Apple's original business plan | Hacker News Reader

Apple's original business plan

slideshare.net

186 pointssirteno69 comments

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?

Wozniak's is only not impressive because they left off "invented the personal computer."

"Invented the personal computer" might be a bit of a stretch to me. Apple I was one of the first (popular?), but iirc it wasn't the very first one of its kind, nor the only one at the time.

But even if it was the first and only of its kind. At the time, "invented the personal computer" still wouldn't be anything would be counted as "credentials", let alone "impressive credentials". Someone who has been around the block might correct me if I'm wrong, but personal computer was nowhere near influential, or well known back then as it is now.

It was the apple 2, also designed by Wozniak that really made them famous, not the first one. It was the first personal computer to hit the market that you could purchase and use without some serious technical knowledge, both is software and hardware. So he may not have technically invented the personal computer, but he built one that was actually marketable. And Apple was worth billions within the first years of their existence, so I would say it was pretty influential. Some people may not like Apple, but it's impossible to deny the massive role they played in the early days. And it really wouldn't have happened without Wozniak, he was the technical genius of the group.

You know, that the Altair was before and Woz did his own design just because he couldn't afford the Altair.

The Altair was a microcomputer, but not a personal computer. A personal computer is a microcomputer with a keyboard and screen. The Altair was designed to be programmed using binary toglle switches and later an interface card came out to connect it to a teletype terminal. The Apple ][ came with a keyboard and worked with a screen, so it was the first true personal computer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcomputer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_computer

"Inventing the personal computer" is something that is completely open to interpretation. I've heard Woz say something similar, and if you look at it a certain way then it's easy to agree with him. What he means by that is that the Apple ][ was the first computer that came with everything so you could plug it in and start work. The Altair and other's that people may consider as contenders for the first personal computer required more technical skills, like not coming with a keyboard, or requiring you to do a certain amount of assembly. So by one definition the Apple ][ was the first computer that you could buy, plug together and boot up Basic or VisiCalc and start doing some work.

At least with the first Apple ][, Woz designed the whole of the hardware, the ROM, and the first Basic. Later on that Basic was replaced with Microsoft Basic, which caused problems for Apple later on with the Macintosh when it came time to renew the MS Basic license. Steve Jobs did have some influence on the Apple ][, but far less than Woz, he worked on the PCB layout (as far as making it nice and everything line up, not the actual routing), and the case design (designed by Jerry Manock), which was revolutionary at the time. The switch-mode power supply was also unique in a computer at that time, and was not designed by Woz, but by Rod Holt. Woz's disk controller is probably the most impressive piece of design from that period though.

It was a very close thing though as the Commodore PET was actually released only a few months later, and was even more easy to set up as it came with a built in cassette drive and display. It's interesting that in most of this history Chuck Peddle, the designer of the PET, gets very little recognition, much less than he should. As well as designing the PET (which led on the the Commodore 64 and others), he was the main designer of the 6502, the processor used in the Apple ][. There's also a story that he met Woz and helped him debug one of his 6502 designs.

The thing I noticed was that Steve Jobs had the least impressive credentials on the page.

Credentials generally just mean that some institution decided to give you a title.

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.

“Embellish” is used here because this happened a long time ago and it’s just completely, utterly irrelevant to anything at all …

People around here seem so, so convinced that everyone here loves Apple and anything to do with it, all the while all I ever see is complete, unfettered hate. And that’s ok, definitely, nothing wrong with that, but to me this perception of Apple being irrationally loved by anyone around here is just so, so weird and unrelated to reality.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

Atari and HP both had some serious cachet back then

The 2015 equivalent would be an ex FB engineer and ex-Blizzard engineer team. Totally fundable.

It's easy to forget that Apple and a number of the corporate giants of today were born in a time when there was much less competition, not just in the tech business but in life in general.

In 1977 California's population was almost one half what it is today, heck the world population was almost one half what it is today. We see the vast pool of smart educated people on the planet as normal right now, but back even 40 years ago a tiny fraction of people really fit the bill.

I'm a firm believer that most of the heroes of history would be considered average shlubs today. They just happened to be possessing the right balance of intelligence, vision and work ethic at the right time in history.

Not certain that "timing" would apply to Intel founders Gordon Moore, Bob Noyce, Andy Grove and perhaps some others in the semiconductor industry (Shockly, ....). Also Seymour Cray.

In developed countries, yes. That's basically what developed means -- there's less opportunity except at very high specialized areas often requiring lots of expertise and capital. Not so in lesser developed countries. People would be shocked if they realized how many rather mediocre people in "third world countries" are very wealthy doing pretty basic things.

If one is up for lower competition they can head to Africa now.

The source of this document is computer history muesem website. linky >> http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/2009/10271...

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."

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).

At least in Europe, the Amiga had this... the RF output was strong enough that you could use it as an antenna and get it from the other side of the room, complete with snow effects :)

Direct download link: http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/2009/10271...

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

So does the word "Apple" on page 3.

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.

Modern conventional wisdom would tell them to "focus".

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!)

There were many hobbyist computers on the market when the Apple II launched.

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.

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.

How is that buzzword so huge now? Does no one using it realize that the word "focus" by itself... conveys nothing!

At least 20 different ways that I could see "focus" being interpreted, most of those conflicting with each other. I suppose that the advice giver is allowed to retroactively choose which definition of "focus" that they actually meant at the time they gave that advice.

It would also tell them to develop minimum viable products -- which as commonly interpreted means slap together crap to test the market. Had they done this they would have been forgotten in short order.

I would argue that the Apple I was exactly an MVP (as I understand it): not crap, limited in functionality, and impossible to mass-produce.

+1 to that. It didn't even have a monitor, keyboard or casing: http://andrewchen.co/apples-minimum-viable-product/

That was typical of computer kits of the day. MVP of the sort I was imagining would have been something that barely worked if at all and was tossed together in two weeks.

Of course what I'm really arguing against is the fake cutout interpretation of MVP, not the concept as a whole.

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

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

He didn't? Steve Jobs attended Reed College (and according to his biography, it was the only college he applied to)

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

He was outranked by the first two, you can't list a VP before the President.

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

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?

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?

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.

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.

No, "Staff" is a top-level heading, just like "Competition".

I think that mention of Apple was simply missed by whoever redacting the document. They're saying "Manufacturers like us have already started to offer assembled computers, disrupting the dominant marketshare of unassmbled kits."

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" (Shown as "[Redacted] Software Bank" - wonder what that blank could be?)

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

What other word do you know that starts with an up-left slanted character, has two descenders immediately following, is less than 6 mono-spaced characters long?

Is it Aqqle?

> Because of the applications development ability of the software oriented hobbyist, Apple will continue to service his needs.

Developers. Developers. Developers. Developers. Developers.

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.

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

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

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

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

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?

It has been years since I heard anyone ask about viral coefficients.

And yet the graph seems exact: According to the Telegraph, Apple's sales in 1982 were indeed $1b. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/steve-jobs/8810045/Ste...

They did note that home computer market had been growing by 250% per year, that is mostly what that exponential curve is based on.

I happened to be reading a transcript of a Bill Gates interview last night. [1] Interesting that he predicted the exponential growth and realized it at Microsoft too.

[1] http://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/gates.htm#tc8

In fact that means they underestimated. Read more closely, the graph is their estimate of PC Market Total Revenue and they predict only 35% market share of that pie.

So they projected a 350M slice of a 1B market, and got a 1B slice of a... ??? market

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

Completely off-the-cuff, but mobile?

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...

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

You reminded me of these charts by Horace Dediu:

http://www.asymco.com/2012/01/17/the-rise-and-fall-of-person...

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

http://web.archive.org/web/20141113180306/http://www.asymco....

"Smart" device adoption

Omg, THANKS for sharing this!

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.

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