What Steve Jobs Taught Me About Growth (opens in new tab)

(blogs.hbr.org)

35 pointshellacious14y ago8 comments

8 comments

8 comments · 5 top-level

softbuilder14y ago· 3 in thread

tl;dr: Think Different. Fluff.

It shows how bold Jobs was even when Apple was on the ropes. This was the same year he needed a $150M investment from Microsoft to keep from running out of cash and he was willing to close the most profitable part of the company because it was not how he wanted to sell to people. The authors big quote is from Jobs in 1997 "Fuck the channel. we don't need the fuckin' channel"

That is exactly how I feel as a B2B customer. Companies that sell through "the channel" have beautiful web pages showing the products and absolutely no way to find out how much something costs. You need to get a call back from a salesperson who wants to figure out who your customer is so he can "add value" right up to the limit of what you will pay. I have begged with these guys to just give me an order of magnitude: "Do you sell for $100, $1000, $10000?"

efsavage14y ago

This is changing. As people who grew up with the internet start to become responsible for spending, salespeople are figuring out that "no price = no lead". It's a slow process, I'd say it's got another 10 years of steam left in it, as the old guard (on both sides of the table) fade out, but I hear this concept being discussed from business/sales/MBA people far more today than 10 years ago.

r00fus14y ago

Wait, wasn't it Eddie Cue who said "Fuck the channels"?

intev14y ago

I'm not sure I understand the point of this article. Do things differently? What an original article.

What the article fails to mention is the thousands of startups and companies that tried to do things differently and failed. I think Steve Jobs took a huge risk, and he had the ability to pull it off, and he succeeded. Not everyone can do that. So many things could have gone wrong for someone else.

_nist14y ago

How the hell did some business fluff get on a site called "Hacker News"? 95% of business think can be reduced to fluff, dribel, and nonsense buzz words like "Do things different", "Think innovatively", etc. Why don't they teach them something like "Todays Lesson: The public is stupid, so make a fart noise phone app and you'll get rich."

adolph14y ago

Seems like "we will use a direct sales/lean inventory model like Dell" isn't as pithy as profanity.

gallerytungsten14y ago

As a former Apple VAR, I recall thinking in the late 90s that Apple had this attitude of "Fuck the channel; we don't need the fuckin' channel." Interesting to see confirmation.

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