NeXT

“They paid half a billion dollars essentially to rehire Steve Jobs, and it was the bargain of the century.”

“It is better to have fewer people, even if it means doing less.”

“Within six years of Nex's launch, the entire founding team, other than Steve, had resigned”

“Steve Jobs, one of the ninth employee, if I remember correctly, ninth or 10th employee at Next was an interior designer for the office.”

“So this is one of those cases where you hire the right people. They don't always listen to you in key moments in time.”

“I believe that if we turn ourselves into managers instead of doers, both our schedule and the greatness of our product will suffer. Let's not let this happen. It is better to have fewer people, even if it means doing less.”

“Steve respected talented people who could fight. You had to be willing to push back against Steve. Your ideas would only survive if you could evangelize them and convince all the smart people around that this was the best option.”

“When Nexus factory schedule, inevitably slipped rather than blaming his own indecision. Steve took out his frustration on Linda, and he fired her, and the entire company gets stuck in this loop for months and years.”

“The whole pricing discussion took five minutes.”

“The most important thing you're competing with is not another company, but it is your own ability to execute.”

“And by this time, they'd already poured a hundred and forty million dollars into the company. And Steve says, if you don't deposit another check for twenty million dollars by Monday, I'm going to shut the doors. In exchange for the twenty million dollars, Cano…”

“Within a year, Dell's web objects powered online sales exploded, growing to three million dollars a day and quickly becoming the core of the company's distribution strategy.”

“Cannon agreed to give them another forty million dollars.”

“If you don't treat talented workers right, they can go get another job in 10 minutes. So a strange thing happens, which is the sort of the hierarchy of power inverts and the CEO is actually at the bottom. So I sort of feel like I work for most of these people …”

“In November, the first cubes finally shipped by the end of the year. Next had shipped a measly 205 computers.”

“The team reported sales figures by determining the number of units given to distributors, not sales to final customers. Distributors didn't have to pay right away. They got the machines on credit. Next then immediately counted these as sales, even though no mo…”

“And so he convinces Canon to put a hundred million dollars into next in return for their a hundred million dollars. They get 16.67% stake in the company.”

“Between now and when you have a product, you are the product, my friend, and so you better be nice to people.”

“His company's burning through a million dollars a month.”

“Ross is going to put twenty million dollars into next for a 16% stake in the company. He becomes the company's largest outside shareholder. But as one prerequisite of the deal is that Steve has to have more skin in the game. So he asked Steve to put in another…”

“That year, the company achieved its first profit of a million dollars on revenues of almost fifty million. After nine years of losses, Next was finally stepping into the black.”

“Steve opened, offering the company at 12 dollars a share, which would have made the total acquisition price five hundred million dollars.”

“IBM agreed to Thirty million dollars on signing the contract and another thirty million dollars on shipping and then royalties on every copy they ship. A total investment of sixty million, which is three times how much Ross Perot put in and a windfall that bro…”

“When you have too much money, you just don't have that hunger. And you start spending money on floating staircases and 10,000 dollar chairs.”

“Steve had too much money. He had too much personal money, and he got way too much money from his investors, and so he stopped watching his costs.”

“Steven Ross has struck a second secret deal. It would never appear in any press release or regulatory filing. They didn't even write the terms down to sell the next computer. Ross was willing to mobilize his high level government networks and his sales force f…”

“When Steve spoke to Paul for the first time, he asked if Paul could present him with a few options for Next logo. No, Paul said, I will solve your problem and you will pay me. Paul's price, a 100,000 dollars, whether or not Next ended up using the logo. It was…”

“Years later, he confided in Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull That he had learned a lesson from the collapse of the IBM deal. Never overplay your hand.”

“And so he winds up poaching his co-founders. I think there's like four or five co-founders of next directly from Apple. This causes Apple to sue Steve jobs.”