#390 Rare Steve Jobs Interview

What It Covers

Steve Jobs at 29 discusses Apple's meteoric rise to $1.4 billion in revenue, his philosophy on hiring A-players, building insanely great products, competing with IBM, and predicting computers as revolutionary as telephones.

Key Questions Answered

• •Talent density advantage: The performance gap between average and best performers reaches 50-100x in technology fields, not 2x like most industries. Jobs built Apple by recruiting brilliant troublemakers who left other companies where individual achievement was discouraged.
• •Product development philosophy: Build products for yourself first, not market research. Jobs refused to use plywood on hidden parts because quality must carry through completely. The Mac team wanted to build the greatest computer ever seen, not maximize profits through volume sales.
• •Simplicity as competitive moat: The telegraph required 40 hours to learn Morse code, limiting adoption. The telephone won because people already knew how to talk. Jobs applied this lesson by making computers work immediately without thick manuals or complex training requirements.
• •Market timing insight: Jobs recognized computers provide free intellectual energy similar to how the petrochemical revolution provided free mechanical energy. He predicted this information revolution would dwarf the previous one, despite being unable to specify exact future applications like Bell with telephones.