Today at Stanford University, Steve Jobs the current CEO of Apple Computer Inc. gave a commencement speech to the graduating class. The speech was very humorous and inspiring, giving tales of Jobs’ youth and his successes and failures.
Steve came from humble beginnings of course as he started Apple all in his garage with friend the late and great Steve Wozniak. They would make the first Apple computer in 1976 as basically just a bunch of parts, but their greatest success and what set them off into the big leagues of tech was the Macintosh computer.
But even Jobs has had his own struggles in the past, he opened up about his time at Reed College and how he would eventually drop out. He talked about how when he was in the process of dropping out he did not have any money and even struggled to find a good meal. It really shows that even successful people have their struggles at one point.
What’s also interesting to note is when Jobs talked about how he was fired from his own company stating “How do you even get fired from your own company?” A very funny joke but it led into the story of how Steve was fired by John Sculley who was the current CEO at the time. They came to a lot of disagreements on the company should have been run and eventually Steve would be fired because he did not hold as many assets as Sculley did.
But something that would shock some is when Steve talked about death. “Death is the destination we all share and no one has ever escaped it.” Was quote that really stuck as it is true that death is certain for all of us and it will happen to us eventually, but Steve shared about his time when he diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and how he was lucky enough to have beaten cancer and it made him give a different outlook on life
“Stay hungry, Stay foolish.” Was a quote shared not only by Steve Jobs but also the book “The Whole Earth Catalog” which essentially means to have the desire and ambition to do more and life and to step into the unknown, and why Steve used this quote was to tell the graduates to stay ambitious and take a step into the unknown because when you graduate college you are taking a step into the unknown.
There are clearly many ways to interpret this speech but the one way to interpret it is life itself, thinking about whether there is a clear connection between all 3 of the stories Steve shared is quite obvious. He starts by talking about his birth then he talks about the time he failed and finally he talks about death, and the analogy whether it was intentional or not is incredible people are born and people make mistakes but most importantly we all die and that’s why this speech was so incredible.
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