Brent Schlender

Rick Tetzeli

Based on the highly popular 2012 cover story in Fast Company, an award-winning journalist and a veteran editor present a behind-the-scenes account of how Steve Jobs became the most famous and visionary CEO in history through interviews with people who knew Jobs best.

The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart Into a Visionary Leader

Becoming Steve Jobs

Roxan

I didn't see it than , but it turned out that getting fired from apple was the best thing that could happen to me.

the heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner. it freed me to enter one of my most creative periods of life. 

"the stores offered group lessons in how to transfer playlists and albums to an ipod. even though it was a very simple process."

The online store went up on april 281998, as cue preperd to drive home he stopped by steve's office to tell him they sold more than a milliondollar worth of computersin just six hours, thats great said steve, imaguie what we could do if we had real stores. nothing would be ever enoguh cue relaized. he liked the challenge

So when OS X was finally ready to go, it could make the mac  do things no pc has ever been able to do.

users revealed in the obvious cosmetic improvements like the ability to have video played continue to be played even as you moved the mouse to move a window on the screen. 

And OS X was truly beautiful to behold. creating a screen with the illusion of three dimensions, where windows appeared to cast shadows on the layers of object behind them.

Like steve, johnny has a gift for clearly explaining stuff,, steve was impressed. you know jonnies kind of a cherub. 

Steve put it this way "You hire people that are better than you aren't certain things, and than make sure they need to tell you when you are wrong. 

the executive teams at apple and pixar are constantly arguing with each other. everybody wears their thoughts on their sleeves at Pixar.

Everybody totally straight with what they think, and the same is beginning to happen at apple."

"The company is one of the most amazing inventions of humans, this abstract construct that's incredibly powerful. even so, for me,

it's about the products, it's about working with together with really fun smart creative people to create wonderful things, it's not about the money, 

what a company is, a group of people who can make more than just the next big thing, it's a talent,  it's a capability, it's a culture, its a point of view and it's a way of working together to make the next big thing, and the next one and the next one. 

A talent, a capability, a culture, and a point of view: the apple he was in the midst of re creating would have all these things, as would the products it would create 

Steve also understood that the personal satisfaction of accomplishing something insanely great was the best motivation of all for a groupas talented as his, "yoiu had to belive that it was going to take some time, that you werent going to wqake up tommorw morning and it was all going to be fixed, because there was a lot of pain along the way there were a lot of people saying it's going tofail its not going to work, this is wrong with this this is wrong with that, finding a million things wrong, but you just had to know that if youkept your head, kept working kept trying to do the right thing, it would work out, saving apple was an accomplishment eveyroine one on the teamwould take pride in for thier rest of their lives.

 he cared deeply and that what made him a great manager, 

"when i returned to apple, I was blown away by the fact the third of the people stayed  really werea to a plus - the kind youd do anything to hire

think different started a process of bringing back pride to apple employee's. billboards and posters went up across the cupertino campus/ steve narrated version was featured in a video prompting the whole camping inside the company, and later after eapple won the emmy awards, the company gave a 50 page commemorative book to all it's employees, our audience was the employees as much as anyone else. inspiring them was challenging.

the truth is more subtle, over the previous decade steve had learned to act less impulsive . in the past he get overreached time and again. now he was willing to walk away slowly down a path

and if following his nose led him somewhere better than where he thought was headed, thats where he would go

to trust your own feelings rather than obeying rules or allowing yourself to be influenced by other people's opinions

: Take a chance and follow your nose - you may be right!  

he and levy spent weeks studding the ins and outs of film finances and accountings, to get a better sense how how studio really make their money as part of their homework they flew down to hollywood to quiz other exercuirtves at other studios about movie budgets and distribution deals.

they immediately learns that pixar was at least at that point a long shot for a successful IPO

some of the woman steve jobs has dated had seem to be needy overtime. laurence wasnt that way. she brought as much self sufficiency to the relationships he did. 

they both accepted the value of hard work so they were fine giving space to each other interests. 

why not micromanagement  and fighting back

At pixar he would lay the foundations of two of his strengths: his ability to fight back in times of distressed his ability to make the most out of of competition" i became the place where hear really learns albeit slowly and reluctantly and against his natural instincts that the best management technique is to forgo micromanagement and give good talented people the room they need to succeed. 

Steve and lewin and some other founders made several trip to universities to hear what professors and researchers really wanted and mostly their pains. 

we didnt have alot of money, all of us  6 would squeeze in a rental car. we even shared hotel rooms, we developed a real pioneer spirit. 

the not having money drove us better to the mindset of the startup hustle life

when he resigned, steve  had told the apple board that his new company would not attack any important apple markets. that was nonsense, his state target - the higher education  was in fact very important to apple, and he stolen awa levin. 

steve believed he now had everything he needed to succeed as a world class CEO 

While steve looked at his elders at apple for guidance he also sought it out elsewhere, he didn't yet have the skills to build a great company, but he admired those who had pulled it off. and he would go great lengths to meet them and learn from them. basically i got to know all these guys who were all company builders, and the particular scent of silicon valley at that time left a serious impression on me

knowing you are better than the outside world

Woz knew the mits machine wasnt all that much more advanced than the cream soda computer hed created four years earlier in 1971 when he has to use much less sophisticated components. 

anything is possible with a great partner

Woz who was 5 years older than steve taught steve the intrinsic value of great engineering, his accomplishments reinforced steve's sense that anything was possible when you had technological genius on your side. but it was steve's ability to manipulate woz  that rove the partnership.

But it demonstrated the feasibility of having a computer to yourself one that you could program 24 hours a day if you wanted t, without having to waiting line or punch any cards.

bill gates read the article and shortly thereafter famously dropped out of harvard to start a little company called micro-soft to design software programming languages for the altair 

steve however proposed that they try to make some money by selling compltlyasse,bled machines. so while eoz polished his circuit design. steve pulled together the necessary materials and priced the finished boxes. he and woz netted some 6K selling the illegal devices at 150$ a pop, mostly to college students. 

the two boys wander dormitory hallways knocking on doors and asking occupants if this was georges room, - a fictional character who supposedly was an expert phone phreak.

if the discussion prompted interest, they'd demonstrated that the blue box cloud do, and sometimes make a sale.

Based on the explosive cover story about Steve Jobs in Fast Company in May 2012, this is the real story of how Steve Jobs became the most famous and forward-looking CEO on Earth. Veteran journalist Brent Schlender and veteran editor Rick Tetzeli take us behind the scenes, to friends, industry insiders, and the people who knew Jobs best - but decided not to talk to Walter Isaacson. Schlender, who was friends with Jobs for 25 years, has over 100 hours of never-before-transcribed interview tapes with Jobs to draw on as well.

Abhimat Gautam

A few factual inaccuracies, but overall a very fresh, compelling, and convincing narrative about something that could have just easily been an uninteresting series of facts.

Cristian Garcia

I will never get bored with reading stories about the management in Apple. Jobs, being the main figure, has so many lessons when it comes to his way of managing this behemoth. Although the learnings are up to you. By connecting the dots and reading between the lines. This book is just another side of the story. A good one I must say. If you read Walter Isaacson's book, you might get bored with this one. But both volumes blend pretty good. And for a good cocktail, I would add Creativity Inc. by  Ed Catmull

Lee Herman

This is an excellent biography by a journalist and author who became personal friends with Steve Jobs and had close access to Steve when he was alive and most of the key figures in the history of Apple. Unvarnished and honest but largely sympathetic to his subject, Schlender has richly researched and interviewed Steve Jobs and his inner circle and other industry figures for many years, so he knew Steve Jobs and Apple over most of the period he covers. He writes well and the book is a pleasant read.

Sanat Gersappa

Based on the popular cover story about Steve Jobs in Fast Company in May 2012, this is the behind the scenes account of how Steve Jobs arguably became the most famous and visionary CEO in history. Journalist Brent Schlender and editor Rick Tetzeli have interviewed friends, industry insiders, and the people who knew Jobs best throughout his evolution as a CEO and leader. In addition Schlender, who knew Jobs personally for 25 years, has over 100 hours of interview tapes with Jobs to draw on, many hours of which have never before been transcribed.

James Paden

Fine book. Maybe I struggled with it because I read Walter Isaacson only a couple years ago, so most of the content wasn't new to me, but I greatly preferred Walter Isaacson's book. I was enthralled in that book, and I must have missed all the negativity people said Isaacson wrote - because this book seemed just as negative to me.

Luke Kanies

A book written with a clear agenda (securing Jobs's legacy as not-an-asshole), it was also a far more informative book than Isaacson's Jobs about how products were actually made, and how the company worked. It was especially useful to fill in the years around NeXT and Pixar.

Anna Pinto

Focuses a lot more on the business than Isaacson's book. But, as I imagined, it's too sappy at some points.

Vom angry young man zum Ausnahme-Unternehmer Halb Genie, halb Wahnsinniger, Guru, Choleriker und Kontrollfreak – das ist das vorherrschende Bild, das sich die Welt von Steve Jobs gemacht hat. Jobs selbst hat zu seinen Lebzeiten dieses Image gern gepflegt, und seine Biographen sind ihm bereitwillig gefolgt. Vier Jahre nach seinem Tod im Oktober 2011 ist es nun an der Zeit, ein klareres Bild des Apple-Gründers zu zeichnen, ein Bild, das frei ist von Klischees und Vorurteilen. Brent Schlender begleitete Steve Jobs über zwanzig Jahre lang, der engen Freundschaft der beiden verdanken wir tiefe Einblicke in das Leben des Unternehmers und in das Imperium von Apple. Auf Grundlage zahlreicher Gespräche mit Jobs selbst, mit engsten Vertrauten und Weggefährten wie Tim Cook oder auch Bill Gates ist ein ebenso differenziertes wie leidenschaftliches Porträt entstanden, das in seinem Kern der Frage nachgeht, wie aus einem ungestümen jungen Gründer die wichtigste Unternehmerpersönlichkeit unserer Zeit reifen konnte. Die Nähe Schlenders und das Knowhow Tetzelis – beide gehören zu den profiliertesten Technikjournalisten und zu den besten Kennern der Silicon-Valley-Szene – machen Becoming Steve Jobs zu einer mitreißenden Geschichte der Technologie-Ära und zu einer Biographie, die den Unternehmer nicht zur Ikone erhebt, sondern den Menschen hinter dem Mythos zum Vorschein bringt.

Vom Abenteurer zum Visionär

Michael Camilleri

This is not the definitive Steve Jobs biography but I'm not sure if we'll get one until a lot more time has passed. What it is is an interesting take on how Jobs transformed from a person who was kicked out of a company in ignominy to one that returned to lead it to glory.

Michael Hessling

Wonderful. SO much better than the Isaacson book.

There have been many books--on a large and small scale--about Steve Jobs, one of the most famous CEOs in history. But this book is different from all the others. Becoming Steve Jobs takes on and breaks down the existing myth and stereotypes about Steve Jobs. The conventional, one-dimensional view of Jobs is that he was half-genius, half-jerk from youth, an irascible and selfish leader who slighted friends and family alike. Becoming Steve Jobs answers the central question about the life and career of the Apple cofounder and CEO: How did a young man so reckless and arrogant that he was exiled from the company he founded become the most effective visionary business leader of our time, ultimately transforming the daily life of billions of people? Drawing on incredible and sometimes exclusive access, Schlender and Tetzeli tell a different story of a real human being who wrestled with his failings and learned to maximize his strengths over time. Their rich, compelling narrative is filled with stories never told before from the people who knew Jobs best, and who decided to open up to the authors, including his family, former inner circle executives, and top people at Apple, Pixar and Disney, most notably Tim Cook, Jony Ive, Eddy Cue, Ed Catmull, John Lasseter, Robert Iger and many others. In addition, Brent knew Jobs personally for 25 years and draws upon his many interviews with him, on and off the record, in writing the book. He and Rick humanize the man and explain, rather than simply describe, his behavior. Along the way, the book provides rich context about the technology revolution we all have lived through, and the ways in which Jobs changed our world. Schlender and Tetzeli make clear that Jobs's astounding success at Apple was far more complicated than simply picking the right products: he became more patient, he learned to trust his inner circle, and discovered the importance of growing the company incrementally rather than only shooting for dazzling game-changing products. A rich and revealing account that will change the way we view Jobs, Becoming Steve Jobs shows us how one of the most colorful and compelling figures of our times was able to combine his unchanging, relentless passion with a more mature management style to create one of the most valuable and beloved companies on the planet. From the Hardcover edition.

Becoming Steve Jobs The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart Into a Visionary Leader

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