3 Important People Everyone in Tech Should Know About

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If you're in tech and you're not  learning from Conan going viral or   Caitlin Clark going viral or every Steve  Jobs project ever, you need to catch up. Because it's about how these  three people approach originality,   authenticity (that one's huge), and failure. Before we dig in, some quick context,  unless you've been off the internet,   you know Conan's Hot Ones episode has gone viral.

It's what many people are calling  the best episode in history. We go all the way from Conan saying, "I never  saw spice till I was about 52 years old." To near the end where he says, "I'm fine.

I'm perfectly [expletive] fine." We'll learn from Conan everything between those  two moments and even more from his career. For Caitlin Clark, if we think back a couple years   to Bill Burr's bit where he  says, "Dude look at the WNBA."

Caitlin Clark's in college  ball, but you get the idea. "They have been playing in front of three to  400 people a night for a quarter of a century." We'll come back to that bit, but fast  forward to what happened this year,   where the women's NCAA  championship game was literally, "the most watched basketball  game...period...in five years. Men's, women's, college, NBA." There's a ton to learn from  how that happened and why.

And finally, we all know the  popular side of Steve Jobs,   and tech drama always gets eyeballs like  Facebook being dramatized in The Social Network. "Let's gut the frickin' nerd." Which, yes, you saw that right, the mouth movement  and the recorded dialogue are not the same. Watch again. "Let's gut the frickin' nerd." Nonetheless, the drama earned a  quarter billion at the box office.

Now, Jobs wasn't shy about his opinions,  and he could be even more dramatic. "I'm going to destroy Android  because it's a stolen product." We're not done yet. "I'm willing to go to thermonuclear war on this."

Which is, admittedly, pretty dramatic. But there's a lesser-known side to Jobs  that relates to these three things,   and I think there's more to learn from that  than some of the sensationalized drama. So let's get started with originality. With Conan, you know from the first title  card that he's going to be different. "I brought my personal physician, Dr. Arroyo. This is Dr. Arroyo."

"Hi, how are you?" "Amazing, hi, nice to meet you." No one's done this across  nine years of Hot Ones. "You don't have to talk to him, just to me. Just get a baseline temperature."

And we set the tone right away. "...been my doctor for about 25 years." "Yeah, yeah." "Where did you go to medical school?" "In 1998." "Where'd you go to medical school? In 1998." Then he says, "Where?" "Where? Oh, um, out of state."

"You should go." "Okay." Dr. Arroyo there becomes our first  narrative motif, a recurring theme.

By the way, Jobs does narrative motifs all  the time, but he does it with structure. The iPod Video, "Like every great classic  story, I've divided it into three acts." His Stanford commencement speech, "Today I  want to tell you three stories from my life." He crafts these narrative motifs, these  themes that recur like no one else. "An iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator.

An iPod, a phone. Are you getting it?" [Audience cheering] Now for Conan, because he's a guest on a talk  show, he does a second really critical motif. It's not a structure like  Jobs, but it's a baseline,   which is Conan repeatedly  saying, "This is nothing." And then, "I've yet to have any spice at all." This builds confidence around the idea  that he's completely unaffected by spice. So now we have two motifs.

You get motif number one. "Dr. Arroyo." "Yes, sir."

"Can we get a baseline pulse here?" "Yeah." "It's getting, it's starting  to race a little bit." "Oh, sure, sure." He continues that same dynamic. "You're just choking me." "So sorry."

"No, no, you just feel for the pulse." "All right, yeah." "It's just you've been with me for a long time, but..." "Yeah, it's there."

"Okay." And we get motif number two. "I don't think there's a wing on this table that  I cannot devour like it's cool whipped cream." Which builds and builds throughout  the gauntlet into Da Bomb. "Oh my gosh."

It is the most angry, awful  flavored sauce in the entire lineup. "Oh my gosh." But Conan completely doubles down on the motif. "Come on, man, are we doing this or not?!" "Yeah, no, I'm with you." "Are we doing it or not?!" "No, I'm on the same page." "What's the point of even being alive?!" By doubling down on these patterns, we get  one of the most original ways to approach   being interviewed, and it goes completely off  the rails, which we'll show more of in a bit.

But if you tried and you fed ChatGPT  every other Hot Ones transcript,   it couldn't come close to being able to  put together half of what we've seen here,   because Conan's not interested in copying others. He hasn't done that in his career, and  he's not doing that in this interview. Now, when we see game-changing stuff in text,   stuff that actually changes  things, it's rarely incremental. It can be divisive, sure,  but at least it's original. Again, we'll talk about AI Pin a bit later,   and we'll come back to Conan, but the key  is this — he does stuff in his own way. And so does Caitlin Clark.

If you don't know the story of  Caitlin Clark, let's start with this. In eight weeks this year, she broke three of  the most notable records in basketball history. So here Iowa's playing Michigan — this  is February — and it's the first quarter. Michigan misses the shot. Gabbie Marshall recovers.

Straight to Caitlin Clark. Here comes Clark. How will she go for history? Let's pause. And first, let's rewind. Look how far back in the court she is. For reference, that's half court.

But look at this. She says... "How will she go for history?" Pause again.

Why did she say "for history"? Because if Clark makes this shot, she  will beat the all-time college career   point record in Division I Women's Basketball. Before we resume, prep yourself for  three sounds in very quick succession. One, the sound of the ball on impact. Two, the briefest of silences. And three, the crowd's reaction.

Listen to that again. It is the second most satisfying  audio waveform in basketball history. But that's just one record. Watch this. Where just two and a half weeks later,  they're playing Ohio State, and you hear... "This for college basketball history!" Pause.

She just made college basketball history,  so why is he saying that at this game? Because right at this moment, Caitlin Clark became... "The all-time leading scorer in  major college basketball history." Now she's broken the women's record and  the men's record, all while creating...   the first most satisfying audio  waveform in basketball history.

Now, if you're in tech and you think that these  things are just a part of success, you're right. But with Clark, that momentum led to the third  and a very different kind of record, this is all   within eight weeks, because this time, the women's  championship game became, as we now know... The most watched basketball  game...period...in five years But why? If you look at Clark's history, originality  just being herself was at the core. Her parents, in fact...

"struggled to find teams where there were   girls that were pretty competitive  and was gonna help me get better" So she doesn't care, she moves over to the  boys' teams until around sixth grade saying... "it never was like 'oh, why am I playing  with the boys?' It was just what I did" And that competition goes all  the way back to that time. “Those are some of the boys that  know I would beat them one on one,   so it’s funny they would admit that, but it’s  honestly I think a huge reason of who I am is growing up and playing that way. So what does she get from  this, and what can we learn? Well, over time, she builds this super  competitive style into her approach. She takes what she felt early on...

"Like all I wanted to do was win, no matter if it  was a board game, a card game, really anything. Like, I just was gonna do  whatever it took to win." She brings that into her college career, and  she realizes to get there on a technical level,   actual achievement, she sets  out to do what Steph Curry did,   who got so good at the three-pointer  that he holds the all-time NBA record. "It's curry for the record. It's good!"

But in women's college ball, Clark  became so good at the three-pointer,   and when she makes those shots, she's getting  50% more points over just a two-pointer. Because that's how math works. Of course, Clark explains it like this... "I was never like, 'Oh, I need to  make really long three-pointers.' It was just kind of something  that evolved in my game,   and something that I really embraced, and  the crowd embraced, and fans embraced.

So, you know, it's probably  people's favorite part of my game." Now, competition itself, you could say, is not  an original trait, but it is embracing that kind   of journey, a whole way of doing something  that's not following everyone else's path. That is huge.

It lets Caitlin Clark do things that are very   obviously and measurably beyond  what I think anyone could predict. Also, it's worth noting, she recently  broke Steph Curry's NCAA record for   three-pointers within a season, and it  was during that same eight-week period. Now, for Steve Jobs, when it comes to being  original, yes, we can look at the obvious. We can look at Macintosh or iMac or iPhone. There was no fear of being  different, of being original.

But for Jobs, with originality,  I want to do something different. There's two examples, two different parts of  his career, actually two different companies. The first one, this side of Jobs,  is probably the most studied.

"The problem with them is really  sort of in the bottom 40 there. It's this stuff right here." This is the original iPhone keynote, 2007, and  Jobs goes up and says that the problem is... "They all have these keyboards that are there  whether you need them or not to be there. And they all have these control  buttons that are fixed in plastic." And they solve it, of course, by  getting rid of everything else.

"Just make a giant screen. A giant screen." And if that description sounds familiar,  look at literally any mobile phone today. Like Caitlin Clark in her college career, Jobs  was intensely focused on changing the game. But Ballmer — this is Steve Ballmer,   who was CEO of Microsoft — he very  famously reacted to the announcement. "I said that is the most expensive phone in  the world, and it doesn't appeal to business   customers because it doesn't have a keyboard,  which makes it not a very good email machine."

Of course, it's easy to point out almost two  decades later how wrong he was, but in fairness,   I did something with that edit of Balmer, which  is going to relate bizarrely enough to AI Pin. But three people being original in three  very different ways, different industries. Conan, even just in Hot Ones? Changing the game. Clark, even just at 22 years of age? Changing the game.

And of course, Jobs. And this may seem obvious because  the original iPhone became the   fastest-selling smartphone in history, and I  don't have to tell you how big it's become. But I also said there's a second story. I want to talk about a side of Jobs  that not a lot of people focus on.

It's not about Apple,  everyone knows those stories. Instead, I want to talk about a totally  different record he broke, with a different team. This is the second example. In 1995, he spoke at SIGGRAPH  95, he comes on stage to talk   about a project his company Pixar was working on. And you'll never believe how he kicks it off. "I want to talk about three things today."

We'll come back to what those three things  are, but the film, of course, is Toy Story. Back in '86 — this is 1986 — Jobs  bought Pixar from George Lucas. Originally, they were going to  sell the Pixar Image Computer. He didn't buy Pixar to make films originally. But over time, that changed. And nine years later, Toy Story becomes "the first   completely computer-generated  feature-length motion picture."

Which doesn't just gross a ton  of money at the box office,   which doesn't just release to absolute  critical acclaim, which doesn't just get   nominated for three Oscars and receive  a Special Achievement Academy Award. But when Jobs takes Pixar public, which is  like just a week after Toy Story comes out,   it becomes the biggest IPO of 1995. Although the whole Pixar selling  hardware and software thing,   although that didn't take off, they  did something far more original.

And today, most would argue that Toy Story did  for animation what iPhone did for mobile phones. The story of SIGGRAPH 95, though, goes way deeper. But to get there, we have to shift  gears from originality to authenticity. Let's start with Conan.

One way he shows up really authentically  is in his self-deprecation. Now, where some people might get  a laugh by tearing down others,   Conan has absolutely no fear of just  being himself, making fun of himself. Even here with the final sauce, The Last  Dab Xperience, he literally takes a swig. He pauses for a moment and eventually  says, "What's wrong with me? Why can't I feel?" At this stage, there is no vanity, there's  no more calm, he is fully committed. Which is why when Sean tries to wrap up by  saying, "Conan O'Brien, the good news is,   that's a wrap on our lunch date with the  wings of death, we're here about to drop–" He can't finish that sentence  because Conan jumps in to insist, "I'm fine.

I'm perfectly [expletive] fine. You didn't come up with one way that had any  effect on Conan, because he's here to stay." Self-deprecation is where Conan shines, but  to understand deeper, let's go back to 2016.

"Oh, that's Nike? Look what I'm doing, pretty smart. Nike up here, Reebok down here. I get paid twice! Ka-chang!" Again, he's knowingly establishing himself as  ridiculous, so Kevin Hart can come in and say,   "You don't karate kick after say... no." Of course, he has to explain to  Conan, "You don't get paid twice,   they have no idea that you're wearing them." But Conan doubles down, just  like he's doing in Hot Ones. But here he says, "I just got the word out.

Nike up here, Reebok down there. These sneakers? We don't even know who made  them, they're Romanian. My point is, I get paid three times. Ka-cha-pow! Pah! I ripped my whole ass when I did that.

This is filling with blood." And that comfort he has,   where he commits to a bit involving  something ridiculous, usually about himself' "Conan, I bet you were wild in your college days." "Oh man, I was balls to the wall. I put it up there and I saw if it would stick.

I rolled that onion all the way down." That's what hits so hard in the final six  minutes of Hot Ones, because we've gone from "This is nothing!" All the way up to this: "I've never felt so alive!" And it's that ability to have  that full range of expression. It requires someone who is 100% comfortable  being both the calm and collected guy "I don't fear your wings, man." and the person who screams "This is a guy who's just being  on a show, and it's legitimate.

So I say here's to you, Sean. You're a great mother [expletive] host!" "Right back to you!" "And I'm glad I'm here!" This is uniquely Conan, but before  we move on to Clark and Jobs,   there is another aspect of Conan, because  although he has these great narrative motifs,   these callbacks, and he has a brilliant  comedic mind and timing, all of it,   it's nothing compared to the other  reason that Conan is so successful. Sean, who is seriously a  world-class interviewer, he asks "Do you take any kind of perverse pride   in the sheer number of hours of  television that you've created?" And Conan's response is sincere. "I was never that excited about volume. To me, it's whether it's good or not." It's these personal insights  that lead to that authenticity.

In fact, he tells a story about  getting to host Late Night. "And then this crazy situation develops. One in a billion chance where I get a chance  to audition for that show and then get it." And even when he got the job.

"There's the early era in '93 to '95  where I'm living in sheer terror all   the time because I'm waiting for a phone  call any second that I've been cancelled." That's what's different from just  self-deprecation, because as much   as he jokes, his relationship with not  just the audience, but with his team,   his cast and his crew, it's famously supportive. He can be authentically himself,   but he gives credit to his team  and it gives them space to shine. So similarly, we could talk about Caitlin Clark,   who on the other hand could do the exact  opposite, because with stats like hers,   she could very easily take a ton of credit  for her and for Iowa's success (her team) But listen to how she widens  her message beyond just her.

Actually, first, let's go back to Bill  Burr on the WNBA so we can get a baseline. "Yeah. So the money listens.

You'd rather watch that [expletive]? Real Housewives, bunch of women  just tearing each other down." But listen to this. "That's the message you sent.

We would rather watch that than see a bunch   of women come together as a team  and try to achieve a common goal. We would rather watch them actually  [expletive] destroy each other." If that is the prompt, if that's the  problem, or that's the question that's posed,   here comes Caitlin Clark just  two years later with the answer.

Again, not about her, not about Iowa. "You know, there's Iowa  fans all across the country,   but there's also just basketball fans  and people that just appreciate the   game and want to watch and support  women doing really great things." Which is so far beyond her as an individual.

In fact, she goes on to say, "Freshman and sophomore Caitlin would have thought   the world was ending if she didn't  do all these things for her team." Because over those years, she grew  to the point of being able to say, "I'm always going to be able to impact this  game, whether I'm scoring, whether I'm not,   but also just being a good leader  and being there for my teammates." At 22, Caitlin Clark is balancing not  just being a technical overachiever,   which she of course is, but she's  balancing that with being a team player. For her team, for Iowa, for  women, for the whole sport. That level of authenticity is an incredible model.

And by the way, it doesn't just  affect how women look at the game. Now, what about Jobs? Let's go back for a second to 1995. "I want to talk about three things today." The first thing he talks about is the 100  year anniversary of the motion picture.

That was in 1995. That's the first thing. Now, and if you're used to Steve Jobs'  keynotes, you're probably expecting him to say,   "Toy Story is a breakthrough on the scale of  stuff like Technicolor, Snow White, or Star Wars." "It's a breakthrough on the scale of  Technicolor, Snow White, and Star Wars."

But to be fair to Jobs, it absolutely was. We do, however, tend to have a  selective memory about these things,   because this next side of  Jobs is so often overlooked. In fact, he actually spent most of part one   celebrating the history of  achievements in filmmaking. "And Walt Disney trained their animators in  color theory and produced the first color   films, the Silly Symphony cartoons,  which won several Academy Awards." But when he gets to the second topic, the  second topic is about scale and complexity.

Watch what he does. "Just as an example, Woody has 723 animation  control points, all of them available to the   animators or actors to animate Woody. 212 of them  are on the face, 58 of them on the mouth alone." This is a guy who's up on stage just proudly  nerding out about his team's achievements.

And some people focus on Jobs as kind of just  the sales and marketing guy, or sometimes they   say that because he wasn't an engineer, he never  actually pioneered anything, which is, of course,   an opinion that, in addition to being wrong,  misses out on maybe his most effective quality. This is Larry Ellison in 2012. "Every excruciating detail he  was personally involved in." Larry and Steve were best friends. "He would call me up and say,  'Larry, let's get together.'

We saw each other a lot. He'd come over to my house,  I'd go over to his house. I said, 'Steve, I'm not coming over,  if you make me watch Toy Story again.'" And so Steve would say, "So Larry, you won't  believe how different the shadows look."

Steve was famously proud of his  team's work, and at SIGGRAPH 95,   he had every right to take a bow  and celebrate that achievement. So what does he do in Part 3, which  he titles "A Place in History"? He says something completely unexpected. "The computer graphics community has been  climbing the wall of the castle for 20 years standing on each other's shoulders, and  made immense progress as we've seen today." He's not just talking about Pixar. "And I think that that is an achievement that many   people in this room should  take proud ownership in." So who's the authentic Steve Jobs? Is it the guy we know by his keynotes at Apple or the stuff about Android? In his book Blink, Malcolm  Gladwell talks about thin-slicing.

So this is our ability, our  unconscious mind's ability,   to find patterns that are based on  very narrow slices of experience. Snap judgments. Watch the Ballmer clip again on iPhone.  "500 dollars fully subsidized with a plan? I said that is the most expensive phone in  the world, and it doesn't appeal to business   customers because it doesn't have a keyboard,  which makes it not a very good email machine."

A lot of us could base our opinion of Ballmer or   Microsoft at the time on like one  or two sentences, and similarly,   we can thin slice Pixar on paper and  talk about its technical achievements. But it's not just that, because  Pixar tells some of the best stories. It's not one or the other. Jobs took this moment to celebrate both of  those things, but not just about his team,   but the people who came before, so Pixar  could stand on the shoulders of giants.

These are three people who are known  for something, but there's often a side,   a more authentic side we overlook  because it's just not as flashy. But what might define them best is failure. Let's start this time with Caitlin Clark, because  we know she's competitive, but if we go back... "I think, especially when I was younger, I  really struggled with understanding losing." She goes on to say... "Whenever I would lose, when  I was in either softball,   basketball, whatever it was, I would just cry.

That was my immediate reaction." Which is, of course, a completely normal feeling. But Clark says... "I think it's been something that I've been able  to balance, especially as my career has gone on." But here's my favorite part from this interview.

"Nobody ever said, 'You're going  to have a perfect record,' and   a lot of the losses in my career have  really fueled me to be who I am today,   whether it was getting upset my sophomore  year in the round of 32 to Creighton." Round of 32 is the second round of March Madness,   and her team lost that round,  in what Clark describes as... "Probably one of the worst losses  in my entire basketball career."

But here's how she looks at it now. "I'm not sure if I don't have that loss. Are we as good? I don't think so.

So I think being able to learn that  and understand that as my career   has gone on has been really important for myself." That mentality is obviously critical in  sports, and it served Clark very well. With Conan, he was on nightly,   so failure was usually a pretty  quick turnaround, except for this. "NBC found that out a few  months ago when Conan O'Brien,   the newly installed host of The Tonight Show, quit after the network announced it was  going to push The Tonight Show into tomorrow, and to give its traditional time slot  back to O'Brien's predecessor, Jay Leno."

It's how Conan talked about this  situation years later that sticks with me. "So at the age of 47, after 25 years of  obsessively pursuing my dream, that dream changed. For decades in show business, the ultimate goal  of every comedian was to host The Tonight Show. It was the holy grail, and like many people,   I thought that achieving that goal  would define me as successful." Which of course is not uncommon, but he  goes on to say, "But that is not true. No specific job or career goal defines  me, and it should not define you.

In 2000– In 2000, I told graduates to not be  afraid to fail, and I still believe that. But today I tell you that whether you  fear it or not, disappointment will come. The beauty is that through disappointment,   you can gain clarity, and with clarity  comes conviction and true originality." I don't think Conan's popular  just because he's funny.

I think his words on failure, and  especially if you listen to his podcast,   the way he just treats other people, this  is someone who is imperfect and weird and   shares those things so that some of us can feel  okay about being imperfect and weird ourselves. Conan does that, no matter how overwhelmingly   funny/genius/uncomfortably  bizarre it ends up getting. That's the bigger reason that Conan isn't  just original and isn't just authentic.

It's because he talks about his  failures, the things he struggles with. And I think for Steve Jobs, the first time he did   this in a very public way at  least was in 2005 at Stanford. "We just released our finest creation, the  Macintosh, a year earlier, and I just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started?" I think everyone knows this story,  but it gets so real when he says this. "What had been the focus of my entire adult  life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I'd let the previous  generation of entrepreneurs down,   that I had dropped the baton  as it was being passed to me." But here's the really important perspective. "I didn't see it then, but  it turned out that getting   fired from Apple was the best thing  that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by   the lightness of being a beginner  again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the  most creative periods of my life."

All three of these people, in  totally unique ways by the way,   they learned over time to see  something different in failure. Conan leaving NBC gave him tons of freedom on CBS. It let him start one of the biggest podcasts ever,  which he sold to Sirius for like $150 million.

Not to mention, he has a new show on Max where  he travels the world connecting with fans. And how about Caitlin Clark? Did she stop after losing the  championship game this season? Of course not. Six days later, she's on SNL  getting ready for the WNBA. And just as Jobs used his moment in 1995  to celebrate those who came before him,   Clark does the same right here. "It's just one step for the WNBA, thanks to  all the great players like Sheryl Swoopes,   Lisa Leslie, Cynthia Cooper, the great Dawn  Staley, and my basketball hero, Maya Moore. These are the women that kicked down  the door so I could walk inside."

And of course, Jobs getting fired  from the company he founded let   him go on to build teams that changed  personal computing and animated films   and retail and music and the music  industry and phones and tablets. It goes on and on. All three of them are defined  by how they respond to failure. And that leads me to what all  three of them can teach us in tech. Originality isn't always celebrated right away.

Ballmer said of iPhone, "That is the  most expensive phone in the world,   and it doesn't appeal to business customers  because it doesn't have a keyboard,   which makes it not a very good email machine." But the next sentence, which  people usually forget about is,   and I'll show it now, it's the honest admission. "Now, it may sell very well or not, I, you know." Ballmer was just talking about iPhone for business  customers, which did take time to catch on.

And it was one of the most expensive  phones, but we thin-slice these things   and we make these quick judgments,  especially when something is different. Everyone right now is responding the same  way to Humane, talking about how AI Pin is   "the worst product", but we're thin slicing again. My favorite thing Marques Brownlee  said about the AI Pin was this,   and I think this is why I respect  him so much as a tech reviewer. "If you ask me like, who should  buy this device right now? I mean, nobody should buy this device  right now, but if there's one person who   would most consider it, it's the person  that wants to spend as little time as   possible with a screen in their hands, like  as little time as possible on their phone. That's me sometimes. I don't want to doom scroll the second  I pull my phone out of my pocket.

For that person, if they want that  at the expense of everything else,   this device represents just a  glimmer of hope for that future." It's easy to pile on, but Marques demonstrates  being original and authentic all the time. He goes deep and he shares his opinions  and he's usually right, but with AI Pin,   everyone else piles on and focuses  on that one part of that headline. And yeah, it may hold a bit of truth,   but Bill Burr had a point, but  it wasn't just about the WNBA.

"...come together as a team and  try to achieve a common goal,   we would rather watch them actually  [expletive] destroy each other." That's the challenge of originality. And, so sometimes the uncomfortable  question we have to ask each other is,   "what's your original opinion?" "What are you building?" Everyone is entitled to  their whatever, but for me,   I'd rather be part of something different and  at least try for originality rather than being   part of something incremental that's a tiny  optimization of whatever the existing thing is. That's originality. That's what Conan does for comedy,  it's what Clark does in sports,   it's what Jobs did in tech, and by doing  it authentically, we can ask ourselves,   "does what I do matter to me  even if it's unconventional?" Conan can make fun of himself and  he can completely disregard how   everyone else does something in  favor of being more of himself.

"There you go, there you go." "I said a-how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood." So does Caitlin Clark. She sticks to her roots. She didn't just decide to  play with boys teams early on. She didn't just decide to  break a bunch of records.

She's being true to her competitive nature  and redefining what's possible in the sport. And Steve Jobs didn't just go after  big ideas. "iPhone runs OS X." Jobs wanted to leave behind, he talked a  lot about wanting to build a body of work,   but he connected that vision with what he  and his teams ended up actually building. Now, none of us have to be Steve  Jobs or Caitlin Clark or Conan,   we just have to find our  own passion and follow it. And when we fail, there's maybe  the biggest lesson of all.

Failure to Conan turned into new possibilities. Failure to Clark continues to shape who she is. And failure to Jobs drove him to try more  things to learn, to grow, and to change things.

Yeah, it's a comedian and an  athlete and an entrepreneur,   but to me, they're three people  that decided to be different. Figma thought differently  about collaborating on designs. It didn't matter that there was  already Sketch and Illustrator,   and it didn't just change the way we design. Figma set the standard.

They set the standard for what real-time  collaboration is supposed to be in all software. Webflow thought differently about developing  for the web by developing visually. It didn't matter that there  was WordPress or hand coding,   and now no code apps and visual development? These are expected for most software. OpenAI even created ChatGPT. They did this as a demo. Of course, when people played around with it, it  became the fastest growing user base in history.

And now different models can compete, and  that chat interface is a global standard. History is built on new ideas and discovery. No one changed anything by copying and  pasting, because in a time where it   seems like AI is changing everything  in good ways and not-so-good ways,   I think it's more important than  ever to realize that approaching how we approach these three things can define the kind of legacy  each of us leave behind. Now, if you want to learn more about  software and AI, things like this,   make sure to subscribe or follow. This year, I'm making courses that  teach how to use software and AI,   so if you're in tech, definitely stay tuned.

Thanks, everybody.

2024-04-25

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