Steve Jobs Talks About His Rise and Fall (1985)

I was in a small meeting at an investment bank with Jobs when he was at his lowest point (1994? 1995?). There were probably three of us in the room with him. He was <i>literally</i> begging us to use the NeXT platform for even just a small test project -- offering to do <i>whatever would be needed</i> to get the deal done. I swear, it nearly brought a tear to my eye -- seeing my industry idol so desperate. Fast forward 15 year and Apple's market cap is higher than that investment bank's market cap. And let's not forget about how Steve turned $5mm into billions with his Pixar investment and nurturing.<p>Great people bounce back. Steve Jobs is like flubber -- he gains more momentum with each bounce.

Great quotes here! My favorite so far:<p>"I helped shepherd Apple from a garage to a billion-and-a-half-dollar company. I'm probably not the best person in the world to shepherd it to a five- or ten-billion-dollar company, which I think is probably its destiny."

"It is hard to think that a $2 billion company with 4,300-plus people couldn't compete with six people in blue jeans."<p>The best part is they couldn't. They ended up buying NeXT to use NeXTSTEP as the basis for OS X (and later, iOS).

Once you're lucky, twice you're great.

So many great quotes.<p>Q. Now that you're 30 and an estate owner, do you see a settled life for yourself, a family, big Silicon Valley parties, furniture?<p>A. Actually, I bought a few Eames chairs so I have a place to sit down and read a book, other than the floor.

Wow, great reading that as a little historical piece. I was about 7 when that article was written, so I'm pretty sure I missed it when it was first published. The thing that strikes me is that I have always thought of Jobs as a guy who exudes confidence. But in this interview he is pretty broken. He seems happy with himself, but you can sense he is quite battered.<p>I think it's interesting that people from Steve's generation had Hewlett and Packard as role models. I'd venture to guess many people from my generation would have Steve and/or Bill Gates. Given what has happened to HP over the years and the current state of Microsoft, I wonder if Apple can really maintain the spirit of Steve after he is gone.

Ironic quote: "And in 10 years will I be faced with the same dilemma again? Maybe, maybe I will." This turned out to be almost exactly right, as he rejoined Apple just 11 years later.