
Apple's original business plan - sirteno
http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/akdiamond/original-apple-business-plan
======
NhanH
The plan itself looks reasonable to me. It's fairly buzzword-free (comparing
to the plans nowadays), but maybe the buzzword back then just became common
vocabulary to us.

The most interesting thing on the plan to me is the staff page: specifically
how non-impressive the credentials of everyone on the team is. It's fun to
think that Jobs might have embellish a little there (attended Stanford part)
just to look better. Even the one with most credentials (Markkula, I believe)
just read like a normal upper-middle management bio nowadays. And Woz & Jobs
... well, I don't think any company nowadays would be able to raise fund if
the founder s' bios look like that.

Am I wrong?

~~~
wamatt
Sometimes I do wonder about the double standards involved in characterizations
of certain people.

Like if it's someone we like, then that person "embellished" their record, but
if it's someone we don't then, they "lied".

So thinking aloud, does that mean I can go crash some courses at Stanford too,
then put it in the pitch deck as "Attended Stanford". Knowing full well,
physical access, is not what is meant by the use of the term and that
investors may be misled?

It seems to me, this might qualify as evidence of the reality distortion field
at work.

~~~
NhanH
Besides what arrrg said, part of the reason I used embellish is that I don't
know how close it is to the fact: certainly this is the first time I've
heard/read about Jobs "attended" Stanford, but I have no idea whether he might
have crashed there for a few semesters (if he was crashing the courses similar
to how he did after dropping out of Reed, "attended" would only be a bit of a
stretch).

Also, using the word "lie" is mean, and I'm with the camp that being mean for
no reason is unnecessary.

~~~
wamatt
Sure, while I agree it's nice to give strangers the benefit of the doubt, how
'mean' can one really be, to a deceased public figure?

Or to take a sillier example: You could certainly _act_ mean to a stone, but
would it care?

Personally, I tend to view the term as having more relevance in the
interpersonal domain, where one would try to avoid unnecessarily hurting
someone else.

~~~
AlisdairO
Being 'mean' to the deceased can have at least two impacts that I can think
of:

\- Hurting the living family of the dead person \- In the case of notable
figures, altering public perception of the individual and their deeds. On a
macro scale, if enough people talk up the bad elements of, say, Gandhi's life,
it has the potential to sour society on his worthwhile points of view too.

Actually my impression of Steve Jobs is pretty negative in many ways, but I do
think twice before being mean about the dead.

~~~
wamatt
Those are valid points, albeit somewhat far out there.

Closer to home, in a somewhat ironic twist, my previous comment was downvoted
to oblivion. My first thought was to give the critics the benefit of the
doubt, and assume they were not intending to be mean.

That said, after I had taken time to give a thoughtful and respectful response
(there were no personal attacks, or snark) aimed to give another moral
perspective, you have this knee jerk downvoting occurring.

So while on the one hand "it's internet points and who cares, right?". And
yet, I'm an actual human being here on the other side of that browser with my
real username. Not a hypothetical possibility. It still feels crappy and like
you've been judged by the community and found wanting. Thus to me, in my
bubble, it _feels mean_ spirited, even it was not.

Thus, it begs the question, why shouldn't our focus be on how the _receiver_
of an action is affected?

~~~
AlisdairO
I tend to put it under the heading of people sucking sometimes :-). It's a
commonly observed effect that when there's no face-to-face interaction people
don't think hard enough about the impact of their actions.

Unfortunately people tend to use downvote to mean 'I disagree'. It's sad, as I
think it's important to preserve reasonably expressed dissenting opinions

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eddywebs
The source of this document is computer history muesem website. linky >>
[http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/2009/10271...](http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/2009/102712693.05.01acc.pdf)

~~~
alain94040
Plans for the Apple III were a little bit optimistic:

"Voice and character recognition are both being considered as built in
features. Possibility of UHF very short range transmitter for wireless display
capability depending on FCC approval."

~~~
Osmium
It's interesting to consider how different technologies alter the evolution of
each other: e.g., if hypothetically display technology had stalled and we were
limited to 512x342 black and white pixel screens, I can easily imagine that
wireless displays would be the norm. So it sounds crazy reading that now,
because we have these huge colourful displays, but back then maybe it was
reasonable. It's just that history turned out differently and display
technologies progressed far faster than wireless transmission standards (and
the processors necessary to drive them).

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kgc
Direct download link:
[http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/2009/10271...](http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/2009/102712693.05.01acc.pdf)

------
swamp40
I wonder why "Apple" is whited out? The "Staff" page pretty much gives it
away.

~~~
sjwright
Given the sloppy way most instances of "Apple" were removed -- ultimately
concealing nothing -- it looks like a lame attempt to make the documents
appear to be genuine leaks. Which makes me consider whether they're actually
fake.

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coreyh14444
Modern conventional wisdom would tell them to "focus".

~~~
visakanv
I don't know the details very much, but maybe things were different back in
their time when the market wasn't yet saturated? (My tech business history is
pretty sketchy, so I'd welcome any clarification!)

~~~
phkahler
Visicalc played a large roll. The father of a friend of mine bought an Apple
II in large part to do spreadsheets. While we're at it, I remember reading the
inventor of the spreadsheet went to the computer clubs as showed his work.
They all said "well yeah it can do that, so what" and he showed it to
accountants and they all ran out to get Apple computers to run it. I think a
lot of hackers focus on neat hacks that interest themselves, but overlook
relatively easy solutions that could be a big deal to others.

~~~
joezydeco
I owned an Apple ][ before VisiCalc was released. The transition was amazing.

The home PCs were really just a curiosity before that. Look at Apple's early
magazine ads. A mom filing recipes. A dad balancing his checkbook. Looked
amazing in photos, but when you sat back and realized they wanted $1,200 for a
tabletop calculator it really deflated the motivation to buy one.

VisiCalc showed people that these machines were _programmable_ in a way they
could understand. That was a major breakthrough.

------
maxsavin
Interesting - Jobs went to Stanford?

Also, surprising he let him self be #3 on the list after apparently picking a
fight with Woz about who would be employee #1

~~~
presty
Interesting that he attended Stanford. Never saw any reference to this before.
Does anyone know the story?

~~~
wl
The Isaacson biography mentions that he audited and crashed engineering and
physics classes at Stanford.

------
chrispeel
From a couple of sources it looks like their revenue forecasts for the PC
market were too low:
[http://www.etforecasts.com/products/ES_pcww1203.htm](http://www.etforecasts.com/products/ES_pcww1203.htm)

I'm curious who the target of this was; was this aimed at the banks who they
got the $250k loan from that Markkula signed for?

------
caublestone
I don't think this is Apple. On page 5 it specifically calls out Apple as
being part of the Hobbyist market. That right there makes this even more
interesting as this thorough business plan was beat out by a company
recognized as Hobbyist instead of a pc manufacturer.

So who is this?

~~~
RadioactiveMan
Slide 6 lists staff, including S Jobs and S Wozniak. That leads me to believe
it is Apple, though I have no idea if they were involved in other companies.

~~~
caublestone
I see the confusion. That is listing the staff of Apple as discussed in the
Hobby Manufacturers as competitor analysis. As in, this is who our competitor
is.

~~~
asveikau
That's hilarious. I don't know why this is redacted but whoever did it did a
terrible job, and left "Apple" in a bunch of places, such as: "Apple will
provide..." or "... used to assist dealers in selling Apple products." It also
has references to googleable phrases of the late 70s/early 80s such as "Apple
Software Bank":
[http://google.com/search?q="apple+software+bank"](http://google.com/search?q="apple+software+bank")
(Shown as "[Redacted] Software Bank" \- wonder what that blank could be?)

But I admire your quest to find who the real company is.

------
staunch
> _Because of the applications development ability of the software oriented
> hobbyist, Apple will continue to service his needs._

Developers. Developers. Developers. Developers. Developers.

------
nsxwolf
Whatever that reader app they are using is... Wow does it suck on iOS Safari.
I can't figure out what the heck is going on.

------
mraison
Interesting to see that the "growth curve" was already a thing back then.

~~~
zachrose
And that it's convex (like an ant hill) rather than concave (like a hockey
stick).

~~~
wanderingstan
Note that it has a logarithmic scale. On a linear scale it would be close to a
hockey stick.

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fit2rule
Is it usable as a template for a business plan today?

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ezl
I wouldn't invest. That growth curve doesn't seem reasonable.

VC's: I don't really see there being an interest in this. What's the viral
coefficient?

~~~
porter
Has there even been a market as big and as fast growing as PCs since then?

~~~
mikeyouse
Mobile is a much larger market and a much faster growing one..

I can't find the chart I'm looking for, but on any reasonable time scale that
includes PC saturation vs. mobile saturation vs. smartphone saturation, the
'Smartphone' line is damn near vertical.

Here's a decent look:

[http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2015/1/11/home-and-the-mo...](http://ben-
evans.com/benedictevans/2015/1/11/home-and-the-mobile-supply-chain)

Even more impressive that Apple took a big piece of both.

~~~
fjarlq
You reminded me of these charts by Horace Dediu:

[http://www.asymco.com/2012/01/17/the-rise-and-fall-of-
person...](http://www.asymco.com/2012/01/17/the-rise-and-fall-of-personal-
computing/)

Unfortunately the images on that webpage seem to be broken. Here's a backup:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20141113180306/http://www.asymco....](http://web.archive.org/web/20141113180306/http://www.asymco.com/2012/01/17/the-
rise-and-fall-of-personal-computing/)

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mkaroumi
Omg, THANKS for sharing this!

~~~
visakanv
I appreciate your enthusiasm! Sorry you're getting downvoted, Hacker News is a
pretty tough community to crack. The secret is to always add value to any
conversation by introducing some relevant perspective or piece of information.

