John Sculley On A Friend, Business Partner, Visionary

Dec, 1982 - A pirate’s flag flew over Bandley II, the Cupertino, Silicon Valley home to the Steve Jobs’ Macintosh team. In preparation for my visit Steve had told his team that I was President of Pepsi and they should give me a really cool demo because I could become a big customer. The Mac was only a small mother board with wires running to a make shift power supply and another bundle of colored wires leading to a 10" cathode ray tube balanced on a bench top. To impress me, Andy Herzfeld, one of Steve’s brightest software engineers, had created a simple animation of dancing Pepsi cans on the screen. I didn’t know enough at the time to appreciate how revolutionary this computer animation was.

The fully developed Mac was still more than a year away from its birth as a commercial product. Steve’s small Mac team averaged only 22 years of age and Steve himself had just recently turned 27. Even the iconic Mac 128k case that would resemble a 1950’s television set hadn’t yet been designed.

More from Biztech

Future Group - Reliance Retail Deal approved by CCI RBI ban on cryptocurrencies takes effect; prohibition could force investors to tap the black market

But in Steve Jobs’ mind’s eye there wasn’t the slightest doubt. Mac was destined to change the world and it would be the most ‘insanely great’ product ever! Steve called it a bicycle for the mind. The world would know it as pure magic.

Steve was always Apple’s visionary; when I first joined Apple my priority was to squeeze 3 more years of cash flow out of the near-end-of-life Apple II so Steve would have enough cash runway to create and launch the Mac.

So began an incredible friendship and partnership that was to last only until the Spring of 1985. Now, many decades later I replay in my mind our amazing times together. I am still learning lessons from Steve Jobs. The advances in technology over these years are extraordinary, but Steve isn’t an engineer. As an artist he barely draws anything recognisable on his white board. But as a master impresario the clarity and brilliance of his creations is genius. Steve would say, “I have this really incredible product inside me, and I have to get it out”. One time, Steve and I sat in Dr. Land’s conference room at his office on the Charles River that Dr. Land used after he was fired from Polaroid. I sat there listening while these two geniuses discussed where great inventions come from? Pointing towards the center of the empty conference table Dr. Land says, “I didn’t invent the Polaroid camera, its always existed just waiting to be discovered”. Steve replied, “That’s right. I knew long before we built it exactly what the Mac was. It always existed. I never had to ask customers what they want. If it’s something truly revolutionary they won’t be able to help you.” All of Steve’s visionary products have always existed, they are just waiting for him to discover them.

Steve recruited me because he believed that the Mac would be such a life empowering tool-for-the-mind that Apple needed to prepare to sell Macs in the millions. No one else in Silicon Valley knew or cared anything about advertising. But Steve Jobs cared a lot. Steve Jobs believed the Mac deserved the very best entertainment experience advertising campaign ever. He was inspired by ‘Pepsi Generation’ and ‘Pepsi Challenge’ and believed that a world changing product deserved a world class brand campaign.

Steve’s ‘first principles’ from those early days haven’t changed.

Steve would say the hardest decisions are what to leave out, not what to put in. He is the ultimate systems designer. Always simplifying. Everything begins and ends with the user experience. Simplify the steps. “Look we can did it in 3 steps”. “Not good enough, do it in one step”. Simplify, simplify, simplify. Sound familiar? This was Steve Jobs in 1983!

In the early 1980s software code was admired as a work of art. Steve only recruited the best code designers in the world. No bozos, ever. It’s always about design. Its also always about taste. Steve’s taste that is, as he controls every design decision even while by his side is the world’s greatest industrial designer Jonathan Ives.

We spent hours together often just walking around. Sometimes it was the Apple campus, other times it walks in the hills up at Sky Line. Steve loves to talk through an idea. I remember him saying, “Great companies must have a noble cause. Then it’s the leader’s job to transform that noble cause into such an inspiring vision that it will attract the most talented people in the world to want and join that cause”.

When Steve Jobs resigned as CEO I emailed him a message:

Steve,

I owe you a lot.

Because you cared so much, the universe is a little bit different. You did it with taste, design, addictive user experience, and no compromise products that make all of us smile.

John

Sculley was CEO of Pepsi-Cola when Steve Jobs recruited him to be Apple’s CEO in 1983.