Steve Jobs 2001 Interview in Japan, very inspiring
Transcript
Machine transcript in the original language. It may contain errors. Select a timestamp to play that moment.
I'm an old man in the city.
Did you ever want to give up?
Did you ever think of giving up?
Oh, there were moments where it was pretty tough.
There have been moments, but no, I don't think so.
I don't think so.
The first year or two was the hardest.
The most important thing, though, I think,
is that if you're going to start something new,
you have to feel passionate about it
because it's really hard.
It's so hard to start a company.
You have to work so hard that if you're not passionate about it, you'll give up.
And most of the difference between people that succeed and people that don't, is the
people that don't give up.
They give up sooner than the people that succeed.
And you have to be passionate about it because it's so difficult.
You've been called a visionary.
Uh-oh.
What?
Uh-oh.
How do you believe will be the role of the personal computer?
What do you think will be the role the personal computer should play?
The personal computer is entering its third grade age.
Third grade age.
The first grade age started around 1980 and that was the age of productivity with
the spreadsheets and word processors and things like that.
And that primarily benefited businesses.
About six or seven years ago we began the second grade age which was the age of the
Internet.
And all of a sudden, not only businesses were benefiting, but regular people, consumers.
We could buy these for our homes, and our children could get on the Internet, we could
get on the Internet, and it was tremendous.
But now that's maturing a little bit.
And we're beginning the third grade age, which is the age of digital lifestyle, which
is being triggered by all these wonderful digital devices, most of which are coming
from Japan.
So we have digital camcorders, we have digital cameras, we have DVD players, we have handheld computers, we have cell phones.
And all of these things, actually, the personal computer can make them even better.
We first created a personal computer, and there was no personal computer in 1975. It's very hard to believe.
Well, that's why we made one. We made one because we wanted one, and there wasn't one, so we had to make one.
Did you know that when you made the personal computer though that this would become a major industry?
I mean, did you know like this?
No, no.
It took about a year before we started to sense it.
I had a partner named Steve Wozniak who's a brilliant guy.
And he did most of the engineering on the original Apple I and the Apple II.
And after about a year, we just made it for ourselves.
And we showed it to our friends and they all wanted one.
And so we were busy making these computers by hand for our friends.
And it was taking all of our life, all of our spare time.
And so we decided we better manufacture 100 of these so that we can not have to spend the rest of our lives making them for our friends.
And that's how we got into this.
We didn't think about starting a company.
We were just doing it for ourselves and then our friends.
And then the circle got bigger and bigger and bigger.
Now there's 25 million people.
So you were having fun.
Oh, yeah.
We've always had fun doing this.
So many young people are aspiring to become startup venture companies and emulate something
like Apple for themselves.
And sometimes people come to me and say, I want to start a company.
And I say, why?
They say, oh, I want to make lots of money.
I say, forget it.
That's not a good enough reason.
Most likely you will not succeed.
Most people that have started companies because they want to make lots of money,
I haven't seen very many of those succeed.
The ones that succeed are people that come.
Sometimes they don't even want to start a company.
They just have an idea that they want to get out, express out into the world.
And often times they have to start a company because nobody else will listen to them.
You know, think different is easy to say.
I mean, it's just two words.
It's easy to say, but much harder to do.
But it's a company of 10,000 people.
How do you permeate the message throughout all the employees?
What do you say to them?
Well you permeate it by example ultimately.
And in other words, when something's not quite good enough, do you stop and make it
better or do you just ship it?
You know, and everybody watches to see how the senior management makes those decisions.
And what we've tried to do is stop and make it great before we ship it.
When we have problems, stop and fix them.
And by example, you can say anything you want, but everybody watches very carefully
when you're in a difficult situation, what decisions you make, what values you have.
I mean, there are so many Japanese companies who are now trying to rejuvenate themselves,
trying to instill a sense of...
of a venture spirit in their companies.
And they would like to know how you do it.
And, you know, it's probably not easy to do.
Yeah, you know, we try to hire really smart people,
but we have a very simple organization,
and we try to focus and do very few things well.
And focusing is hard,
because focusing doesn't mean saying yes,
it means saying no.
So we decide not to do a lot of things,
so we can focus on a few handfuls of things and do them well.
And I think, you know, everybody working at a company wants to do something great.
They want to be excited about what they're working on.
And they want to be recognized for it if they do a really great job.
So we just try to allow people to do the best work of their lives at Apple
and get it out to 25 million customers that we have.
And that's very exciting.
and when you're working on something and you know if this works out
up to 25 million people
are going to use this. It's very motivating.
And it's not just 25 million of our customers
but other companies
tend to follow us.
It takes them a few years but other companies
tend to copy what we do if it works
and so we can
influence the whole industry.
Because the environment
of personal computers is becoming
very, very, I'd say