Wozniak in waffle mode
The Hive - Steve Wozniak, Dave Hitz & Lance Smith
11:41: Wozniak: Well you know what, when we started Apple, we didn't exactly have the culture of a big company. But we felt, the few of us that were there, it was important to hire professional people who knew what they were doing, not to remain just a couple of kids. And we also had this feeling that we were on top of a revolution, we had a great product. It was going to be the seeds of making something important in the world. So for the next two years almost nobody ever left. I mean we felt we were something important in the world. And I don't know if that's the culture that remains today but I'm sure it's a big seed of it ..
17:39 Wozniak: .. the communication between sales and marketing is sometimes a problem too within a company. But when I joined Fusion‑IO and I had one year where I was in my office everyday. I went on every sales call I could. I wanted to hear what the customers wanted ..
19:12 Wozniak: But Apple made a lot of mistakes too putting out products like, ten years too early, five years too early. If you miss the timing because of the price and the value, that can hurt you too ..
19:37 Wozniak: Even as an engineer, all my life was getting good at reducing the complexity, reducing the size, reducing the cost. Because I had no money. Having no money and not having done it before were the two greatest thing I ever did ..
20:17 Wozniak: First of all you gotta have some engineering and talent that knows how to built it. And you should not conceive your product thinking then I'll go and get the engineering once I have the idea. The idea and some knowledge of building parts and what can't be made. People who have spent their life as makers, completing, really developing working prototypes and models of things, should be included in the starting team and you gotta have customer support. Somebody on your starting team is a customer. That absolutely lived there and knows what they want, what's good and what's bad and they also gotta have some good thinking. They can't have been just there, they gotta be like a person who really wants things to be right and not wrong. And not anything works anything is good, no. And I think you need those three people, they could all be in one person, or they could be two people or three, but you really need that in a founding team ...