Smart Business Magazine, November 2014

November 2014 Smart Business Cleveland 39 STEVE WOZNIAK FEATURE fun I never thought I would even have a job designing computers I didnt think there were such jobs How do you keep innovation alive when you are growing a company How do you stay ahead of the curve In the early days of Apple it was just so free Almost everything we touched turned to gold It was a new industry and there was a lot of positive press The computer was built on parts connected to a printer that changed the world for people forever You could plug a printer into your computer You had a part to plug into a modem You could turn your computer into a terminal These were new things so this is what I loved to do I wouldve done that anyway Back then the innovation was all really on me I was the only engineer for a while We were revolutionary we had the best product in the world we had a really high price but our product cost less to build than the ones with the low price We had a company We had investors We had advisers We had professionals around telling us how to establish a company you need a president director of operations and heres what he does Investors were telling us all the people we needed and what their roles would be At that time Steve didnt have an official title You just participated in everything and learned how to run everything But I hate politics so I said leave me out of running the company just dont kick me out I stayed in the laboratory I wanted to do hardware software for the rest of While working at Hewlett Packard I had no chance of having a girlfriend or a wife I was too much of a geek Woz on HOW HE MET STEVE JOBS Bill Fernandez Apple employee No 4 introduced us When I met Steve we started doing pranks together and we tried to outdo each other But we also had our electronics knowledge I told him all these computer things I designed what Id done and I dont think he ever tried to become a designer after that When it came to design he wasnt going to win that one But he never stopped thinking When he was very young he just kept having these ideas and dreams of the world of a few people becoming important He wondered how those people would take steps forward for mankind for science and how the world never goes back from that He thought about big steps forward THE BEGINNING OF APPLE I was selling stuff that I could come up with Once a year Steve would find a way to turn my stuff into money But heres the reason I had a job as an engineer Steve had no job and no money at all Having no money at all was worth a lot to him The Atari deal was funny because he told me we got paid 700 bucks and he wrote me a check for 350 Twelve years later when the Lisa came out I discovered that he had made thousands But you dont judge a person based on one thing in life Thats wrong To me friendship was more important than anything I wouldnt have done it with anyone else but my best friend Steve Jobs Thats it THE FIRST APPLE LOGO Back then it cost 1000 to make a color television The reason that it cost 1000 was that you had to have circuits with precision it was so complicated Our first logo for Apple was six colors for a reason Nobody could have ever expected color in a low cost computer