Steve Jobs talking about death, in April 1995
Transcript
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ahead of anybody else.
Sounds really exciting.
Well, the question I was going to ask,
and you partially answered it,
was about startup companies.
As I look around the facility here
and in your literature,
their alliance is written all over the walls,
literally, Sun's art.
I mean, you're aligned with the Hewlett-Packard
and Sun and Oracle and Digital
and all the systems in the grids.
Communications companies and information technology companies are merging and becoming one.
Do you think that it will ever be possible for a new major startup company to develop
if they're going to focus on major applications or software?
Will there ever be another?
Yeah, you know, I think yes.
Yes.
Intellectually, sometimes one would say in despair, no, but I think yes.
And the reason is because it's not, technology keeps on advancing, so there are opportunities.
But the thing that makes it possible is that human minds settle into fixed ways
of looking at the world.
And that's always been true, and it's probably always going to be true.
I've always felt that death is the greatest invention of life.
I'm sure that life evolved without death at first
and found that without death, life didn't work very well
because it didn't make room for the young
who didn't know how the world was 50 years ago,
who didn't know how the world was 20 years ago,
but who saw it as it is today without any preconceptions
and saw and dreamed how it could be based on that who were not satisfied based on the
accomplishments of the last 30 years but who are dissatisfied because the current state
didn't live up to their ideals without death there would be very little progress and so
one of the things that happens in organizations as well as in people is they settle into ways
of looking at the world and become satisfied with those and the world changes and keeps
evolving and new potential arises but these people that are settled in don't see it and
that's what gives startup companies their greatest advantage is is the this the the
sedentary point of view of of large companies and in addition to that large companies usually
do not have very efficient communication paths from the people closest to some of these changes
at the bottom of the company to the top of the company which are the people making the big
decisions and so by the time there may be people at the lower levels of these companies
that see these changes coming but by the time the word ripples up to the highest levels where
they can do something about it sometimes 10 years passes and even in the case where part
of the company does the right thing at the lower levels usually the upper levels screwed up
somehow i mean ibm and the personal computer business was a good example of that so
So I think as long as humans don't solve this human nature trait of sort of settling in to a world view after a while,
there will always be opportunity for young companies as well as young people to innovate, as it should be.
And that was going to be my closing question before I gave you a chance to just sort of reassociate on your own.
And that is to talk to young people who sort of look to you as a role model.
Opportunities for innovation you think are still possible.
What are the factors for success for young people today?
What pitfalls should they avoid?
if you're playing the role of an older statesman.
For entrepreneurs?
Yeah, for young entrepreneurs.
Oh, I get asked this a lot, and I have a pretty standard answer,
which is a lot of people come to me and they say,
well, I want to be an entrepreneur.
And I go, oh, that's great.
What's your idea?
And they go, well, I don't have one yet.
And I say, well, I think you should go get a job as a busboy or something
until you find something you're really passionate about,
because it's a lot of work.
And I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs
from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance it is so hard you pour so much
your life into this thing there are such rough moments in time that most people give up i don't
blame them it's really tough and it consumes your life i mean if you're if you've got a family
and you're in the early days of a company it's i can't imagine how one could do it i'm sure
it's been done but it's rough i mean because it's a pretty much you know an 18 hour day
a job seven days a week for a while.
So unless you have a lot of passion about this,
you're going to not survive.
You're going to give it up.
So you've got to have an idea or a problem or a wrong
that you want to right that you're passionate about.
Otherwise, you're not going to have the perseverance
to stick it through.
And I think that's half the battle right there.
Well, I lied because you're talking
made me think of the other side of that.
we talked about the passion side.
What would you say,
there's passion and there's power.
What would you say as,
about the responsibilities of power
once you've achieved a certain level of success?
Power?
Yeah.
What is that?
You need passion to build a company like Apple,
or IBM, or any other major company.
But once you've achieved,
once you've taken the passion to that level,
and have built a company and are in a position like Bill Gates at Microsoft or anybody else, yourself.
What are the responsibilities of those who have succeeded and have economic power, social power?
I mean, you've changed the world.
What are your responsibilities within that framework or paradigm?
Well, I think, I mean, that question can be taken on many levels.
Obviously, if you're running a company, you have responsibilities.
But as an individual, I don't think you have responsibilities.
I think the work speaks for itself.
And I don't think that people have special responsibilities just because they've done something that other people like or don't like or what have you.
I think the work speaks for itself.
I think people can choose to do things if they want to.
But, you know, I mean, we're all going to be dead soon.
That's my point of view.
You know, somebody once told me, they said,
live each day as if it will be your last,
and one day you'll certainly be right.
You know, and I do that.
And I really, you never know when you're going to go.
but you know you are going to go pretty soon and what you know if you're going to leave
anything behind you know it's going to be you know your kids a few friends and your work right
so that's what I tend to worry about