Steve Jobs: how to build excellent products that sell

Real artists sign their work. That was Steve Jobs rallying cry. Jobs gathered 35 team members who were all involved in making the Macintosh. And got them to sign the mould that would make the plastic case. Everyone’s signature would appear inside every Mac that was shipped. Most customers would never see the signatures, but that didn’t matter. Because Apple was not making a product, they were building excellence.

“The goal wasn’t to make a lot of money, it was to build the greatest thing possible, or even a little greater!”

Jobs saw himself as an artist. He took this ideology to NeXT as well, his venture after he was fired from Apple. Jobs demanded that the internal wiring and circuit boards had to be laid out beautifully, even though no one would see them!

Everything was set in 90 degree angles! It looked elegant! Expensive magnesium was used for the chassis! It was a technical masterpiece.

Everyone who saw the computer fell in love with it! It was the computer Tim Berners Lee used to build the world wide web! It was the most beautiful and powerful computer everyone wanted.

Unfortunately, it flopped in the marketplace!

Because Jobs attempt to make the most beautiful computer made it unaffordable. Priced at $6500, very few people could justify buying it.

Steve Jobs learnt a very important lesson with NeXT. He lets us in on that lesson in his interviews.

When Steve Jobs rejoins Apple in 1997, he is asked a question by a hostile audience member.

How is Java better than Opendoc? Jobs answers that Opendoc maybe technologically better. But the bigger question to ask is: how can you sell 8 or 10 billion dollars worth of product?

For that, you have to start with customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with technology!

You cannot be good. You have to be good at what matters.

You have to be excellent at what the market actually demands. Jobs learnt and taught that excellence has to give you a decisive competitive edge. Otherwise it’s simply a waste chasing excellence. It’ll lead to expensive failures.

You have to be precise where you practice excellence. Because resources are limited, aren’t they?

When the iPod was launched, tech people called it a failure.

Because it didn’t have a voice recorder. It lacked radio. It didn’t have a removable battery. All the things that other mp3 players had!

So then why should anyone even buy an iPod?

Because Jobs focused on building excellence only on the things that mattered. The things that gave him a competitive edge.

1. Everyone wanted a portable music player. A device that would actually allow you to have a 1000 songs in your pocket.

2. But everyone faced a problem: no one wanted to spend hours transferring a 1000 songs to their music player. And no one wanted to click 50 times to find their song.

3. Those friction points are the only things Jobs focused on. He ditched the industry standard USB for a faster FireWire. And instead of buttons, the iPod would have a scrollwheel!

That’s how you get a product that sells over 450 million units! Chase excellence, but only when it matters.

In fact, if you go through many of Steve Jobs product decisions, they were always hated by the tech crowd.

The first iPhone didn’t have 3g. He removed the floppy drive from laptops. And aux cables from phones.

But if you dig into the absurd decisions, you would see the pattern. He focused on what he believed people actually wanted. And eliminated everything that took them away from that desire.

3g ate away battery so it was dropped. Floppy drives made laptops bulky. Aux inputs made phones less dust and water resistant.

Every decision was hated. Every decision helped sell a few billion more.

Action Summary:

• Step 1, Find the desire. Step 2, Find the constraint, something that slows people down to achieve their desire. Step 3, Apply excellence there. Be excellent where it removes buyers’ friction, and be ruthless everywhere else.

• Excellence requires courageous decisions. Everything new will be panned by critics.