Latest / The Innovation Show / Geoffrey Cain — Steve Jobs in Exile, Part 2: NeXT's Failures, Pixar's Lifeline and the Road Back to Apple

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Geoffrey Cain — Steve Jobs in Exile, Part 2: NeXT's Failures, Pixar's Lifeline and the Road Back to Apple · The Innovation Show

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Welcome to part two of this brilliant book, Steve Jobs in Exile,
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and the author, Geoffrey Cain.
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Welcome back, sir.
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Good to be Back, Aidan
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Great to have you back, man, and thank you for doing this.
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Geoffrey's just, finished this book while he was having a baby, and the
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baby's with him now, so we're gonna get through as much as we can, and
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he's kindly fitted us in for part two.
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Doing two parts on this book does not do it justice.
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I know many of the interviews you do are shorter, but man, I don't
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know how you could fit in the amount of gold you have in this book.
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It's just a phenomenal piece of work.
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I- you sent me down so many rabbit holes with all the videos on YouTube that
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exist, loads of articles that are out there, but you've joined them together
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in a beautiful, beautiful way, and thank you for joining us for part two
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Well, thank you and honored to hear it from you
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It's great, man.
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So let's, let's start.
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We… I, I was kinda thinking part two would be the comeback, but we didn't
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even get through the crisis, 'cause the crisis almost lasted 10 years as
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he burned through his personal fortune.
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He bought Pixar.
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There's so much in there, but let's start with a chapter you call When Reality
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Distorts Back, and this is a reference to his famous reality distortion field.
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But he couldn't distort this reality because the Cube's expensive components
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had driven the price of the Cube up to six and a half thousand dollars.
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That was more than double what he had initially promised, and light
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years from the $1,000 that had made the Mac a campus s- sensation.
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And that's in reference to it being an educational product.
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So let's pick it up from there and just talk about how it just inflated,
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and also the backstory of him being driven by vitriol and rancor to prove
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himself after the ousting from Apple
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Right.
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So Steve Jobs was filled with a sense of vengeance when he started
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this company, NeXT Computer, because he had been sidelined from Apple.
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He spent the summer of 1985 adrift, traveling, trying to
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figure out what to do with life.
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But his baby had been taken from him, and his baby was the Macintosh computer.
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That was the, the pride of what Steve Jobs had created.
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But he lost this power struggle with, CEO John Sculley, who he had famously
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hired a few years earlier by saying, " do you wanna make sugar water the rest
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of your life, or do you wanna come and join me and change the world?"
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That was how he recruited John Sculley.
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And Sculley pushed him out, so he was angry.
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He was full of rage over what had happened.
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And so when he founded NeXT Computer, the mission was to get revenge on Apple.
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And the decisions that he made became a series of his, of mistakes precisely
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because of that, because he was trying to get back at Apple for removing him.
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Here's what's interesting about this story.
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This is what I always found so fascinating.
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People talk about the reality distortion field.
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That was Steve Jobs' most famous, trait.
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It was this characteristic where he could walk in a room, and he could
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look somebody in the eye, and he could say, "The sky is green," and
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they would end up believing him.
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He could convince anybody of anything.
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He could sell anything.
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That was really his masterly trait, something that people saw in him.
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But there's a limit to that.
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You can't bend reality to your will forever, and eventually reality's
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gonna snap back at you and you're gonna be put in your place.
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It's an iron law of the universe.
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, I think there's a misconception out there that, the reason Steve
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Jobs is so successful is because he could bend reality so well.
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He could put a computer in front of you and sell it to you in an instant.
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You would take out your checkbook, write that $4,000 check.
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that's not how, the Steve Jobs story actually went.
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In this period of his life, the middle period, tried to do exactly that.
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He built this perfect cube, the NeXT Computer.
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He unveiled it, it was October 12th, 1988.
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Had a major launch event.
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It was the talk of the town.
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People had, literally gotten on buses and come out from Kansas City 'cause
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they wanted to see Steve Jobs again.
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This was his big debut after being fired from Apple, and this was gonna
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be the moment when he would, put his foot down and say, "i am Steve Jobs
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and I'm here." And for the time, he gave a brilliant product presentation.
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He had a, a violinist from the San Francisco Symphony come in and played,
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one of the first, one of the first pieces in which a computer was calculating its
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part in real time and did it as a duet with one of the world's top violinists.
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Uh, And, for the year 1988, that's incredible because you
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gotta remember, computers back then, they did boops and bleeps.
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I don't know, how many people remember that.
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Maybe the younger crowd doesn't, but, you put in your old NES, your
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Nintendo, or your, turn on your old Apple computer, and it was like a
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boop, boop, boop, bleep, bleep, bleep.
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This was the end of it, this was a new, era in technology that
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Steve was heralding in But back to the reality distortion field.
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So this cube comes out ni- late 1988.
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It only sells about 100 computers in the first month.
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And I have all the data, I have all the old memos where they're stating
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the numbers, and it's, something like 100 the first month, 50 the second
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month, 80 are sold the third month.
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The numbers are ridiculous.
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And Steve Jobs is there, telling his team that actually w-
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we're gonna sell a lot more.
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We're gonna sell 10,000 this year.
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We're gonna sell 50,000, 100,000.
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He keeps inventing these, these greater numbers to show that, this is a success.
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But the reality, everybody sees it, is that they're only selling
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about 80 to 100 computers a month.
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So by any reasonable investor's accounting, that's a failure.
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That's not something that went so well, especially when you consider the amount of
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investment that goes into this technology.
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It's a loss.
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and so, what's the lesson here?
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The lesson is that reality does distort back.
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Steve Jobs did not wish his way into success by warping the world around
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him, by, warping people into his vision.
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The way that he got to success was how he figured out the way
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that his vision meets the world.
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and that's a- an entrepreneur's lesson.
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You can't fight the market.
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You can't swim upstream.
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If the market wants something and you're trying to cram something else down the
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market's throat, it's going to fail.
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And it's just an iron law of business.
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So I know it's kind of a, a prosaic, lesson.
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It's not the kind of lesson that a lot of founders wanna hear necessarily because,
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founders are visionaries by definition.
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And, it's very easy to get captured, caught inside your vision to, have
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this feeling of, I'm going to show the world what I'm made of and what
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I'm capable of." But ultimately, what the world needs from you might not be,
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the vision that you have in your head
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I love that, and maybe we'll talk about that because he, he, just like
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Macworld, he'd created an event.
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He'd co-created and co-owned an event called NeXTWorld, and this
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was kind of the start of it, this expose, this demo with the violinist.
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But I wanted to mention something 'cause w- we'll move on from his, his early
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days because there's a risk people might think that Steve Jobs remained an
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absolute jackass, and there's critics out there that said, well, he did.
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But when you read the book, you really see the transfor- from a transformation of a
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person on, on a hero's journey, really.
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It's essentially like a movie plot.
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You see this person change, and you see the character emerge over
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time, but from all the failures.
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And one of the horrible things he did, one of the many, was a young au-
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audio engineer who had joined was in charge of making the sound, the audio
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for, the audio software for NeXT, which actually, for those who use Mac,
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became an early version of GarageBand.
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And I love that in the story as well, that there's so many what are perceived
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failures that led to successes later because he had enough runway and because
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he stayed at the table long enough,
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Mm-hmm.
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and I think that's a, a real important lesson as well
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Yes,
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That's the hero shithead rollercoaster in action.
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That's, another famous Steve trait.
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I believe we talked about that last time.
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And, there's the reality distortion field, and then there's the
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hero shithead rollercoaster.
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what Steve was great at doing, it was a double-edged sword.
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He was great at doing this, but it could also be to his detriment.
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It was his ability to, look at somebody, look into their soul.
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NeXT executives, they-- Some of them, they called Steve a street hustler.
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He's like this guy.
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That was his personality.
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He could look at you and size you up immediately and reach into
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your soul and pull out things, that you didn't know are there.
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And what I mean by that is talent, creativity, ideas.
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He was so good at walking into a room and pushing people, just pushing and
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pushing and asking harder questions like, "Why can't we do it this way?
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Why not that way?
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Why does the software have to look like that?" engineers would
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look back at him and say, "Well, you know, this is how we do it.
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This is what software looks like in the year 1988.
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We can't do it anywhere else." But he would not accept that.
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The way that he approached creativity sort of like being a film director.
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And the director, certainly different from an actor, you know, like you're
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not the one with the roles, you're not setting up the costumes, but you have
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the vision, and your job is to bring out what you need from every piece of
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this film set, every person who's doing something, and unifying it into a whole.
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So there was something that a NeXT executive mentioned that, a lot of,
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a lot of business founders, leaders out there, they tend to look at
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one or two parts of the business.
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That's a mistake.
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What Steve Jobs was so brilliant at was taking the whole thing and looking
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at it together, and that's how he could get these great ideas out of
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people who were focused on one or two things It's outside-the-box thinking.
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That's exactly what it is.
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But, you know, this was not always a great trait in him because, flip side of this
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is that he could be, especially earlier in his life, mean and vindictive and nasty.
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He would go in, he would scream at people, yell at them, call them worthless, swear.
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Like, there was a lot of swearing that went on at the early NeXT Computer,
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according to people who were there.
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It was not nice to be around Steve all the time, and, one day he could hold
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you up, the next day he could cut you right down in front of an entire group.
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And in the book, there are many instances of this where he's just
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being outright irrational, and he's just impossible to work with.
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It's interesting watching this in the life of Steve Jobs because it's clear that,
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he has this brilliance at the outset.
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He knows what creativity is and how to get the, how to get his vision working with
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people, but he misapplies it early in his life, and he does it in a, in such a way
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that he damages relationships, he chases off talent, he angers his investors.
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He's got that energy there, but he's pointing it in the wrong direction,
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and a lot of what my book is about is how he learns to harness this
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energy, how to work with it, how to not use it in a destructive way,
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but to use it in a building way.
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That's the magic of Steve Jobs, learning that lesson, how to build and not destroy.
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One of the interesting things that came up, Geoffrey, was I was talking recently
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on an episode about Nokia and the culture at Nokia to Quy Huy and Timo Vuori, these
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two scholars who did a lot of research into the culture, the real culture
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at Nokia, much like you did in Next.
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And one of the things they said was the difference between Jobs and
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Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, which was the CEO at Nokia, and the culture at
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Nokia, which was a screaming culture like that as well, very autocratic
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culture.
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Stories.
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But they said the difference was Jobs sold people a vision for
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the future, a compelling vision.
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And to your point, he'd reach inside and he'd pull out something
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they didn't know was there, versus just being driven by fear.
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So he, yes, he used fear, but he actually used both the carrot and
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the stick at the same time, and that was a huge skill that he had
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Right.
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Right.
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It's the carrot and the stick.
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Um, that's a skill that a lot of talented CEOs are able to harness.
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It's unfortunate that early in life, Steve Jobs, you know, was more of a stick guy.
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He would yell and scream and step over people's boundaries and so forth.
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But, later in life, as his transformation happened, as he learned
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the lessons of failure, he learned the usefulness of the carrots and how,
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you know, you really, as the CEO…
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There's even a quote, this was in the Steve Jobs archive, a video
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interview that recently surfaced.
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He talks about what it's like to realize what it really means to be
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a leader, and he says, look, he's talking about Pixar at this point.
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"At Pixar, I have the most brilliant people working for me.
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They're at the cutting edge." Remember, this is the age of
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Toy Story, one of the greatest computer-animated films of all time.
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And he's talking about just how good the people are he works with,
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and he wants to keep them around.
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And the realization he had is that there's a kind of inversion
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that happens when you're leading a company of highly talented people.
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the inversion is that you, the CEO, are actually at the bottom.
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The people you work with, the animators, the engineers, the software developers,
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the so forth, they're above you.
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They're at the top.
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It's in an inverted pyramid, and your job as the CEO is to keep them around.
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And how do you keep them around?
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You treat them well.
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Remember, this is something that a Steve advisor told him.
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Steve's advisor said, "Remember that your assets have feet." Your
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employees, they're not, people who you can just use and abuse.
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You have to keep them around, and you do that by being a more
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humble leader and asking for their advice and going along with it
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Beautiful.
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I think, I think that was Paul Rand, the logo designer actually m- might have said
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it from, from memory, or maybe Ross Perot.
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But he had so many people saying this to him all the time, and he kinda
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going, "You're gonna lose good people." Let's lean into that, because he did.
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He burned so many bridges.
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Let's talk about the relationships, the original NeXT founders,
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'cause they went one by one.
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Dan'l went as well, and
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Mm-hmm.
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And you see this oftentimes where they, a leader like Jobs will lose somebody
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like Dan'l, and then publicly humiliate them in a way to go, it was his fault,
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not mine, and then also to let nobody else think that if you leave, by the
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way, I'm gonna do the same to you
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Right.
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Right.
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And, that's one of the stories that pops up again and again in, in this book.
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The original NeXT co-founders, it was a team of six people.
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So there was Steve, and then there were five co-founders.
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They were Dan'l Lewin, Susan Barn, Susan Barnes, George Crow,
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uh, Rich Page, and, Bud Tribble.
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And these are some of the most talented people in Silicon Valley, the top
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engineers and marketers of their day.
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So Steve is taking a serious team with him.
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Now, what immediately happens it's perfectly predictable, and I'm always
15:57
careful about writing history because I try to put it from the perspective
16:00
of the people living in the era.
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Like, if we do this, we don't know.
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If we make this decision, we don't know for sure how things are gonna turn out.
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Like in Japan, sorry, in, in World War II, Japan attacks Pearl Harbor.
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They did not know that that was gonna lead to the collapse of the Japanese empire.
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You see these examples all throughout history, and you have to write
16:19
from the perspective of people at the time with that uncertainty.
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So in this particular case, it was interesting because I thought I would
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go back into the archives, and I thought I would find evidence of people
16:30
who thought that they were making brilliant visionary decisions and that
16:34
they truly thought this was gonna be the next great technology of its era.
16:39
But what I found was interesting, 'cause it wasn't that at all, this is like the
16:42
opposite of most historical writing.
16:44
Steve Jobs was the only person who truly seemed to think that he
16:48
was doing something revolutionary.
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else was on board, and they liked working at the company, but they were telling
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Steve the entire time exactly what was gonna happen and how this was gonna fail.
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The entire way through, from the start of the company, until the 1990s
17:08
when the last co-founder left out of frustration, just frustrated with Steve,
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entire time everybody was telling him, "This is what you have to do, Steve.
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This is what's gonna happen if you don't do it." And then years later,
17:22
when they released the product, the exact things that they said were gonna
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happen, the exact failures happened just as they said it was gonna happen,
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but Steve was not listening to them.
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when they told him that, Steve blamed them, just put it right back on them.
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Book to write because you don't see that in a lot of places.
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You usually see much more disagreement among advisors,
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disagreement among colleagues.
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Like this might work, this might not.
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In this case, everybody knew what was gonna happen, but
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Steve blew them off anyway.
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Major life lesson
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One of the things that was so different from what became Apple 2.0 was, and even
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NeXT 2.0 when they became a software company or a web objects company, was
18:03
the difference in how they tracked things like bugs or released products.
18:06
So the Cube was released and not fully working.
18:10
It was buggy.
18:11
It was breaking down all the time.
18:13
The software was useless, dubbed useless by many, many developers.
18:17
And on top of that, they didn't have much of an application database, so
18:21
there wasn't many apps working on it.
18:23
And you see this as an early version, and this is what I say about Jobs, had
18:28
a second chance, which is so unusual.
18:31
And I think there's a danger in reading this book that y- you look, or looking at
18:35
Steve Jobs, which is why it's so important you wrote this book, to think he was this
18:39
genius that just laid out this vision and had this reality distortion field.
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But when you read your book and read it with other accounts of his life,
18:48
you see actually he just learned from his failures time and time again
18:53
And that's what I found interesting about exploring this period
18:56
in the life of Steve Jobs.
18:57
The biographical element, it's different from, the way that most
19:02
biographies kind of play out.
19:04
And the reason is because-- Here's the way I think about it.
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So this is a contribution that I've written.
19:08
This is not the one defining story.
19:11
There is an entire litany of biographies out there and histories, books on Apple,
19:16
books on Steve Jobs, and so forth.
19:18
And they all contribute something, but they all bring a different contribution
19:21
to a man who's extremely complex, one of the most brilliant inventors of our age.
19:26
He's not somebody you can pin down easily into one cardboard,
19:29
archetype or that sort of thing.
19:31
And so Steve Jobs, what's interesting about him, I thought…
19:35
I, think about it this way.
19:37
A lot of other biographies out there, those are the donut.
19:40
And what I've been doing here is writing the hole.
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This is the part that tends to get overlooked.
19:46
You know, when you're looking at a donut, you don't think about the hole so much.
19:49
But this is, the goal of the book, to show something that's a little different
19:53
that we haven't really thought about before with Steve Jobs, and that's
19:56
really what I'm trying to do here.
19:57
Let's talk about a couple of the investors here.
20:00
So Canon was a huge investor who came in later on and got 16.67% of the company
20:08
Right.
20:08
So Canon came in, and they came in under interesting circumstances.
20:12
So they originally were not, you know, on Steve's list of investors,
20:16
but they had built this optical drive for the NeXT Computer.
20:20
And what this optical drive was, was the next generation of technology
20:24
that was gonna shape storage.
20:26
It was also visually beautiful, something that Steve really liked.
20:29
And as Canon was developing this drive, well, they were late and the drive didn't
20:34
work very well, which is the story of NeXT Computer, stuff just doesn't work
20:37
'cause it's so far out of its time.
20:40
and so what happened was that, Canon, as a result of getting involved with this
20:44
NeXT cube, ended up being pulled in as an investor because Steve Jobs needed money.
20:50
He was just burning through cash left and right.
20:52
He was almost out of money, and so who do you call?
20:54
Call your supplier.
20:55
It's Canon, major Japanese company.
20:58
Of course they're gonna wanna invest because this is Steve Jobs.
21:01
so that's really, how Canon arrived.
21:03
It wasn't just a matter of investing in the company NeXT, but it was
21:07
because they saw Steve Jobs and his brilliance, and so they put money in.
21:11
But, not a relationship that ended well, like a lot of his relationships in this
21:15
period, just because he was, blowing through cash and not being accountable.
21:19
So Canon eventually said sayonara, and just like everybody.
21:23
So I don't wanna get too far into the ending 'cause there's a lot that
21:26
happens, a lot that happens that's hard to , get into in, in one episode.
21:30
But, things do not end well, with the way things are going here.
21:34
One of the other examples, IBM, and there's a brilliant story you
21:37
tell about on their way to Dallas.
21:39
So Steve, you call it Steve on a stick.
21:41
This is what they used to call it, where Steve was a brilliant salesman.
21:44
Like you said, he had this reality distortion field, but he, but he
21:47
also gave great demos of the product.
21:50
And he was on his way to an expo with IBM, and one of his colleagues,
21:55
Mark Hayes, a salesman, comes up to him at a bookstop, a bookshop in San
21:59
Fran in the airport, and he tells him, "Look, there's two screens here.
22:04
We've only w- " And at the time you would've needed two separate
22:07
presentations, and Steve had the only one.
22:09
I'll let you take it from there.
22:10
And just, this is an example of the ego, but also the self-sabotage.
22:16
There's so much self-sabotage in the life of Steve Jobs in the early part of his
22:20
life, and this is such a great example because what happened, was that had
22:25
entered a massive deal with NeXT Computer.
22:28
They were gonna build, IBM workstations that could run Steve
22:31
Jobs' operating system NeXTSTEP.
22:33
So, to put this into context, this is significant because you have to remember
22:39
at the time that Windows was just starting to become the dominant, operating system.
22:44
One of the reasons we actually use Windows today, why it's so common, is
22:47
because IBM had adopted it in these early years, and it was sort of like
22:51
the operating system that everybody booted up if you didn't have an Apple.
22:54
So Steve Jobs manages to convince IBM for its workstation market, which is
22:59
a level up from PCs, to put NeXTSTEP on it, which is a major coup d'état
23:05
against Bill Gates because Bill wanted that market, and Bill wanted to have
23:09
the only operating system of the future.
23:11
This is when he was creating his Microsoft monopoly of the era.
23:15
Steve Jobs, couldn't have had a better hand played to him with the help of
23:19
all of his executives because what this meant, if this deal had succeeded,
23:24
then NeXTSTEP, like we-- today we would probably not be using Apple and the OS.
23:28
We would actually be using the NeXT operating system.
23:31
Like, that's how significant this is.
23:32
It would be everywhere, most likely But, Steve just sabotaged it.
23:38
He, I mean, it's a very complicated story 'cause he's a complicated man.
23:44
But, IBM, like he couldn't get everything he wanted from IBM.
23:47
They were slow to put the operating system on their computers.
23:51
And in the end, you know, Steve was afraid of giving up total
23:55
control of his operating system.
23:57
And you have to remember that, that he was always a man of total control.
24:00
He wanted to have the walled garden where he controlled all the software and all
24:04
the hardware, and he just couldn't imagine licensing away his beautiful operating
24:10
system to IBM, a company that he hated.
24:14
There was even a famous photo of him flipping off the IBM
24:17
logo, - in New York City.
24:19
It's one of those like famous photos that everybody looks at.
24:21
And so Steve Jobs, sabotages this relationship.
24:25
He just can't get what he wants from IBM.
24:27
He doesn't wanna get up, give up control, and so he allows, they're
24:31
about to go give this presentation.
24:33
This is when talks are already breaking down.
24:35
He's gonna fly to IBM and give a presentation for 800 IBM employees.
24:40
And, the way that the room is set up is that, it has two sides of
24:45
the room and like each side has a slide, but they only have enough
24:50
slides for one side of the room.
24:52
So people can't look in both directions.
24:54
They can't look, you know, to the side or back or whatever it is.
24:57
And so Steve Jobs is at, literally at the airport getting ready to fly out to
25:00
New York to give this presentation and, tells his, salesperson who's there with
25:05
him, his assistant, I don't wanna do this.
25:07
I don't have enough slides.
25:08
I don't have the tools I need today." So he literally got in his Porsche,
25:11
drove home or drove to the office and said goodbye. So this poor salesman,
25:17
Mark Hayes, who's very prominent in the company, has to show up to IBM's
25:22
office, has to stand in that room with 800 IBM engineers, tell them
25:27
that, there's no Steve Jobs today."
25:30
And how does IBM this?
25:32
They realize that the deal is dead.
25:34
This is just one example of many examples of this kind of behavior,
25:38
and this is what gets Steve in trouble
25:40
Maybe one last one because there's loads.
25:44
And, and this one was Dan'l saying to Steven, "You're blowing it up. You're
25:49
going to blow up the relationship with Ross." So put it in context.
25:54
Ross Perot was a major investor, the chairman of the board as well, from
25:59
memory, and had put lots of his own money in, believed in Steve, but brought, more
26:04
importantly, he was a such a strategic investor 'cause he brought the government,
26:08
he brought all the alphabet soup of government agencies with him because they
26:12
wanted the security and the animation that the, the Next Cubes could offer.
26:18
But he blows this one up as well
26:21
Exactly.
26:22
Exactly.
26:23
Uh, Ross Perot is, um, here's how you think about Ross Perot.
26:27
He's the Chuck Norris of technology.
26:30
This is a guy who, uh, sent his employees into Iran during the revolution of
26:35
1979 to rescue other employees who were kept in an Iranian prison.
26:41
Uh, y- you know, it's like, I mean, that doesn't even happen anymore today.
26:44
It's just we have drones and all this stuff.
26:46
But, um, you know, Ross Perot is a military veteran.
26:49
He's tough as nails, straightforward.
26:51
He tells you when you're wrong.
26:53
And so, um, know, Ross is somebody who's very interested in Steve at the beginning.
26:58
He signs up to be an investor.
27:00
He's actually Steve's biggest backer.
27:02
And part of the goal is that Ross Perot, who's a military and government
27:05
contractor, uh, is gonna line up NeXT Computers with intelligence
27:09
agencies, three-letter agencies, CIA, NSA, with the Department of Defense.
27:14
They're, they're chasing a lot of these major governmental contracts.
27:17
And one of the reasons that the intelligence community loves
27:20
the NeXT Computer is because of this futuristic tech-- the, the
27:23
futuristic technology of the day.
27:26
Um, you know, just for example, that optical drive that Steve loves that
27:30
I mentioned earlier, uh, spies from the CIA like it because they can
27:34
remove it and destroy it, and it's not like a hard drive where it, it sits
27:37
around forever and, you know, somebody can steal it and gain access to it.
27:41
So NeXT Computer is, like, exactly what these spies and
27:44
soldiers need in the field.
27:45
It's like the computer of the future of intelligence.
27:48
And, um, so Ross Perot has this all lined up.
27:52
He's really well-connected in government work.
27:54
And so what does Steve do?
27:55
He says, in the end, "I don't wanna work with the federal government. I don't
27:59
like the feds." You know, he's s-- you have to remember Steve's personality.
28:03
He's not a man known for, um, bureaucracies and ranking, rank
28:07
and file, and hierarchies that, like, this is a world that is
28:11
alien to somebody like Steve Jobs.
28:13
He's the man of democratizing technology.
28:15
Like, he would rather have a computer that every student in a dorm room
28:19
can use rather than a computer that's being used by the federal government,
28:23
you know, to manage databases.
28:24
It's just not his style.
28:26
so Steve, uh, kills the relationship.
28:29
You know, he just, he just decides, "I don't wanna do business with the feds."
28:33
And so this puts his relationship with his investors, including Ross, up in the
28:37
air once again because they're saying, "Well, you know, if you're not gonna sell
28:40
to the government, who is your market?
28:42
Because you're only selling 100 of these computers a month to actual consumers,
28:46
so you gotta figure something out here."
28:48
So we talked in part one about how he had bought Pixar for a song.
28:52
He g- got it for 5 million because Lucas was under pressure
28:56
for a divorce settlement.
28:58
But later on then, he's in a meeting with Disney executives, and this was
29:02
a huge opportunity for both Pixar and NeXT, eventually for Pixar.
29:06
But Disney was using Pixar software to develop movies like The Rescuers, Rescuers
29:12
Down Under, but refused to give Pixar credit, and Steve kept a receipt on that.
29:17
So despite having this opportunity where he was gonna show them the
29:21
technology, he blew that one up as well
29:24
Exactly.
29:25
And so Disney was gonna become potentially a major customer.
29:28
Geoffrey Katzenberg at the time was the, I believe the CEO
29:33
of Disney, and he was there.
29:34
So th- this was a scene that a couple, NeXT employees who were in the room
29:39
with Steve recounted this same scene.
29:41
And it was, Steve in there with Daffy Duck u- up on the wall.
29:46
What he was doing is he was demonstrating this new color display
29:50
that the new NeXT Computer, could use.
29:52
Steve was really proud.
29:53
This was, this was the second NeXT Computer release, and Steve was
29:56
really proud that it now had color, which at the time was an innovation.
30:01
And so, he put Daffy Duck up on the wall and, you know, he was making his
30:06
pitch to the senior Disney leadership.
30:08
They were gonna, potentially buy thousands of computers.
30:12
Another example, big corporate acquisition, something that could really
30:15
make a difference for the company.
30:16
And instead of just swallowing his pride and selling the damn
30:20
computer, he has to bring up his unhappiness with this deal with Pixar.
30:25
So Pixar, his other company, is doing business with Disney making computer
30:29
graphics, but under their contract at the time, Disney was not giving
30:33
credit to Pixar, in these movies.
30:36
And Steve didn't like that.
30:37
He wanted credit.
30:38
He thought that he was getting the short end of the stick.
30:40
And so he brings this up, and it just becomes a fight.
30:43
And Geoffrey Katzenberg, according to people in this room, legally threatened
30:47
Steve and said, "You're using Daffy Duck on the wall without our permission.
30:51
You have to, get our permission for that." And then what happens in the end?
30:55
So Disney orders, like, something like 20 of these computers, maybe 100.
30:59
I forgot the number, but it's so small, and it's just clear
31:02
that Steve blew that one too.
31:04
So let's flip around, 'cause he starts to change pretty
31:04
much after he gets married, and
31:07
you have a chapter here called
31:10
The Two Steves, and it's, it's really when he's kinda hit, hits rock
31:15
bottom, and it so happens to be at the emergence of the internet as well.
31:20
And a really interesting fact you learn from your book was that Tim
31:23
Berners-Lee, who invented the internet essentially, actually used Cube, and
31:28
as did another developer who created the game Doom that so many of us know
31:34
Right, right.
31:35
Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, and he literally created
31:39
the web on a So originally, we think of the web as this sprawling
31:45
network that anybody can log into.
31:47
We use Facebook and social media.
31:48
But at the beginning, in the year 1990, this was such a new concept,
31:53
and it was literally running on one computer in a laboratory
31:57
overseen by Sir Tim Berners-Lee.
32:00
, It was a NeXTcube.
32:01
It was a NeXT computer.
32:02
And, this is just one example of how far ahead of its time this technology was.
32:07
The NeXT computer was so sophisticated that in the year 1990, you could
32:12
literally create the World Wide Web on this computer I mean, think about that.
32:16
Like, think about how many computers you need for the web to work, the cloud, all
32:20
this technology, and there's one computer in a lab that can run the World Wide Web.
32:24
It's just-- I, I find that mind-blowing, the level of creativity that people
32:29
could unleash on this NeXT Computer.
32:32
other one, Doom.
32:33
The, one of the greatest computer games of all time, one that
32:38
is, literally game-changing.
32:40
Play on words, I suppose, but literally changes the game industry
32:45
from this, this old pixelated, , side-scrolling business to something
32:49
that's more three-dimensional, shooting, gory, violent.
32:52
Like this is a new age in gaming, and Steve Jobs not care for it being built
32:59
on a NeXT Computer with NeXT Software because he just didn't like games.
33:03
It wasn't his thing.
33:04
And he didn't see games as something to be taken seriously.
33:08
He wanted this computer to be used for scientific revolutions
33:12
and medical discoveries.
33:15
so another big mistake, they missed out.
33:16
Doom had the, they, the Doom creators went to NeXT Computer and offered to put,
33:21
made on a NeXT Computer, like an opening screen on Doom, and they said, "No, forget
33:25
it." So another big missed opportunity.
33:28
What is the lesson from all this?
33:30
lesson is that sometimes the product that you're making is so far
33:38
ahead of its time that you're not sure what it can be used for yet.
33:41
It's easy to get boxed in and to think, "I'm making something for
33:45
this or that, something that solves this or that problem." But a lot of
33:49
the time, if you're really at the cutting edge, y- don't really know
33:52
how it's gonna be adapted out there.
33:54
And if your users are speaking to you, if somebody's saying, "I just
33:57
created the World Wide Web," you know, "I just created a major video game,
34:02
best-selling game on here," that's something to listen to because that
34:05
shows what your tech is capable of.
34:06
And this is such a pertinent lesson to today with the massive,
34:11
the AI revolution, the advances happening week by week with AI.
34:16
We still don't know for sure how this is gonna be adopted in so many cases.
34:19
We see that people are now using it for generative purposes, for writing
34:24
their school essays and so forth.
34:26
But with this new agentic AI, um, you know, AI bots that can go out there
34:30
and actually make decisions and execute code, , without you having to approve
34:34
it, that's a major, major revolution.
34:37
I mean, that's, that's technologically beyond anything that we've done before.
34:41
You know, a computer system that can process information on its own
34:44
and doesn't need human oversight, I mean, that's, that's major.
34:49
So You know, my s- my suggestion to people who are, at the cutting
34:54
edge of AI right now is, you know, don't, don't get too boxed in.
34:58
Like you might-- So you might think you're making AI for medical purposes, AI that
35:02
can help diagnose X-rays, for example.
35:05
If you're focused on that, you know, step back and look at the whole picture.
35:08
If your AI is generating, diagnoses based on medical X-rays, you know, what
35:14
other imagery purposes, you know… what else can this system be used
35:17
for that you're not thinking about?
35:19
And is there some smart kid out there in a dorm room who has been
35:23
taking your product and using it for something that you didn't anticipate?
35:26
If they are, listen to them, because that could be the future
35:29
revolution right there, but maybe you're just not paying attention
35:32
And one of the interesting ones was NeXT had always used Motorola chips.
35:38
So next, the next thing that happens, Motorola goes with
35:42
IBM and they cut out NeXT.
35:45
So NeXT then go to Intel, but this leads to a far bigger pivot than they'd
35:50
imagined, and a compromise that Steve was just not used to, and, essentially
35:54
NeXT becomes a software company
35:57
Right.
35:57
It's a comedy of errors, and it's all leading up to this
36:00
final collapse of NeXT hardware.
36:03
One of the things that, um, historians remember is that NeXT as a company,
36:07
they tend to think of the hardware, the, the computer, the cube.
36:09
That cube is famous in design schools, but really what was the game changer was
36:15
the software that Steve was developing.
36:17
But Steve wasn't really, as we just said with Doom and the World Wide Web, Steve
36:20
was not, paying attention to how his software was being adapted on the market.
36:25
He only wanted it to be used for what he intended, and he
36:28
didn't want to give up control.
36:30
But this comedy of errors just plays out.
36:32
It's one after the other.
36:34
If you pick up my book, if you read it, you're gonna see that it's a cascade of
36:38
failure after failure, and each failure feeds the next failure, and it gets to
36:42
this snowballing point where the failures are just so massive that the business
36:46
can't possibly sustain itself anymore.
36:49
So by the end, I guess it's not the end.
36:51
By, by the middle, NeXT hardware, there's a reason it no longer exists
36:55
today, because the company effectively goes bankrupt and he has to sell
36:58
it off at a fire sale to Canon.
37:01
so Steve Jobs is he's just, this is rock bottom, and the final
37:07
error in this whole tragedy is, betting that Motorola, his main chip
37:12
maker, is gonna stand behind him.
37:14
The small company, NeXT Computer.
37:16
If you're making chips, that's a scaled, massive business.
37:19
You're working on billion-dollar contracts, and just because Steve Jobs
37:22
comes along with his NeXT Computer that's selling 100 a month doesn't
37:25
mean that you're gonna drop your other, contracts out there and just
37:29
suddenly want to work with Steve Jobs.
37:30
It's just not how the market works, and this is a lesson
37:33
that Steve also had to absorb.
37:36
What happened in the end was that Motorola just dumped NeXT Computer.
37:41
They decided, pure business decision, cold, calculated.
37:44
They decided that they're gonna go, with this new PowerPC being
37:48
designed by Apple and IBM.
37:51
It's the, these two, Apple and IBM were enemies and competitors, but
37:54
they teamed up at this one point.
37:56
And by this time, the writing is on the wall.
37:58
Every single NeXT executive that the hardware business is dead.
38:03
We don't have a chip.
38:04
A chip is the engine.
38:05
Without a chip, we're screwed.
38:07
And they realize, look, we made a lot of major mistakes because at this point,
38:11
NeXT Computer is about eight or nine years old it's well into its business cycles.
38:16
And they still haven't achieved the scale.
38:19
They still don't have the sales.
38:20
They don't have what they need.
38:22
And so why would anybody in their right mind look at NeXT Computer
38:25
and say, "I want to, work with this company that has been small for eight
38:31
years, that's failed after another"?
38:33
It's just, it doesn't make any sense.
38:35
So falls apart.
38:36
They don't have a chip, and, uh this is when the hardware business ends.
38:40
So the, , next we're onto h- everything's falling apart.
38:44
He's, he's really not enjoying it, Steve, here at all.
38:47
He, he actually is getting most of his fulfillment from Pixar.
38:50
Between… He was putting $50 million of his personal wealth into
38:55
Next, $54 million into Pixar, and combined all together, this new CFO comes in
39:02
and he estimated that he was burning through about 50 to $60 million a year
39:06
to just keep these businesses alive.
39:08
So then he recruits his neighbor, his former neighbor, Oracle founder Larry
39:13
Ellison, to join the board, and he starts to get things together a little bit.
39:17
And this guy Dominique, this Belgian guy, he brings in a bit of discipline,
39:22
and they start to get pra- positive practices, so away from the deep
39:27
shit list towards a more proactive list, and they start to track bugs
39:31
and develop different types of apps.
39:34
Maybe we'll mention this period of time where the kinda,
39:36
the change starts to happen
39:38
so this is the change.
39:39
This is where the transformation really hits.
39:42
It's the end of the hardware business.
39:45
The hardware business collapsed in 1993, springtime.
39:49
This is when NeXT Computer becomes a software company.
39:52
And, why does it become a software company?
39:54
It's not because Steve Jobs loves this software necessarily.
39:58
It's just a matter of survival.
39:59
And so they pivot, and they do something finally that everybody's
40:04
been begging them to do, but that Steve has refused at this point.
40:07
They start selling enterprise software.
40:10
So think about this.
40:12
Steve Jobs, the man in the turtleneck, the man with his brilliant, colorful, devices
40:18
and iPhone, his brilliant presentations.
40:21
Can you see this guy walking into Goldman Sachs and standing up there and talking
40:26
about finance and selling financial engineering to Goldman Sachs, traders?
40:31
Like, no.
40:33
Like, totally no.
40:34
Like, that's, that's something that nobody has ever seen in Steve, I mean,
40:38
nobody outside of this period of his life.
40:40
But this point in the 1990s, this is what Steve is doing.
40:43
He's going to Goldman Sachs.
40:45
He's going to IBM.
40:46
He's going to all these big federal bureaucracies, military.
40:49
He's walking in, and even his physical appearance changes.
40:53
He's no longer informal Steve, but he's wearing these gray,
40:57
these, gray and beige suits.
40:58
You can look it up on YouTube, and he's got like, a formal red tie and
41:02
he wears white button-down cotton shirts, , that are nicely tailored.
41:07
He looks like a corporate salesman.
41:10
And Steve Jobs, like, if he's a corporate salesman, that's how
41:14
you know he's hit rock bottom.
41:16
That's not Steve Jobs.
41:17
That's not who he is.
41:18
And even the people around him told him, like, "Steve, this is not you. Like, this
41:25
is not who you are." But Steve knew that he had to survive, that he had to bring in
41:31
the money, he had to build the business.
41:34
He only had about three years of cash left, so if this had failed, he would
41:39
have failed possibly permanently and maybe even been written out of history.
41:42
He would not be remembered as the genius who we know today, but he
41:45
would've been remembered as a failure.
41:48
This is drastic.
41:49
The stakes are high, and this is the moment where they re- Steve finally
41:53
concedes that, reality has distorted back, that reality, objective reality exists
41:59
out there, and Steve has to conform to it.
42:02
so he finally starts conforming and doing just what he needs to do to
42:06
keep the business alive, which means building stronger systems, doing
42:10
basic things, keeping track of bugs.
42:12
NeXT Computer, for most of its life, did not have a method for
42:16
keeping track of, keeping track of bugs and errors and so forth.
42:20
It was a very disorganized company, and finally he brings order to it.
42:24
And ironically, last point here, this is the, I think one of the greatest
42:28
lessons for any founder out there.
42:31
He knows when to step away finally and to, when to a- when
42:36
to let people, do their job.
42:39
This is the big lesson of this period.
42:41
A man named Dominique Trampot, who becomes the CFO, he's a Belgian
42:45
executive, he comes in and becomes Steve's right-hand man and institutes
42:51
order in processes, in finances, ensuring that the basics are there, that, how
42:56
can we get of debt and make a profit?
42:59
If the company is not profitable, nothing else matters.
43:02
So it's just basic business logic.
43:03
And I just have to say, it's also, it's an unsexy lesson.
43:09
You know, we love the sex appeal of being a founder, those, the hot presentations,
43:13
like what's the next big thing?
43:15
But sometimes you just have to sit down and work out the basics.
43:19
You can't always be that star.
43:21
You have to know when to pull away from being a star and when to look at
43:25
your accounting books, when to hire somebody new, when to, kill that debt.
43:30
If you don't get the basics down, then the stardom is never gonna come.
43:35
One of the, again, pivots , the many, many pivots of got rid of the Cube.
43:40
There's a deal with Sun that falls through, 'cause Sun weren't really
43:43
committed to it, but they end up with this product called WebObjects,
43:47
which came just out of Steve's desire to allow the developers to just be
43:52
curious and follow their instincts.
43:54
And a couple of guys built this new, basically a website over the weekend
43:58
to track bugs, but it led to this thing they called WebObjects, which essentially
44:03
became the underpinning of many of the products we use on Apple today.
44:08
Right, right.
44:09
WebObjects is a, a forgotten app.
44:12
You know, like WebObjects is one of those things that existed in its time
44:15
in the 1990s, forgotten today, but, one of Steve's favorite soft- one
44:21
of his favorite apps at the time.
44:23
comes-- Okay, so here's the irony.
44:26
love the story of WebObjects because I think it encapsulates the many
44:30
lessons of Steve Jobs in exile.
44:32
This is software that can create dynamic websites and update them real time, live.
44:39
Um, you have to remember what the internet was like in the 1990s.
44:43
These were the, you know-- I mean, I remember it well.
44:46
I was a kid.
44:47
These were these old static, uh, you know, these, like, odd colors that clash.
44:52
Like, people would make their personal websites, and it's, like, pink and green,
44:55
and then there's, like, a flashing, uh, animated GIF, you know, of an icon,
45:00
and it's, like, their favorite car.
45:01
Just, you know, re- like, the, the internet was-- It, it was the Wild
45:04
West of that day, and people were just fiddling with it, but there was
45:07
no way to, you know, really build a serious business on the web yet.
45:11
And Steve Jobs saw that.
45:14
even said himself that he had abandoned his idea that technology
45:18
was gonna change the world.
45:19
He said that this was not gonna change the world, but it will
45:22
be helpful for businesses.
45:23
And how will it be helpful?
45:25
Look at the web today.
45:26
Look at Amazon.
45:27
Look at all these online shops, Barnes & Noble.
45:29
Y- go anywhere on the web, and it's all live, real time, updated.
45:34
You go in, you type what you want.
45:36
You, you wanna buy this or that, and then it gives
45:38
recommendations with an algorithm.
45:39
Like, is now.
45:41
Steve Jobs was planning for this 30 years ago.
45:45
This was exactly what he saw was gonna happen, and that's what WebObjects was.
45:49
It was software that would create dynamic websites.
45:52
So why is this so important for the book, for the lessons of the book?
45:57
The one big takeaway here is that this is the culmination of what NeXT
46:04
Computer was really meant to do.
46:07
know, they had ignored the original internet.
46:09
They had-- Sorry, the web, not the internet.
46:11
They had ignored the original web created by Tim Berners-Lee.
46:14
They had ignored Doom.
46:15
They had released a cube computer that was not selling.
46:18
But in all those failures, what was adding up was the real purpose of NeXT,
46:24
and it was that it was a networked it was the software that was set that,
46:32
, if it had continued on this path, it would've been the software that would
46:36
have led the transformation from the old age of the static, boring computer
46:41
to the new age of the hyper-networked internet world that we all live in now.
46:47
That's the vision of Steve Jobs, and that's what he saw that was
46:50
just so far ahead of its time.
46:53
just took, it took a long time to get there because WebObjects was created in
46:57
1996 Next Computer was created in 1985.
47:02
So that's 11 years to figure out your true purpose in this world.
47:07
So what does that mean?
47:10
Like, yeah, so those failures did not go, those failures at NeXT
47:16
did not go out for no reason.
47:19
They had a purpose.
47:20
It's just that it took a lot longer than Steve thought to get there, and
47:24
if Steve had made decisions differently earlier on, they would've probably
47:29
arrived at this much earlier and it would've been even more profitable.
47:32
So it's a complex lesson, but it's a lesson of, a mixture of knowing your
47:37
timing, knowing your market, knowing the people you need to reach, and
47:41
knowing which ideas might work sometime in the future versus what works now
47:47
and what needs to happen right now.
47:49
So we'll start landing the ship, because there's so many
47:52
brilliant stories in there.
47:53
Michael Dell, Dell Computers, he built, he, he… Apple built this
47:57
for him as basically his online store that saved his company.
48:01
The or- origins of anybody who's ordered a pizza online all
48:04
happened through web objects.
48:06
But one of the big changes was Pixar, because Pixar gave him now a lifeline,
48:12
and in a way, it kinda quenched that resentment that now he was somebody,
48:16
he'd made something of himself.
48:18
He'd vindicated himself in many ways.
48:20
He still held onto that bad reputation from the Apple days and the NeXT days, but
48:26
it gave him a different kind of energy.
48:28
He had children.
48:29
He'd been married, and there was a huge transformation,
48:32
personal transformation going on
48:35
Exactly.
48:36
Uh, Pixar… Okay, so let me start with this.
48:40
You know, Steve Jobs, he was not a money man.
48:43
He was not-- He, he didn't do things for the money.
48:45
He took his, know, his symbolic salary at Apple was one do- uh, $1 a year.
48:51
Like, he, he was not, was not opening the books and trying to, to make it big.
48:56
the people who knew him during this time at Pixar said that money was useful to
49:01
him because it allowed him to keep score.
49:04
Um, you know, he, he didn't really wanna be a billionaire.
49:06
That wasn't his goal in life.
49:08
once the movie "Toy Story" from Pixar was a major success, and then right
49:13
after that it had a very risky but very successful IPO, the moment in
49:19
1996 that Steve became a billionaire.
49:22
He joined the club.
49:24
And you have to remember, you know, today billionaires are a dime a dozen,
49:26
but back then, um, there were only a handful of billionaires in America,
49:31
and one of them was Bill Gates, the richest man in the United States, and
49:35
the other newcomer was Steve Jobs.
49:39
Um, so what does this mean?
49:41
It's not that Steve Jobs is happy to be a billionaire.
49:43
It's that, "Oh, I am now vindicated. So all the things that I have been doing
49:48
for the last 15 years, the failures, the, the, you know, the, the ideas
49:53
that went nowhere, the people who left me, well, finally I can recover and
49:58
finally I have money in the bank."
50:00
Um, and there are lots of lessons in here too for founders.
50:03
You know, I, I think that there's a kinda myth out there that if
50:06
you're a creative person, you're not supposed to care about the money.
50:09
That, you know, like caring about money somehow taints or makes dirty your ideas.
50:14
But no, you have to remember that even the most creative fields are, at their core,
50:18
they're businesses too, and there's always business logic that applies to them.
50:23
Business means you have to have money in your bank account.
50:26
You have to be profitable because that money, it's not what you
50:29
live for, but it's a tool.
50:31
It shows you what the market thinks of your idea.
50:34
If there's good feedback, you have money in the bank.
50:36
If there's bad feedback, you lose money.
50:39
That's what Steve learned, and that's the feedback he got.
50:41
He became a billionaire because "Toy Story" was brilliant.
50:44
And why was "Toy Story" brilliant?
50:46
It was because he stepped away from Pixar and allowed his people to do their work
50:52
Last one for you, 'cause I know you have a baby about to wake up, and
50:56
I know how precious your time is.
50:58
And you and your wife
50:59
with the baby.
51:00
will… Your, your wife will be cursing me for taking your time,
51:03
your precious time when she's asleep.
51:05
But the last one, which was an important one, is it's these transitions
51:10
that I love that you did, Geoffrey.
51:11
It's not like the story of Steve Jobs is he was fired from Apple,
51:16
he disappeared, he found himself, and he came back as this hero.
51:19
But it's these little stories like the serendipity of a
51:23
phone call that saved Apple.
51:25
So this was, a developer inside NeXT who hears that Apple need a operating system.
51:32
Their operating system, Copeland or Copland, was failing.
51:36
They had hired an IBM executive, the Iron Grandmother.
51:40
She was out there looking for a new operating system.
51:44
She'd been asked to this by Gil Amelio, the chairman of Apple, who'd
51:47
become interim CEO, and this guy just goes, "Why don't we just call Apple?"
51:52
It wasn't Steve's idea, which was really interesting, and this changed
51:56
the fate and the course of history
51:58
You know, one of the incredible things about this book that I
52:02
found is that, Steve-- We all know what happens at the end.
52:05
We know that Steve Jobs returns to Apple and creates the renaissance.
52:09
I mean, that's not the question here.
52:11
But, around that time when he was returning to Apple, Steve gave an
52:16
interview to Time Magazine, he said something remarkable in there that it
52:20
actually sent shivers down my spine.
52:22
He said, "I don't believe that anything in life happens by chance, that there
52:27
is a design, that there is an order to it." And that's my paraphrase.
52:31
That's not the literal quote.
52:33
But I'm sitting there thinking, once I got to that stage in the story, I'm
52:37
sitting there thinking, "Okay, look at this entire story of NeXT Computer.
52:41
It's failure after failure.
52:42
It's disaster.
52:43
It's, a company going down in flames.
52:45
It's the reputation of Steve Jobs going down in flames." It's like everything
52:48
that can go wrong does go wrong at NeXT Computer, and yet there are a series
52:55
of things that people do, not always Steve, but also just random people
53:00
that, put the play back in a different order, and he ends up, through these
53:06
series of decisions, returning to Apple and igniting the Apple renaissance,
53:11
creating the most valuable company in the world, the one that we all know today.
53:16
I'm sitting there thinking like, this is Steve reflecting on the meaning
53:18
of life and why things happen as they do, and it really is remarkable, if
53:23
any of these little decisions had gone differently at any stage of the story,
53:29
Steve would be written out of history.
53:31
He would be completely forgotten today, and he would not be the
53:34
person we read about in business case studies, for example.
53:37
It's just, it would be a different world.
53:40
And yet, at one point, there's one, know, like a mid-level, mid-senior level
53:46
employee at NeXT who just says, "Look, Apple is gonna acquire another company.
53:51
They're looking to buy an operating system. How about I just pick up the phone
53:55
and call Apple and tell them more about NeXTstep and what we're doing?" Steve is
53:59
actually neglecting NeXT at this point, so he's all focused on Pixar and like
54:03
he, he doesn't wanna return to Apple.
54:04
Laurene, his wife, doesn't want to, want him to return to Apple.
54:08
The place, it's tainted.
54:09
It's doing poorly.
54:11
It's not the Apple that he knew back when he founded it.
54:13
It's not a place that he wants to go to.
54:16
And it's just, it's this random employee just picking up the phone, getting the
54:20
attention of Apple, and then suddenly an executive nicknamed the Iron
54:24
Grandmother, so Ellen Hancock is her name.
54:27
Everybody said she was smart.
54:29
She's the kind of person you want looking at this kind of thing, and
54:32
she's the one who goes in and says, "Okay, let's take a look at NeXT."
54:35
And that creates the cascade of events that lead to Steve when
54:42
he has uncertainty about it that lead to Steve returning to Apple
54:48
Beautiful, man.
54:49
I think we'll leave it there because there is so many lessons in there, and
54:53
I… If you get the book, and I highly recommend you do read to the end, 'cause
54:58
Geoffrey does a great job of extracting the lessons from the story as well.
55:01
And you know, Geoffrey, as much as I do, so many people don't get
55:04
to the end of the book they intend
55:05
Oh
55:06
to.
55:06
yeah.
55:06
But get to the end of this book.
55:08
It's there.
55:09
Oh, it's where it's… I've after where I'm after putting it.
55:11
It's here beside me.
55:12
It's a brilliant book.
55:13
This is not the cover.
55:14
I've an early access cover.
55:16
Steve Jobs in Exile, absolute brilliant story, and you do a brilliant job.
55:20
And we'll be back again when the baby's a little bit older to cover
55:23
Samsung Rising as well, one of your previous books that I absolutely love.
55:27
before I finish, before I finish off, just let's tell people where they can find you
55:33
I'm at X. My handle is @Geoffrey_Cain, so my name G-E-O-F-F-R-E-Y
55:38
underscore Cain C-A-I-N.
55:42
on LinkedIn and it's GCain.
55:45
And then I'm also at my website geoffreycain.net where I post updates.
55:49
And also check out my Substack, The Burner Files, which is my
55:53
name geoffreycain.substack.com
55:55
It's been an absolute pleasure, and I'm so grateful for you taking the time out
55:59
this very precious time that you have.
56:01
Author of Steve Jobs in Exile, Geoffrey Cain, thank you for joining us
56:05
Thank you, Aidan.
56:06
Great to be here
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