Ask HN: What was Steve Job's core competency?
When we find co-founders, we look for what they can bring to the table. What was Steve Job's core competency?
Per your question. You NEED two core competencies to build a company: sales and the ability to fulfill what it is you're selling (product/services). Being strong in selling and building products (or providing services) tend to be separate skill sets, so often two-person teams form due to this concept (like the 2 Steve's). It is important to note that having a sales skill set does not negate the need for technical competency anymore than engineers can ignore building products that align with the business- it's about efficiency.
I will end by saying... you don't need co-founders. Solo Founders are responsible for more than half of the exits. (https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/26/co-founders-optional/) There are advantages to having a cofounder(s) and the same can be said of going it alone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field
> Reality distortion field is a term first used by Bud Tribble at Apple Computer in 1981, to describe company co-founder Steve Jobs's charisma and its effects on the developers working on the Macintosh project.[1] Tribble said that the term came from Star Trek,[1] where in the Menagerie episode, it was used to describe how the aliens created their own new world through mental force. In chapter three of Steve Jobs, biographer Walter Isaacson states that around 1972, while Jobs was attending Reed College, Robert Friedland "taught Steve the reality distortion field."
Steve Jobs has himself repeated several times during his career that it’s the intersection (or marriage) of technology and liberal arts and humanities that makes Apple’s products great.
The first core competency was this vision — combining liberal arts and humanities with technology — explains the what, why and how of Apple’s most liked products.
The second core competency he had was a deep attention to detail, though it can be argued that there were several bad products/issues and releases despite that.
The third core competency was communication and presentation. Here too, one can read about the effort and attention to detail that goes into preparing for keynotes and product announcement events.
To sum it all up, these enabled him to make technology seem like magic but yet relatable and useful in enriching people’s lives — whoever they were and whatever their profession. One example of how broad this has been treated is the emphasis on accessibility in Apple’s devices and software (compared to competitors). It wasn’t about the size of the market or market share alone.
>“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
On competency - probably some mix between UX & industrial design?
Once people had ridden a horse with a saddle, they didn't want to go back, and were willing to pay a lot more for having that saddle there regardless of if the horse underneath was the same, or even faster.
People weren't saying "remove the buttons". And I remember a lot of complaining about that when the iPhone first arrived.
I'm always excited by the stories about the detail and time he spend on designing impeccable user experience.
I strongly recommend you find a better rolemodel for cofounders, though. What's the point of starting a company if your partner makes you miserable by being an asshole all the time?
Think of his line from circa 1980, “the computer is the bicycle of the mind.” This is a profound and easy to grasp vision for computing. Everything came from that vision. The products, the sales, the most valuable company in the world. It’s all about how technology can empower people.
- He knew how to find people who could create what he wanted
- He knew how to get them to create it according to his vision
Got this from reading Isaacson's biography (which BTW showed what an asshole he could be).