Dan Murillo

A fond memory of my presentation to Steve Jobs

I posted an abbreviated version of this on Facebook yesterday. Here’s the full story.  

In the Spring of 2008, during my second year of b-school, I was fortunate enough to take a seminar with Andy Grove.  The seminar was tiny, maybe around 20 students.  For one of the classes, I volunteered to lead a group that was going to present an analysis of Apple’s strategy with the iPhone.  You can view the presentation here.  The iPhone was brand new at the time and I had literally just opened the box of my new iPhone a few hours before the presentation.  Andy usually invited some fancy guest speaker to the presentation, and he would always let us know who was coming the night before.  For our presentation, he made some vague remark about a “senior level Apple executive” joining the class, but he never confirmed anyone.  Since I was leading the presentation, I got to class a few minutes early, and as I was setting up the slides, my fellow presenter Gabriel Silva ran in and said, “You’ll never believe who’s outside!”  It was fairly obvious from his high-pitched squeal and arm-flapping that it could only be one person.  I rushed outside to find Andy and Steve Jobs casually chatting like old friends.  Andy, who wasn’t a particularly stylish dresser, must’ve raided Steve’s closet earlier that day. They were wearing matching black turtle necks, worn-out jeans and gray sneakers.  Unreal. 

We watched them talk for a few minutes, and all the while I’m thinking to myself, “I’m about to present to Steve Jobs on the iPhone.  His iPhone.  Me.  I should probably gloss over the section where I say that he might be making a mistake by cutting an exclusive deal with AT&T.  Oh well.  It’s in the deck.” 

After we walked into class and sat down, Andy asked aloud, “Who is leading the presentation on Apple?”  I quickly raised my hand, and then Andy – in his classic Andy way – pointed at me with a curled finger and threw me right under the bus: “Oh, this should be good.  The Microsoft guy is going to present to us about Apple!”  The class laughed nervously as I walked over to the presentation area.  I wasn’t even done with the first slide when Steve Jobs suddenly raised his hand.  I said casually, as if we were old friends, “Yes, Steve?”  I still remember exactly what he asked because it was so puzzling: “What if all of your assumptions in this presentation are wrong?”  Wtf?  It was like a meta-critique of content that he hadn’t even seen.  I needed to buy time before I could come up with some doubly meta retort, so I asked him to repeat the question.   He repeated himself, almost word for word, and as he finished I replied, “Well, if the assumptions are wrong then we should discuss them, and then maybe blame Andy if necessary for teaching us wrong things.”  Crisis averted! A chuckle and some nodding. He seemed satisfied with my answer.

The rest of the presentation went by in a blur. Steve hijacked the show a few minutes later, which I was more than happy to see, and we spent an incredible two hours listening to Andy and Steve discuss, tease each other, and reminisce about the old country.

The lesson that I remember most vividly came when he asked the class, “What characteristic of Apple’s brand makes us unique among technology companies?”  Hand after hand went up, and Steve nixed everyone.  His response was simple and obvious: “Apple is unique among consumer tech companies because we make technology easy. In this respect, we stand alone.”  I’ve lingered on that statement throughout the years and have found myself coming back to it repeatedly now that I’m an entrepreneur.  It is easy to make technology that is hard to use - and it is incredibly hard to make technology that is easy to use. 

Once the discussion ended, Ed Baker, a towering figure in our class, whipped out his shiny new iPhone and asked Steve a few tech-support-type questions.  I forget the exact questions, but I remember that Steve happily indulged him and enthusiastically answered everything.  Now THAT is customer service.