Category Money

Three perfect Steve Jobs nuggets on source

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This video show Jobs in action as he starts his second company, NeXT.

Here are three clips which serve as brilliant examples of the source principles in action.

Jobs on the role of source. The importance of one person holding the overall vision.

Recognising the seed of the idea which then grows and blossoms into something large.

Everything has a beginning, then more and more people are recruited in to take responsibility for realising part of the vision.

How money becomes a drain when you focus on it, rather than the vision.

Notice the energy level in the room as the budget is discussed. NeXT (being discussed in this clip) started with millions in capital and ultimately failed, yet Apple started with almost nothing and was a huge success. Perhaps the relationship to money was a factor in NeXT’s failure.

When a source sells out to a money story

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This video is painful to watch!

Here’s the story: A source (founder) starts a company with a beautifully simple vision: “send one engaging email to users each day.” It’s a roaring success and they sell the company for $125M. The new owners start sending eight emails per day and then chasing each new money making online marketing fad.

The company drifts from its vision and eventually the new owner shuts down the company. The Source says ‘The new owners didn’t realise they were buying a brand.’

Watch the video and notice how the passion was drained out of the initiative by chasing the money, not the vision.

Businesses start with vision & passion, not money: 50 founding visions

tomnixon Leave a comment

One of the source principles is that nobody ever starts anything with money. The source (founder) always starts with a personal need. The need unpacks into a vision (even a blurry one) for a future where the need is being met, and they have passion for it, which provides the energy that compels them take the first risk. It’s the vision and the passion which attract other resources, like money and other people to help.

If you have any doubts about this principle, here’s a wonderful video where 50 wildly successful entrepreneurs share their founding vision.

Jeff Bezos – Amazon – 0:00
Steve Jobs – Apple – 0:12
Pierre Omidyar – eBay – 0:33
Michael Dell – Dell – 0:59
Sergey Brin – Google – 1:16
Biz Stone – Twitter – 1:35
Gary Vaynerchuk – Wine Library – 1:50
Daniel Ek – Spotify – 1:58
Kevin Rose – Digg, Tiiny – 2:29
James Altucher – “Choose Yourself” – 2:55
Robert Greene – “Mastery” – 3:21
Guy Kawasaki – Apple – 3:35
Steve Wozniak – Apple – 4:06
Mark Cuban – Broadcast – 4:26
Sam Altman – Loopt – 5:01
Tony Fadell – Nest – 5:12
Danae Ringelmann – Indiegogo – 5:26
Simon Sinek – book author – 5:46
Seth Godin – Marketing guru – 6:25
Evan Williams – Blogger, Twitter, Medium – 6:52
Reid Hoffman – LinkedIn – 7:13
Jack Dorsey – Twitter, Square – 7:45
Kevin Systrom – Instagram – 8:08
Drew Houston – DropBox – 8:34
Brian Chesky – Airbnb – 8:53
Peter Thiel – PayPal – 9:04
Elon Musk – Tesla, SpaceX – 9:14
Alan Schaaf – Imgur – 9:36
Chris Sacca – Baller Investor – 9:56
Paul Graham – Y Combinator – 10:18
Dennis Crowley – Foursquare – 10:40
Eric Ries – The Lean Startup – 11:11
Leah Busque – TaskRabbit – 11:25
Anthony Casalena – Squarespace – 11:44
Alexis Ohanian – Reddit, Hipmunk – 12:03
Jason Fried – Basecamp – 12:21
Palmer Luckey – Oculus Rift – 12:42
Kamal Ravikant – AngelList – 12:52
Ben Silbermann – Pinterest – 13:19
Tony Hsieh – Zappos – 13:43
Andrew Mason – Groupon – 14:14
Richard Branson – Virgin – 14:39
Andrew Ljung – Soundcloud – 15:08
Justin Kan – Justin.tv – 15:30
Jessica Livingston – Y Combinator – 15:59
Mark Zuckerberg – Facebook – 16:14
Marc Andreessen – Andreessen Horowitz – 16:15
Dustin Moskovitz – Facebook – 17:22
Tim Ferriss – 4 Hour Work Week – 17:47
Emmett Shear – Twitch – 18:24

Hat-tip to Inc. Magazine.