INC.: Do you have more influence over things like that now than at Apple? There's a perception that the launch of Apple was a team effort, and NeXT is very much your show.
JOBS: Is that really the perception?
INC.: To some extent, it is. Of course, there weren't any celebrities at Apple back then. Now, you're a celebrity.
JOBS: Well, we all tend to reduce reality to symbols, but Superman went out a long time ago. The way you accomplish anything significant is with a team.
INC.: Is it a problem or an asset to be a celebrity?
JOBS: Is this Inc. or People?
INC.: Hold on. We're asking a legitimate business question. Maybe celebrity is the wrong word, but you must certainly be a magnet for bright, young talent, which is probably what helps make this an exciting place to work. Don't you ever worry that the very thing that attracts people to your company might also inhibit them from challenging you when they should?
JOBS: Again, it all depends on the culture. The culture at NeXT definitely rewards independent thought, and we often have constructive disagreements—at all levels. It doesn't take a new person long to see that people feel fine about openly disagreeing with me. That doesn't mean I can't disagree with them, but it does mean that the best ideas win. Our attitude is that we want the best. Don't get hung up on who owns the idea. Pick the best one, and let's go.
INC.: What about the expectations people have of you?
JOBS: I think people outside NeXT have fairly high expectations of us, because we have a lot of people here with impressive track records. Before we introduced the machine, many people felt we had little chance of living up to those expectations. The feedback I've gotten is that we've exceeded their expectations—which is a double-edged sword. Now, we have to be pretty much world class with our products and services, but that's also an opportunity.
INC.: Did you ever doubt you'd meet or exceed the expectations?
JOBS: You don't think about it that way. You just make the best product you can, and you don't put it out until you feel it's right. But no matter what you think intellectually, your heart is beating pretty fast right before people see what you've produced.
INC.: What about your expectations of yourself? A lot of successful company builders we know agonize about going back and doing it all over a second time. They think, if it's not bigger—in importance, that is, not necessarily in scale—why bother doing it?
JOBS: Well, first, you have to realize this is my third time. The Macintosh was my second. I mean, that was a bunch of us going off and starting in the garage again. We used Apple as a financial mechanism, and we used the sales force. But we fundamentally redefined a lot of things at Apple, and we had to do it from scratch.
INC.: Are you saying that you've already proven to yourself that you can do it all over again?
JOBS: I'm saying that my motivation is a little different this time. The computer industry is young. I view its future and its history as one long vector. We're only in the first inch of that vector. For some reason, we are in the right place at the right time to influence its direction. You just have to move the vector a little bit in the first inch, and the swing will be enormous by the time it gets to be three miles long. I think both the Apple II and the Macintosh contributed to setting the vector's direction—at least for the part of the computer industry that is most exciting to me. I hope the NeXT machine will contribute as well.
INC.: That's a tall order.
JOBS: It sure is. It means we have to succeed on a very large scale. Our smallest competitor is $1.75 billion these days. The world doesn't need another $100-million computer company. We have to get up to a certain scale if we want to play in the sandbox, and if we want to have the effect we're looking for at the end of the process. We're building the next billion-dollar computer company here—from the ground up.
INC.: How can you actually plan that kind of growth?
JOBS: You can't. Somebody once told me, "Manage the top line, and the bottom line will follow." What's the top line? It's things like, why are we doing this in the first place? What's our strategy? What are customers saying? How responsive are we? Do we have the best products and the best people? Those are the kind of questions you have to focus on.
INC.: Are those explicit goals for NeXT?
JOBS: We have three high-level goals. One is to make the best computers in the world for individuals. They might be in networks or in groups, but one person, one computer. Second, we want a company where really bright people can come and be handed a lot of responsibility early on. If we have an exciting place to work, we can get the best and the brightest to come work here. The third goal is to make sure that the people who build this company share in its success.
INC.: You once said that you felt people do their best work in their twenties. You're 33 now...
JOBS: I'm about to turn 34. Any day.
INC.: So is that a concern for you, given your ambitions for NeXT?
JOBS: No, I think I'm going to be doing some of my best work in the next few years. I want to make the most of it, and that means providing an unobstructed path for the brightest minds in our industry. My job becomes more to help them pick the targets correctly and then get out of their way.
INC.: That's very different from playing an intense hands-on role. It takes a certain maturity. You have to look for different rewards.
JOBS: I don't know about that. You're still in there working with your sleeves rolled up. Then the time comes to get out and let people do their work. But in a company as amibitious as NeXT, there is always another group asking for help. So it's not as if you ever have to sit around with nothing to do.
INC.: You seem to have thought a lot about your role.
JOBS: Yeah, well, when you do things the first time, you might have good instincts, but you don't understand the process intellectually. You may get some fairly good results, but you're not exactly sure why. It takes time and reflection to understand the process.
