13A – Reading Reflection No. 1

What surprised you the most?
The autobiography I read was Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, a compact autobiography that captures not only the career of Steve Jobs but also his personal life. What surprised me the most reading this text was the strong character that Jobs had. Before this book I had heard stories of him being very direct at times and frankly an asshole, but never to the extent that this book portrays him to be. I had never seen the movie, though I watched it after reading the autobiography-- but it doesn't quite portray how heavy his actions and emotions could be, and the impact it had on family and friends.

What about the entrepreneur did you most admire?
What I admired the most were the values Jobs held with respect to what a product had to be. He wasn't an engineer, this man was an artist. For him the Macintosh had to be a work of art, encasing beauty and design in all aspects-- packaging, interface, design, even the interior of the computer, something which many of the engineers would question and battle him for, due to the fact that the consumer wouldn't be able to see it. He held his values to heart so deeply that it eventually led to his downfall at Apple, when he was ousted due to his inflexibility and tenacity. While at Pixar, after the success of Toy Story, the company's IPO settled at $39, which increased his net-value at the company to $1.2B-- at an interview with the New York Times he was quoted saying, "There's no yacht in my future... I don't do this for the money". This just exemplifies how he simply pursued changing the world, and giving to the world a product that meant something.

What about the entrepreneur did you least admire?
Although in part it encases what I most admired about Steve Jobs, the inflexibility he had when it came to pursuing the beauty of his products, essentially sticking to his values, led to him to become an outright asshole in many parts of his career/life. This not only translated to coworkers, but close family and friends. He did in fact mold into a better person as his life progressed, learning from certain situations and repenting his actions-- but his tenacity and tyranny many times led him to be extremely cruel with people. Those around him either dealt with it, or cut ties completely.

Did the entrepreneur encounter adversity and failure?
Yes, like any entrepreneur. The difference in Steve Jobs's case was that some of this adversity/failure came from something he had essentially created. Apple was his baby, and he was eventually ousted due to his persona. At NeXT, the company he started directly after being ousted from Apple, he didn't have much success due to pricing-- creating an expensive product with a target for ordinary people, with prices in the thousands. At no point did he stop or give up though, which led him to create two of the most powerful and influencing companies of our era: Apple and Pixar.

What competencies did you notice that the entrepreneur exhibited?
The biggest competency that Steve Job exhibited was his vision. If you notice throughout his career, early and late, he was never really the technical brains behind his products. He was more of an "I say, you must do" type of guy. More than most these obligations he bestowed onto the people around him were thought to be impossible tasks, but he was able to motivate and convince people utilizing his "reality distortion field" and people would achieve them.

Identify at least one part of the reading that was confusing to you?
The reading is thick, with many names that come and go-- this was probably the most confusing part of the reading for me. Steve Jobs met so many people, encountered so many important figures in his life, that it was surprising that he was even able to remember them. In every chapter of the book he's embarking new paths, new routes, meeting the corresponding leaders or prospects of these routes. The array of his connections is broad and full.

If you were able to ask questions to the entrepreneur, what would you ask?
If I were to ask Steve Jobs the question, it would be what his aspirations were for the future. I'd love to have a coffee with a guy, ask him a bomb of a question, and have him speak for hours on end-- simply to see if I could get inside his mind, or maybe get a glimpse of his thought process. This guy was not only an entrepreneur, he was prophet, a visionary-- Steve Jobs essentially changed the world.

For fun: what do you think the entrepreneur's was of hard work?
This is an interesting question. For Steve Jobs there were two kinds of people; geniuses and assholes. I think his idea of hard work would be how effectively you could carry out and accomplish his ideas. This was really how people won him over, and even if a great idea was presented to him, he would later present it as his own-- and I believe he really believed it was his own. So making a reality of his vision or what he proposed was his vision would be the idea of hard work for him.