Steve Jobs was on the tail end of a world now largely unknown, but recoverable. Indeed, it may become the default. He was smart enough to spot the game and scramble in a changing world, and master it ahead of the other players. I still think, on his way out, he purposely set Apple on the path to dissolution. A brilliant move.
Anyway, Jobs started Apple Computer with Wozniak (and Gates was starting up Microsoft in Arizona) about the time I first went into Communist China:
As this economy crashes, who knows when (the sooner the better), we'll return to a rational, solid economic basis, or some will. Few will notice, since they have no understanding of how it might work. USA will be a country of 340 million fighting over scraps, and about ten million thriving off the radar. Which is about the right size for a country, ten million.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
Anyway, Jobs started Apple Computer with Wozniak (and Gates was starting up Microsoft in Arizona) about the time I first went into Communist China:
Apple Computer 1, also known retroactively as the Apple I, or Apple-1, was released by the Apple Computer Company (now Apple Inc.) in 1976. They were designed and hand-built by Steve Wozniak.[1][2] Wozniak's friend Steve Jobs had the idea of selling the computer. The Apple I was Apple's first product, and to finance its creation, Jobs sold his only means of transportation, a VW Microbus,[3] and Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator for $500.[4] It was demonstrated in July 1976 at theHomebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto, California[5]So how does it start? Passion, suffering, getting computers right, to the point they sell their cherished possessions for a greater good, and then find joy in solving the problem that causes them pain. Passion is pointless without the joy of solving the problem that causes you to suffer. Think of Apple today, and how businesses such as this got started back then:
Wozniak calculated that laying out his design would cost $1,000 and parts would cost another $20 per computer; he hoped to recoup his costs if 50 people bought his design for $40 each. His friend Steve Jobs arranged to sell 50 computers to the Byte Shop (a computer store in Mountain View, California) at $500 each. To fulfill the $25,000 order, they obtained $20,000 in parts at 30 days net and delivered the finished product in 10 days.[7]Perzactly, and what I have been teaching for thirty years now, since I've watched this slowly disappear. Banks have conditioned people to foolishly believe start-up is about risk, it is not, no entrepreneur ever takes risk, and it takes money to get started up. No it does not, it takes bene-credit, something now largely lost. Then Jobs was given 30 days to pay on the parts necessary to start. (the parts supplier had credit, the manufacturer had credit, the materials processor had credit... the whole economy was on interest -free, aset-backed credit.) Jobs did not even accept this credit until he had the orders to cover the production. Start-up 101, so alien to what go $20,000 - $100,000 into debt to learn. (Back then there were really no student loans, since college could be paid for by what you earned in the summer. Nixon launched the program in 1972 - that year again - but it had few takers early on.) Today Jobs would be asked to use a credit card to pay now for the parts. Sounds simpler? Credit fraud to use a credit card to buy anything for business start-up. Read your contract. And it is a suckers game, that EZ malcredit seems to, SEEMS TO, obviate the need to find customers first. The path of perdition for the start-up.
As this economy crashes, who knows when (the sooner the better), we'll return to a rational, solid economic basis, or some will. Few will notice, since they have no understanding of how it might work. USA will be a country of 340 million fighting over scraps, and about ten million thriving off the radar. Which is about the right size for a country, ten million.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
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