

Who's Going to Fund the Next Steve Jobs? - Mrinal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121633667123063791.html

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tx
The question is wrong. They should have asked "Who wants to be next Steve
Jobs?" I suspect not too many: most technical entrepreneurs are more
interested in quickly making a "widget" of some sort and sell out to the first
real business that comes along.

Some may argue that personal computers in the 70s can be compared to web-
widgets of today: the public at large didn't look at them as at "real
computers" and few believed in truly global adoption. In that regard early PC
pioneers were swimming against the flow.

While today, the entrepreneurial mantra is to "figure out where everybody is
going and be there first", being "part of the flow" is crucial (any VC will
tell you that). And nobody bothers with re-thinking anything: hey, ideas are
nothing, execution is the king. Build something fast. Be in a browser. Get on
TechCrunch.

Next Steve won't grow out of making half-assed JavaScript reimplementations of
existing desktop software. And I honestly have no idea what the Next Steve
will do. I know for sure, that what we're doing today is sorta "configuration
files" for software built in the 50s. Perhaps this is what they call a
"matured industry" and perhaps looking for a next Steve Jobs is as practical
as looking for a next Henry Ford.

~~~
aston
Steve Jobs probably should not be compared to Henry Ford. Apple, if anything,
is a great fast-follower with an incredible sense of design and marketing.
Henry Ford, on the other hand, was mainly responsible for the initial
commercialization of something that's pretty much reshaped culture. If
anyone's had a similar impact in the computer industry, it's Microsoft, not
Apple.

~~~
mlinsey
I disagree - Apple was pushing the entire idea of a Personal Computer before
that market existed. Microsoft's big break was when they were called upon by
IBM to provide the OS for IBM's competitor to Apple. Had not Apple taken IBM
by surprise, IBM may have eventually decided to go into that market anyway.
But absent competitive pressure from Apple compressing their timeline, they
probably would have gone with a more proprietary design and wouldn't have even
needed Microsoft.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_I disagree - Apple was pushing the entire idea of a Personal Computer before
that market existed._

Okay, time to channel Grandpa Simpson! Where's my cane?

<grandpa>

Now, sonny, what people forget is that Apple Computer brought their Apple II
to an _existing market_ for home PCs. [1] The first home PC had been
introduced in January 1975, and by 1977 when the Apple II came out there were
already multiple PC enthusiast magazines, Microsoft had been in the software
business for two years, and there were multiple companies selling PC hardware.
The Apple II was introduced _at a personal computer show_.

Even the Apple I was an entry into an existing market.

Jobs and Wozniak certainly pushed the envelope: The Apple II was, for example,
arguably the first PC to be marketed at folks who didn't know how to solder,
who didn't even _care about hardware_ but just wanted to buy or write software
and run it. But the hardware hackers drooled over it too [2], and they bought
it, and thus the venture was less risky that you think -- it didn't have to
create its own market, because Jobs knew the core market was already there;
the challenge was to _grow_ the market.

Pioneering the PC market was the work of the Altair guys at MITS, two years
prior. MITS, of course, followed the usual good advice for people who are
trying to discover a brand-new market: They launched early to test the market.
They launched _really_ early. As in "before they actually _built_ more than a
single prototype, they photographed a mockup and sent that photo plus the
schematic to the editor of _Popular Electronics_ [3], who read the schematic,
concluded that the hardware was probably real, and published an article on it
that drove hundreds and hundreds of mail orders in a few weeks." Then the
company used the money from the mail orders to actually buy the parts, package
the kits and send them out. [4]

You could even argue that _MITS_ was targeting an existing market: If the
folks writing _Popular Electronics_ hadn't built a fan base that was ready and
waiting to solder together computers, the PC revolution wouldn't have caught
fire in 1975.

</grandpa>

All of this is cribbed from Steven Levy's _Hackers: Heroes of the Computer
Revolution_ , a book you should really read.

[1] Note: Here "PC" has its original meaning of "generic personal computer"
and does not refer to MS/DOS compatible boxen. Those came later, obviously.

[2] It helped that the Apple II not only came with schematics and a complete
listing of its ROM, but had been designed by a hardware-hacking genius of the
first water who liked to show off.

[3] MITS also mailed their single prototype to _Popular Electronics_. It got
lost in the mail and was never seen again. If you find it, contact some
historians.

[4] If you think you intend to follow this business plan, make sure your
lawyer is sitting down before you broach the subject.

~~~
mlinsey
Well, okay, I will of course concede that there were personal computers before
the Apple II (although at the time it came out, the Apple I was probably the
closest thing to a working computer, as opposed to a kit that you could use to
build a working computer, that you could get)

But Popular Electronics readers or not, I still think it's accurate to say
that "the market" for PC's did not exist before Apple. The post I was replying
to was arguing about whether Apple or Microsoft was more like Henry Ford. I
think it's also fair to say that the market for cars in the US did not exist
before the Model-T, despite the fact that there were several cars sold before
it, all of which were unreliable, extraordinarily expensive, and used only by
hobbyists - just like pre-Apple I (and to a lesser extent pre-Apple II)
computers.

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nazgulnarsil
"I know for sure, that what we're doing today is sorta "configuration files"
for software built in the 50s."

BINGO, i talk about this all the time and no one listens! the move to multi-
core is a chance for a real reboot, rather than optimizing old software to run
slightly faster on the new hardware.

~~~
MaysonL
And _really_ multi-core machines, like the Ambric MPPA (Massively Parallel
Processor Array) with (currently) 336 cores on one chip, with very fast on
chip communications, have the potential to change _everything_.

------
pg
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhhId_WG7RA>

~~~
pchristensen
From the man too modest to directly name his own name... :)

I guess that changes the question - will the next Steve Jobs need a
traditional VC?

~~~
pg
I didn't mean that to be a reference to YC. I was just pointing out that Sam
was as good a candidate as anyone for "next Steve Jobs," and that he did in
fact get funded by VCs-- Sequoia and NEA.

~~~
mariorz
He did get funded, but is he really in it for the long run? My uninformed
prediction on the matter is loopt gets acquired by MS in a few years, which
does seem to be the goal of most startups these days.

~~~
pchristensen
I don't know Sam at all, but if all he wanted to do was sell out in a few
years, I could think of better ways to pass the time than negotiating with
(ick) cell phone carriers. That's some serious muck he and the other Loopts
waded through, and it makes me think they're in it for the long haul.

------
petuniapredator
With the kinds of tools now available I'm wondering if the next Steve Jobs
will even need funding.

~~~
hugh
How is the next Steve Jobs going to produce millions of hardware units without
funding?

~~~
petercooper
Apple didn't have any for the Apple I. Jobs secured orders from a computer
store who paid up-front. This money was then used to produce the machines.

Funding did, of course, follow quite quickly from this for the Apple II.

------
nickb
Next 'Steve Jobs' will probably be Chinese.

~~~
menloparkbum
Steve Jobs is great at making "luxury" products and marketing them. Marketing
high-end products is not what China is good at. China is good at other things,
like actually building the products that Jobs markets.

But, the article isn't about who will be the next Steve Jobs - it is about who
is going to fund the next Steve Jobs. Given China's economic growth, there is
a good chance that the next Steve jobs could be funded by investors from/in
China.

~~~
hugh
You're thinking of Steve Jobs circa 2008, who makes pretty white luxury boxes.

But the Steve Jobs that counts for is Steve Jobs circa 1978, the Steve Jobs
that was making cheap ugly boxes that plugged into your TV. (And of course it
was really Woz, but let's leave that aside for the moment.) The point is that
Apple started and became big by being a low-end company, and only turned high-
end once they were already huge.

~~~
menloparkbum
China has the cheap and ugly market sewn up, so by that definition of Steve
Jobs, there are already dozens, if not hundreds of Chinese Steve Jobses.

~~~
hugh
Hmm. The Apple I/II wasn't just a cheap and ugly knock-off of another product
though, it was an innovative machine that changed the way computers were
built. It challenged the existing notions of what a computer had to be and how
much it had to cost.

The closest analogue I can think of in recent years is the Eee PC, which
interestingly comes not from China but from Taiwan. (Support for the notion
that innovation comes more easily in democracies? It's only one data point,
but still...)

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thinkcomp
It's a really good question. I posted something I just wrote which basically
asks the exact same question from the opposite perspective, coming from the
entrepreneur's viewpoint:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=249453>

