Are there other stories of people who had one fortune and went on to make another? With $100M, it would be pretty tempting to go back to the fruit commune.
Steve Jobs knew the problem when the product people get driven out from the decision making, the coup d'état from the value creators to the value extractors.
The Lisa, Apple ///, original Mac, and the NeXT were all failures because they didn’t get the importance of actually creating products that people wanted. Engineers seldom understand the needs of the broader market. The “Engineers” also gave you great stuff in the mid 90s like PowerTalk, QuickDraw GX, OpenDoc, and other products that no one wanted.
As far as creative people - letting them take over gets you the trash can Mac Pro, iOS 7, and the MacBook keyboard.
Engineers are infamous for not wanting to deal with pesky things like customers and usually don’t care whether their designs can lead to products that can be produced at scale. Apple would still be floundering without the “MBA types” like Cook who got operations under control and Schiller who was over marketing.
Scully - the “sugar water salesman” - saved Apple the first time around after the missteps of Jobs.
Even today you can look at Google to see what happens when you have great engineers but no leadership. They are still an ad business despite years of trying to diversify.
I have seen this over and over again. Where I am from an Apple reseller was first started by enthusiasts and made it big until MBA types took over only caring about the short term bottom line. They killed the company because customers stopped having faith in the sales people having their interests at heart. It was all about selling you maximum amount of stuff.
They got kicked to the curb by a new upstart mac reseller where the owners really cared about the product and customers enjoying their Mac experience, not just getting money.
The problem with the MBA style guys is that don't really see the value of anything. They just see money. That can only take you so far.
The AppleTV would have been cancelled years ago by any other company. For a tech company to invest billions on creating content like AppleTV+ is something that most non entertainment companies wouldn’t even try.
The Apple Watch has seen dramatic continuous improvement over years and the iPad didn’t come into own until 2015 with both the pro models and iOS improvements. It was just a big iPhone during the first three years.
But Apple will still stick to something long term even if it isn’t an immediate success
I said
Apple would still be floundering without the “MBA types” like Cook who got operations under control and Schiller who was over marketing
> The AppleTV would have been cancelled years ago by any other company.
If the AppleTV didn't exist, what would that change? AppleTV+ (the service) does not need AppleTV (the hardware) in order to exist, nor do I think one benefits the other.
Apple is primarily using iPhones and iPads to push AppleTV+. The service is also available on non-Apple hardware, such as smart TV's.
> For a tech company to invest billions on creating content like AppleTV+ is something that most non entertainment companies wouldn’t even try.
Amazon? Netflix?
The Apple TV was introduced in 2006. They kept pursuing it for over a decade and it still hasn’t gotten that much traction.
The difference is that all of the other hardware choices are slow, ad ridden (Roku has hard coded buttons on their remotes that go to the highest bidder) and privacy invasive.
They also have another avenue to push Apple Arcade. The AppleTV is much better integrated with Apple’s other offerings from the phone to the watch to the HomePods.
What is seen as a 'failure' by MBAs became the base of Apple's biggest product and a world revolution in mobile and smart phones.
To this day the Objective-C libraries still have "NS" prefix for NeXT Computer and NeXTSTEP OS [1][2].
All the other products you mentioned also had decent influence and were research and development to what we built and use today.
Just because the first iteration doesn't make money in droves doesn't mean it was a failure and there isn't gold in them there hills. Business guys fail to recognize that on the regular. Research and development with a holistic focus on product engineering and design is where value is created.
The point is all aspects of business are needed, product, engineering, creative, design, business, marketing, management, financial etc. When one group takes over unilaterally and the others lose position at the decision forums, it goes south. It is especially bad when people from one area start dictating what the others should do. When the business guys come up with the product and design, well, it would be like the engineers or designers coming up with the marketing or funding plan.
Product engineers and designers are more holistic in their approach that take into account all stakeholders and especially the customer [3].
People should be T-shaped employees but no matter what, if product/engineering/creative is removed from decision making and has less power in a company, that company is a dead man walking in short order when the built up research and development product engine momentum wears off, it is almost a law of markets at this point.
Just because business/management/financial controls the money does not mean they create the value. The value is created by product engineering and design, the value extraction is maximized at the right time by the business. The problem is the MBAs largely have your attitude writing off all historical iterations and steps to get to well research and developed value, which highlights the core lack of understanding between these disciplines.
Product development and design is like an engine, it takes time to rev up and get up to speed, MBAs get in the vehicle and press the gas and if it immediately isn't top speed and the fastest most successful vehicle every made, they throw up their hands.
The best leaders and product companies understand iterative development and the value of product research and development as well as the market and budget. They value the disciplines at the company and don't dictate to them but guide them. They understand the brand/product/culture and most important, the customer.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT_Computer
The Apple /// wasn’t the “first iteration”, it was Jobs first idealized computer with no fans - something no customer asked for - it was a failure.
It’s not the MBA types. It’s simple business that a product needs to make a profit. Even Jobs saw that when he returned to Apple when he got rid of the Advanced Technology Grouo
Right now, you can see what happens when a company is customer focused vs engineering focused. How many failures have come out of Microsoft and Google’s “research” departments? While even the modern Apple isn’t perfect, you can tell that research, marketing, and operations are in alignment to create products that have a story to tell.
When Apple doesn’t have a story to tell. It’s very obvious - the first generation Apple Watch.
They didn’t focus enough on market share around 1988-1993. They focused on high margins. When Windows 3.1 came along, it was good enough. But even as late as 1992-1993, they were the number one or number geo computer seller.
Next was a high end product. Apple needed to be more mass market.
Apple did fall behind Windows technically from 1995 - 2003. But remarkably enough, they were able to sell enough Macs running pre OS X to become profitable.
While this was all with the same company, most microcomputer houses failed the transition to DOS, and the DOS powerhouses failed the transition to 32 bit machines.
Microsoft has since made another transition to the internet, one that many failed at.
They did make a successful transition to Applications though, at a time when Lotus 1-2-3 was making a killing and Lotus was the biggest personal computer software company.
The cloud transformation too is likewise big, quite possibly securing Microsoft the company for the long run, but Gates is not involved in day to day any more for MSFT.
Word had the advantage of the move to Windows and WYSIWYG - WordPerfect for Windows (and WP6 for DOS in WYSIWYG mode) meant nearly as big a change as moving to Word did, so n o loss there. The Excel crew had gone way out of their way to make everything 1-2-3 compatible. And Access was less wacky than Paradox, so the dBase croud didn't miss Borland all that much. None of the Office apps were, by themselves, at the top of the game at the time, but they were all good enough... and they worked and felt as if they were all of a piece.
Founding Apple. Pixar. NeXT? Apple the second time.
I'm not sure if you'd count NeXT as a fortune, it looks like he got something a little under $40m in Apple shares, still not bad.
Most of the PayPal mafia.
Musk, several times over.
Which isn't to say he didn't show the world that you can build an electric car with Lithium ion batteries that looks better than an Prius.
I would consider it Tesla’s and Musk’s ultimate success if/when the whole auto industry moved away from internal combustion engine. iirc this is how musk defines his own success as well.
Homework:
1. Use an infotainment system from an “old guard” car maker. 2. Use Android Auto, CarPlay or the Tesla dash. 3. Repeat 1.
So much of the experience of your car is terrible because it’s an afterthought to these companies. They hire people to tick a box at the least expense possible.
I drive a Nissan Leaf. The build quality is pretty good. The battery life isn’t spectacular but it wasn’t particularly expensive either, and it’s all I need...
But it’s no Tesla.
Last week I rented a car. I gave up on the inscrutable infotainment system and just used my phone, with it flopping around the car because there was nowhere to fix it in place.
Edit: the phones are not just better, they are constantly being improved, and the car system stays static. The phones also cost next to nothing compared with replacing a broken system in your car.
Android Auto now works on a handset over bluetooth. Apple being Apple, you have to buy an entire new head unit or a new car with built-in Carplay to use it.
It's everywhere now though, even the used econobox my family bought this year has it.
Ironically, the major brand to NOT support it is Tesla, making it actually a mark AGAINST them.
My Leaf’s functionality is so tied up in the dash unit that it can’t realistically be replaced without losing access to critical functions. Ironically, the very lowest end model is the only one that can have it’s head unit replaced - and I’d have bought one except it mandates leasing the battery which wasn’t for me.
Not everyone can replace their head unit and most used econoboxes do not have head units anywhere close to recent enough to support either platform.
That sounds like a pretext to call victory when faced with an unavoidable defeat, similar to the fox and the grapes fable. The auto industry was already moving to electric cars prior to Musk.
For example, the Toyota Prius was released to the general public in 1997, having won Car of the Year in 1998. Tesla was founded in 2003.
Arguably Musk's contribution was dispelling the notion that electric vehicles were just glorified golf carts made for flimsy Europeans, and in the process marketed a Veblen good that just so happened to be an electric car.
But the Prius is not an electric car. It's a petrol-electric hybrid where the electric part is merely a clever way to optimise the petrol engine usage. You can't drive more than 1 or 2 km with the electric motors.
Indeed even now Toyota don't have any fully electric models and they are very much behind the other manufacturers in other than hybrid technology. So I can't say that Toyota is a good example for this.
The change Elon Musk brought to the EV industry and rocket launches is permanent. Doesn't matter what happens to his companies in the future. What he did has changed both industries permanently. Everybody is making an EV now and everybody is trying to make some sort of reusable rocket.
One of the things to keep in mind about Musk's various projects is that every single one of them has a practical application for Mars colonization. Reusable rockets to get to Mars relatively cheaply, solar panels/grid-scale batteries to keep the colony powered, and mass quantities of phase-array networked commsats instead of laying thousands of kilometres of fiber are the obvious ones, and discussed at length everywhere. But the others are worth fleshing out.
The trick to colonizing Mars quickly is to deliver the most bang-for-the-kilogram in landed mass. If a single Starship can land enough material to build a few big oxygen and methane tanks, all you have is a few big oxygen and methane tanks. If it lands enough mass for a "The Martian" style Aries-type habitat, all you have is a habitat. But if a Starship lands a few fast, miniaturized, automated, and electric tunnel-boring systems and the spare parts to keep them maintained, you can build as many radiation-proof habitats and oxygen/methane storage tanks as you can - underground. I would bet good money on the very first Mars-landed Starships having at least one full tunnel-boring rig (with spare parts) on board each one - if not for immediate use under time-lagged remote control, then in preparation for direct operation by the first landed humans.
As for hyperloop, it's a heavy-cargo electric train designed to run in atmosphere that's 1% the thickness of Earth's. On Mars you wouldn't even need to enclose the rails. This is what you'd want a decade down the road for transporting mass quantities of ice to methalox production/storage sites. Of course it's far less practical on Earth than current alternatives, which is likely why Musk's total Hyperloop involvement is limited to a SpaceX-sponsored tech demo. And I think they're only doing even that minimal investment because they want to see how electric trains work at Martian atmospheric pressure.
David Duffield, Eli Broad,
Also possibly Jesse Livermore, who made many fortunes but also kept on losing them.