#77 Steve Jobs (The NeXT Years)

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one-time only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like The Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories, and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets, they're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high, so I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show so we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today, and I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. When Jobs left Apple in 1985 to start another computer company from scratch, The NeXT in its name referred to Steve Jobs' next bid to shape history, to present to a grateful world The NeXT Big Thing. Intermittently, the world had heard from him and his company in press releases or in stage events for the media. But though eight years had passed and the fire of ambition burned as brightly as in Jobs as ever, another business miracle had yet to materialize. Reporters who wrote about NeXT would often forget when exactly NeXT had been founded. And as late as 1992 would still refer to NeXT as a company that was two or three years old. An error that Jobs, of course, was happy to let stand uncorrected. The less attention paid to his failures to repeat at NeXT his earlier success at Apple, the more attention he could direct towards NeXT's future. Clean and untarnished, always bright with possibility. Better to look anywhere but the past record, where Jobs' attempt to build a profitable rival to Apple had led him from one strategy to another, from blunder to blunder, disaster to disaster. What makes his next story especially intriguing, however, is the gullibility of many others who lent money, careers, and prestige to Steve Jobs' quest.
The greater portion of investment capital came not from Jobs' own pocket, but from that of others. The amount of money that was sunk into the NeXT venture made it a story for the history books, but not in the way that Jobs intended.
Well over $250 million of capital and royalties disappeared in NeXT without a penny of net profit to show for the investment.
NeXT's dismal skein of business misjudgments threatened to go down in the books as the most expensive flop in the history of entrepreneurship.
Okay, so that was from the introduction of the book that I read this week, and the one I'm gonna be talking to you about today, which is Steve Jobs & The NeXT Big Thing by Randall Stross. So I guess I should start right at the beginning. This is gonna be one of the most bizarre podcasts that I've ever done, because I think there's only one good idea in the entire, that you get from reading the entire book. And that makes a lot of sense when you think about the book, let me grab it real quick, was published in 1993 So, at the time the author is writing this, he burned through, as he just said, eight years and $250 million in capital, and the book ends with the decision by Steve Jobs, it's not even by Steve Jobs, it was forced on him, which I guess I'll get to later on, to abandon manufacturing hardware and just focus on the next step operating system. So that's in 93 And so, as you can imagine, if you study, if you just look at the history of NeXT from the time it was founded to 1983, it's a giant failure. We know because we have the benefit of hindsight that the author did not, that about four years later, Steve Jobs somehow convinces Gail Emilio, CEO at the time of Apple, to buy NeXT for $450 million, which of course leads him to running Apple a year later. Now, I do want to say one thing though, because this is the fourth podcast I've done on Steve Jobs. So last week, if I could, I guess before I jump into the book, and I'll just say this real quick and then we'll get into the book, is every single one of the four books that I've read, not including the two that I do for the On The Revera Only podcast feed, which was just about product design at Apple, which is not necessarily just to focus on Steve Jobs. But I guess what I'm saying is if all four of the books, so you have Return To The Little Kingdom, then you have The NeXT Big Thing, then you have Steve Jobs by Isaacson, and then you have Becoming Steve Jobs. If I could do it over again, I would read all of them, but I would do it in the order of the time period that they study. So I'd start with the book I did last week, which is Return To The Little Kingdom, because what's fascinating about that is the subtitle is Steve Jobs, The Creation Of Apple and How It Changed The World. It focuses on a hugely successful company right at the beginning. So it focuses on the first few years of Apple. So if you haven't heard that podcast, listen to it, because I think it's good. Because then you have an understanding of what happens. What happens when you build a truly revolutionary product and it takes off, like the Apple II computer did? So that was really interesting, because it only focused on the first seven years of Apple's corporate history. Now this book, it only focuses on eight years of next history, and it's the opposite lesson. What happens when you have a product that no one wants to buy, which is what the next computer was? And then I would read the two other books, Steve Jobs and Then Becoming Steve Jobs, because it's more of a typical biography. It takes his life in totality, I think is the word I'm looking for. Okay, so I just wanted to put that out there. I'm gonna jump right in. We're gonna still learn a lot, but most of it is studying the decisions and the strategies that Steve Jobs decided to go with and realizing, basically learning what not to do.