s
a famous entrepreneur that you want me
to profile leave it in the comments
below
and we’ll see what we can do thank you
so much for watching continue to believe
me I don’t see you soon
digital revolution a master of
innovation and a design perfectionist he
had a net worth of over 8 billion
dollars in 2010
he’s one of my personal favorite
entrepreneurs of all time he’s Steve
Jobs from Apple and here are his top 10
rules for success the thing I would say
is when you grow up you tend to get told
that the world is the way it is and your
your life is just to live your life
inside the world try not to bash into
the walls too much try to have a nice
family life have fun save a little money
but life that’s a very limited life life
can be much broader once you discover
one simple fact and that is everything
around you that you call life was made
up by people that were no smarter than
you and you can change it you can
influence it you can you can build your
own things that other people can use and
the minute that you understand that you
can poke life and actually something
will you know if you push in something
will pop out the other side that you can
you can change you can mold it that’s
maybe the most important thing is to
shake off this that this erroneous
notion that life is is there and you’re
just gonna live in it versus embrace it
change it improve it make your mark upon
it I I think that’s very important and
however you learn that once you learn it
you’ll want to change life and make it
better because it’s kind of messed up in
a lot of ways once you learn that you’ll
never be the same again
people say you you have to have a lot of
passion for what you’re doing and it’s
totally true and the reason is is
because it’s so hard that if you don’t
any rational person would give up it’s
really hard and you have to do it over a
sustained period of time so if you don’t
love it if you’re not having fun doing
it you don’t really love it you’re going
to give up and
that’s what happens to most people
actually if you really look at at the
ones that ended up you know being
successful unquote in the eyes of
society and the ones that didn’t
oftentimes it’s the ones that are
successful loved what they did so they
could persevere when it you know when it
got really tough and and the ones that
didn’t love it quit because they’re
saying right who would want to put up
with this stuff if you don’t love it so
it’s a lot of hard work and and it’s a
lot of worrying constantly and if you
don’t love it you’re gonna fail so you
got to love it you got to have passion
we had absolutely no idea what people
were gonna do these things when we
started out
matter of fact the two people it was
designed for was was in my society
because we couldn’t afford to buy it a
computer cannot market
so we liberated some parts from Hewlett
Packard and Atari and worked on design
for about six months and decided that we
would build our own computer so we built
and once was up till 4:00 in the morning
for many moons and we got it working we
showed some of our friends immediately
everybody wanted one and it turned out
to take about forty hours to build one
of these things and about another 20 30
40 50 bucket and we had a lot of friends
at work that similar companies who could
liberate the parts also helping our
friends to build computers and it was
just getting to be a tremendous drain on
our on our lives so we got the idea one
day that we could make a printed circuit
board without the parts and sell you
blank printed circuit boards to our
friends and probably cut the assembly
and debug time down to you know 5 10
hours so woz SOLAS hp6
calculator and I sold my van we got
1,300 bucks together and we pay our
friend of ours who is this PC board
layout person 1,300 bucks to do us a
layout and decided we’d sell printed
circuit boards twice what it costs to
build them and hopefully recoup our
calculator and transportation assembly
so that’s what we did and I was out
trying to peddle PC boards one day and
walked into a bike shop the first bike
shop in Mountain View and Paul Terrell
then owner of the bike shop said he
would like to take 50 of these computers
and I saw dollar signs in front of my
eyes and but he had one catch which was
if he wanted them fully assembled and
tested ready to go which is a new twist
so we spent the next five days on the
phone at distributors and convinced the
electronics parts distributors around
here to give us about ten thousand
dollars worth of parts on thin air
this time enthusiasm so we got the parts
and we built a hundred computers and we
sold 50 of them for cash in 29 days paid
off the distributor and that’s how we
got started so we got 50 computers left
over while that meant we had to sell so
then we started worrying about marketing
worrying about distribution got on the
phone to the other computer stores
around the country and gradually the
whole thing began to build momentum and
at that point in time we had some
feeling that we were on to something but
the feeling was so different than the
experience of actually seeing it happen
right now it’s entirely different and
sometimes a lot of a lot of people ask
what did you know it was gonna much
relate to this phenomenon and you could
say yeah you know we planned it out we
have led on a piece of paper but
different than the experience of seeing
500 people working at Apple Computer
it’s very different than the experience
of seeing a five-year-old kid who really
understands what he’s the tool that he’s
gotten from when you first got the job
as CEO you got a call from Steve Jobs
and he offered you some advice well he
didn’t call to offer me advice but we
had worked together on a Nike Apple
collaboration called Nike plus so we
took what Apple knows what Nike knows
and you know brought a new technology to
the market anyway
long story short he said hey
congratulations it’s great you’re gonna
do a great job I said well do you have
any advice and he said no no you’re
you’re great and then there was a pause
and it goes well I do have some advice
because Nike makes some of the best
product in the world
I mean product that you lust after
absolutely beautiful stunning product
but you also make a lot of crap he said
just get rid of the crappy stuff and
focus on the good stuff and then I
expected a little pause and a laugh but
there was there was a pause but no laugh
at the end and he was absolutely right
greatest people are self-managing they
don’t need to be managed you if they
know what if once they know what to do
they’ll go figure out how to do it they
don’t need to be managed at all
what they need is a common vision and
that’s what leadership is what
leadership is is having a vision
being able to articulate that so the
people around you can understand it and
getting a consensus on a common vision
we wanted people that were insanely
great at what they did but work we’re
not necessarily those seasoned
professionals but who has on at the tips
of their fingers and in their passion
the latest understanding of where
technology was and what we could do with
that technology and who wanted to bring
that to lots of people so the neatest
thing that happens is when you get a
core group of you know ten great people
that it becomes self policing as to who
they let into that group so I consider
the most important job of someone like
myself is recruiting agonized over
hiring we had interviews I could go back
and look at some of the interviews
agenda they would start at 9:00 or 10:00
in the morning and go through dinner a
new interviewee would talk to everybody
in the building at least once maybe a
couple times and then come back for
another round of interviews and then
we’d all get together and talk about it
at least to my mind was when we finally
decided we liked them enough to show
them the Macintosh prototype and then
you snap them down in front of it and if
they just kind of were bored or said
this is a nice computer we don’t want it
we wanted their eyes to light up and
then to get really excited and then we
knew they were one of us and everybody
just wanted to work not because it was
work that had to be done but it was
because something that we really
believed in that was just gonna really
make a difference and that’s what kept
the whole thing going we all wanted
exactly the same thing instead of
spending our time arguing about what the
computer should be we all knew what the
computer should be and we just went and
we went through that stage and Apple
we went out and we thought oh we’re
gonna be a big company let’s hire
professional management we went out and
hired a bunch of professional management
it didn’t work at all most of them were
bozos they they knew how to manage but
they didn’t know how to do anything and
so well if you’re a great person why do
you want to work for something you can’t
learn anything from and you know what’s
interesting you know who the best
managers are there are the great
individual contributors who never ever
want to be a manager but decide they
have to be a manager because every no
one else is going to be able to do as
good a job as them after hiring two
professional managers from outside the
company and firing them both jobs
gambled on Debbie Coleman a member of
the Macintosh team 32 years old an
English literature major with an MBA
from Stanford
Debbie was a financial manager with no
experience in manufacturing I mean
there’s no way in the world anybody else
would give me this chance to run this
kind of operation and I don’t kid myself
about that this is an incredible high
risk both for myself personally and
professionally and for Apple as a
company that put a person like myself in
this job I mean they’re really betting
on a lot of things we’re betting that my
skills and organizational effectiveness
you know
override all of you know lack of
technology lack of experience lack of
you know time and manufacturing so it’s
a big risk and I’m just an example in
every single person on the Mac team all
most of your you know entry-level person
you could say that about this is a place
where people were afforded incredibly
unique opportunities to prove that they
could do because they could write the
book again inscribed inside the casing
of every Macintosh unseen by the
consumer are the signatures of the whole
team this is Apple’s way of affirming
that their latest innovation is a
product of the individuals who created
it not the corporation it’s very
interesting I was worth about over a
million dollars when I was 23 and over
ten million dollars from I was 24 and
over a hundred million dollars when I
was 25
and it wasn’t that important because I
never did it for the money I I think
money is wonderful thing because it
enables you to do things
it enables you to invest in ideas that
don’t have a short-term payback and
things like that but especially at that
point in my life it was it was not the
most important thing the most important
thing was the company the people the
products we were making what we were
gonna enable people to do with these
products so I didn’t think about it a
great deal you know I never sold any
stock and just really believed that the
company would would do very well over
the long term our goal is to make the
best personal computers in the world and
to make products we are proud to sell
and would recommend to our family and
friends and we want to do that at the
lowest price as we can but I have to
tell you there’s some stuff in our
industry that we wouldn’t be proud to
ship that we wouldn’t be proud to
recommend to our family and friends and
we can’t do it we just can’t ship junk
so there’s there’s a there are
thresholds that we can’t cross because
of who we are but we want to make the
best personal computers in the industry
the industry that wants that – and what
you’ll find is our products are usually
not premium priced you go what you go
and price out our competitors products
and you add the features that you have
to add to make them useful and you’ll
find in some cases they are more
expensive than our products the
difference is we don’t offer
stripped-down lousy products you know we
just don’t offer categories of products
like that but if you move those aside
and compare us with our competitors I
think we compare pretty favorably and a
lot of people have been doing that and
saying that now for the last 18 months
yeah
mr. jobs you’re a brightening watching
man here it comes
sad and clear that on several counts you
discussed you don’t know what you’re
talking about I would like for example
for you to express in clear terms how
state Java in any of its incarnations
addresses the ideas embodied and opened
up and when you’re finished with that
perhaps you could tell us which you
personally have been doing for the last
seven years
you know you can please some of the
people some of the time but one of the
hardest things when you’re trying to
affect change is that people like this
gentleman are right in some areas I’m
sure that there are some things opendoc
does probably even more than I’m not
familiar with that nothing else out
there does and I’m sure that you can
make some demos maybe a small commercial
app that demonstrates those things the
hardest thing is what how does that fit
in to a cohesive larger vision that’s
going to allow you to sell eight billion
dollars ten billion dollars a product a
year and one of the things I’ve always
found is that you’ve got to start with
the customer experience and work
backwards to the technology you can’t
start with the technology and try to
figure out where you’re going to try to
sell it and I’ve made this mistake
probably more than anybody else in this
room and I got the scar tissue to prove
it and I know that it’s the case and as
we have tried to come up with a strategy
in a vision for Apple it started with
what incredible benefits can we give to
the customer where can we take the
customer not not starting with let’s sit
down with the engineers and and figure
out what awesome technology we have and
then how are we going to market that and
I think that’s the right path to take
I remember with the laserwriter we built
the world’s first small laser printers
you know and there was awesome
technology in that box we have the first
canon laser printing cheap laser
printing engine in the world in the
United States here at Apple we had a
very wonderful printer controller that
we designed
we had Adobe’s PostScript software in
there we had Apple talk in there just
awesome technology in the box and I
remember seeing the first printout come
out of it and just picking it up and
looking at anything you know we can sell
this because you don’t have to know
anything about what’s in that box all we
have to do is hold that something good
you want this and if you remember back
to 1984 before laser printers it was
pretty startling to see that people went
wow yes and that’s that’s where Apple’s
got to get back to and you know I’m
sorry that opened Doc’s a casualty along
the way and I readily admit there are
many things in life that I don’t the
faintest idea what I’m talking about so
I apologize for that too
but there’s a whole lot of people
working super super hard right now at
Apple you know avi John Marino Fred I
mean the whole team is working burning
the midnight oil trying to and and
people you know hundreds of people below
them to execute on some of these things
and they’re doing their best and I think
that what we need to do and some
mistakes will be made by the way some
mistakes will be made along the way
that’s good because at least some
decisions are being made along the way
and we’ll find the mistakes we’ll fix
them and I think what we need to do is
support that team going through this
very important stage as they work their
butts off they’re all getting calls
being offered three times as much money
to go do this that the valleys hot none
of them are leaving and I think we need
to support them and see them through
this and write some damn good
applications to support Apple out in the
market that’s my own point of view
mistakes we made
people will be pissed off some people
will not know what they’re talking about
but it’s I think it is so much better
than where things were not very long ago
and I think we’re going to get there
to me marketing is about values this is
a very complicated world it’s a very
noisy world and we’re not going to get a
chance to get people to remember much
about us no company is and so we have to
be really clear on what we want them to
know about us now Apple fortunately is
one of the half-a-dozen best brands in
the whole world right up there with Nike
Disney Coke Sony it is one of the greats
of the greats not just in this country
but all around the globe and but but
even a great brand needs investment and
caring if it’s going to retain its
relevance and vitality and the Apple
brand has clearly suffered from neglect
in this area in the last few years and
we need to bring it back the way to do
that is not to talk about speeds and
fees it’s not to talk about myths and
magazines it’s not to talk about why
you’re better than windows the dairy
industry tried for 20 years to convince
you that milk was good for you the lie
but they tried anyway and the sales were
going like this and then they tried got
milk and the sales are going like this
got milk the thing to talk about a
product that focuses on the absence of
the product
but but what’s the best example of all
and and one of the greatest jobs of
marketing in though if the universe has
ever seen is Nike remember Nike sells a
commodity they sell shoes and yet when
you think of Nike you feel something
different than a shoe company in their
ads as you know they don’t ever talk
about the product they don’t ever tell
you about their soils and why they’re
better than Reebok their souls
where’s Nike doing their advertising
they they honor great athletes and they
honor great athletics that’s who they
are that’s what they are about that
we’ll spend a fortune on advertising
you’ve never know it you’ve never known
so when I got here you Apple just fired
the agency we’re doing a competition
with 23 agencies that you know four
years from now we’ll pick one and we
blew that up and we we hired Shaddai the
ad agency that I was fortunate enough to
work with years ago we created some
award-winning work including the
commercial voted the best dad ever made
1984 by advertising professionals and we
started working about eight weeks ago
and what was the question they asked was
our customers want to know who is Apple
and what is it that we stand for where
do we fit in this world and what we’re
about isn’t making boxes for people to
get their job done
although we do that well we do that
better than almost anybody in some cases
but apples about something more than
that Apple at the core its core value is
that we believe that people with passion
can change the world for the better
that’s what we believe and we’ve had the
opportunity to work with people like
that we’ve had an opportunity work with
people like you with software developers
with customers who have done it in some
big in some small way and we believe
that in this world people can change it
for the better and that those people
that are crazy enough to think they can
change the world are the ones that
actually do and so that we’re going to
do in our first brand marketing campaign
in several years is to is to get back to
that core value a lot of things have
changed the markets a totally different
place than it was a decade ago
Annapolis totally different in Apple’s
place in it it’s totally different and
believe me the products and the
distribution strategy in manufacturing
are totally different and we understand
that the values and core values those
things shouldn’t change the things that
Apple believed in at its core are the
same things that Apple really stands for
today and so we wanted to find a way to
communicate this and what we have is
something that I am I’m very moved by it
honors those people who have changed the
world some of them are living some of
them are not but the ones that aren’t as
you’ll see you know that if they ever
use the computer it would have been a
Mac
and the theme of the campaign is think
difference it’s the people honoring the
people who think difference and who knew
this world forward and it’s it is what
we are about it touches the soil of this
company so I’m gonna go ahead and roll
it and I hope that you feel the same way
about it I do here’s to the crazy ones
The Misfits the rebels the troublemakers
the round pegs in the square holes
once you see things
they’re not fond of rules and they have
no respect
you can quote them disagree with them
glorify or vilify them not the only
thing you can’t do
they change things push the human race
forward and while some may see them as
the crazy ones we see genius because the
people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world
thank you I’m honored to be with you
today for your commencement from one of
the finest universities in the world
truth be told I never graduated from
college and this is the closest I’ve
ever gotten to a college graduation
today I want to tell you three stories
from my life that’s it no big deal
just three stories the first story is
about connecting the dots I dropped out
of Reed College after the first six
months but then stayed around as a drop
in for another 18 months or so before I
really quit so why did I drop out it
started before I was born my biological
mother was a young unwed graduate
student and she decided to put me up for
adoption she felt very strongly that I
should be adopted by college graduates
so everything was all set for me to be
adopted at Birth by a lawyer and his
wife except that when I popped out they
decided at the last minute that they
really wanted a girl so my parents who
were on a waiting list got a call in the
middle of the night asking we’ve got an
unexpected baby boy do you want him they
said of course my biological mother
found out later that my mother had never
graduated from college and that my
father had never graduated from high
school she refused to sign the final
adoption papers she only relented a few
months later when my parents promised
that I would go to college this was the
start in my life and 17 years later I
did go to college but I naively chose a
college that was almost as expensive as
Stanford and all of my working-class
parents savings were being spent on my
college tuition after six months I
couldn’t see the value in it I had no
idea what I wanted to do with my life
and no idea how college was going to
help me figure it out and here I was
spending all the money my parents had
saved their entire life so I decided to
drop out and trust that it would all
work out okay it was pretty scary at the
time but looking back it was one of the
best decisions I ever made the minute I
dropped out I could stop taking the
required classes that didn’t interest me
and begin dropping in on the ones that
looked far more interesting it wasn’t
all romantic I didn’t have a dorm room
so I slept on the floor in friends rooms
I returned coke bottles for the 5 cent
deposits to buy food with and I would
walk the seven miles across town every
Sunday night to get one good meal a week
at the Hari Krishna temple I loved it
and much of what I stumbled into by
following my curiosity and intuition
turned out to be priceless later on let
me give you one example Reed College at
that time offered perhaps the best
calligraphy instruction in the country
throughout the campus every poster every
label on every drawer was beautifully
hand calligraphed because I had dropped
out and didn’t have to take the normal
classes I decided to take a calligraphy
class to learn how to do this I learned
about serif and sans-serif typefaces
about varying the amount of space
between different letter combinations
about what makes great typography great
it was beautiful historical artistically
subtle in a way that science can’t
capture and I found it fascinating none
of this had even a hope of any practical
application in my life but 10 years
later when we were designing the first
Macintosh computer it all came back to
me and we designed it all into the Mac
it was the first computer with beautiful
typography if I had never dropped in on
that single course in college the Mac
would have never had multiple typefaces
or proportionally spaced fonts and since
windows just copied the Mac it’s likely
that no personal computer
have them if I had never dropped out I
would have never dropped in on that
calligraphy class and personal computers
might not have the wonderful typography
that they do of course it was impossible
to connect the dots looking forward when
I was in college but it was very very
clear looking backwards ten years later
again you can’t connect the dots looking
forward you can only connect them
looking backwards so you have to trust
that the dots will somehow connect in
your future you have to trust in
something your gut destiny life karma
whatever because believing that the dots
will connect down the road will give you
the confidence to follow your heart even
when it leads you off the well-worn path
and that will make all the difference my
second story is about love and loss I
was lucky I found what I loved to do
early in life woz and I started Apple in
my parent’s garage when I was 20 we
worked hard and in 10 years Apple had
grown from just the two of us in a
garage into a two billion dollar company
with over 4,000 employees we just
released our finest creation the
Macintosh a year earlier and I just
turned 30 and then I got fired how can
you get fired from a company you started
well as Apple grew we hired someone who
I thought was very talented to run the
company with me and for the first year
or so things went well but then our
visions of the future began to diverge
and eventually we had a falling out when
we did our Board of Directors sided with
him and so at 30 I was out and very
publicly out what had been the focus of
my entire adult life was gone and it was
devastating I really didn’t know what to
do for a few months I felt that I’d let
the previous generation of entrepreneurs
down that I had dropped the baton as it
was being passed to me I met with David
Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to
apologize for screwing up so badly
I was a very public failure and I even
thought about running away from the
valley but something slowly began to
dawn on me I still loved what I did the
turn of events at Apple had not changed
that one bit I’ve been rejected but I
was still in love and so I decided to
start over 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 the heaviness of being
successful was replaced by the lightness
of being a beginner again less sure
about everything it freed me to enter
one of the most creative periods of my
life during the next five years I
started a company named next another
company named Pixar and fell in love
with an amazing woman who would become
my wife Pixar went on to create the
world’s first computer animated feature
film Toy Story and is now the most
successful animation studio in the world
in a remarkable turn of events Apple
bought next and I returned to Apple and
the technology we developed it next is
at the heart of Apple’s current
Renaissance and Laureen and I have a
wonderful family together I’m pretty
sure none of this would have happened if
I hadn’t been fired from Apple
it was awful tasting medicine but I
guess the patient needed it sometime
life sometimes life’s going to hit you
in the head with a brick don’t lose
faith I’m convinced that the only thing
that kept me going was that I loved what
I did you’ve got to find what you love
and that is as true for work as it is
for your lovers your work is going to
fill a large part of your life and the
only way to be truly satisfied is to do
what you believe is great work and the
only way to do great work is to love
what you do if you haven’t found it yet
keep looking and don’t settle as with
all matters of the heart you’ll know
when you find it and like any great
relationship it just gets better and
better as the years roll on so keep
looking don’t settle
my third story is about death when I was
17 I read a quote that went something
like if you live each day as if it was
your last someday you’ll most certainly
be right it made an impression on me and
since then for the past 33 years I’ve
looked in the mirror every morning and
asked myself if today were the last day
of my life what I want to do what I am
about to do today and whenever the
answer has been no for too many days in
a row I know I need to change something
remembering that all be dead soon is the
most important tool I’ve ever
encountered to help me make the big
choices in life because almost
everything all external expectations all
pride all fear of embarrassment or
failure these things just fall away in
the face of death leaving only what is
truly important remembering that you are
going to die is the best way I know to
avoid the trap of thinking you have
something to lose you are already naked
there is no reason not to follow your
heart about a year ago I was diagnosed
with cancer I had a scan at 7:30 in the
morning
and it clearly showed a tumor on my
pancreas I didn’t even know what a
pancreas was the doctors told me this
was almost certainly a type of cancer
that is incurable and that I should
expect to live no longer than three to
six months my doctor advised me to go
home and get my affairs in order which
is doctors code for prepare to die it
means to try and tell your kids
everything you thought you’d have the
next 10 years to tell them in just a few
months it means to make sure everything
is buttoned up so that will be as easy
as possible for your family it means to
say your goodbyes
I live with that diagnosis all day later
that evening I had a biopsy where they
stuck an endoscope down my throat
through my stomach and into my
intestines put a needle into my pancreas
and got a few cells from the tumor I was
sedated but my wife who was there
told me that when they viewed the cells
under a microscope the doctor started
crying because it turned out to be a
very rare form of pancreatic cancer that
is curable with surgery I had the
surgery and thankfully I’m fine now
this was the closest I’ve been to facing
death and I hope it’s the closest I get
for a few more decades having lived
through it I can now say this to you
with a bit more certainty than when
death was a useful but purely
intellectual concept no one wants to die
even people who want to go to heaven
don’t want to die to get there
and yet death is the destination we all
share no one has ever escaped it and
that is as it should be because death is
very likely the single best invention of
life its life’s change agent it clears
out the old to make way for the new
right now the new is you but some day
not too long from now you will gradually
become the old and be cleared away sorry
to be so dramatic but it’s quite true
your time is limited so don’t waste it
living someone else’s life
don’t be trapped by Dogma which is
living with the results of other
people’s thinking don’t let the noise of
others opinions drown out your own inner
voice and most important have the
courage to follow your heart and
intuition they somehow already know what
you truly want to become everything else
is secondary
when I was young there was an amazing
publication called the Whole Earth
Catalog which was one of the Bible’s of
my generation it was created by a fellow
named Stuart brand not far from here in
Menlo Park and he brought it to life
with his poetic touch this was in the
late 60s before personal computers and
desktop publishing so it was all made
with typewriters scissors and Polaroid
cameras it was sort of like Google and
paperback form 35 years before Google
came along it was idealistic overflowing
with neat tools and great notions Stuart
and his team put out several issues of
the Whole Earth Catalog and then when it
had run its course they put out a final
issue
it was the mid-1970s and I was your age
on the back cover of their final issue
was a photograph of an early-morning
country road the kind you might find
yourself hitchhiking on if you were so
adventurous beneath it were the words
stay hungry stay foolish it was their
farewell message as they signed off stay
hungry stay foolish and I have always
wished that for myself and now as you
graduate to begin anew I wish that for
you stay hungry stay foolish thank you
all very much I made this video because
card games TV one asked me to so there’s
a famous entrepreneur that you want me
to profile leave it in the comments
below
and we’ll see what we can do thank you
so much for watching continue to believe
me I don’t see you soon
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