Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Last week, Steve Jobs stepped down from his CEO leadership position at Apple, Inc. The world already knows about Steve’s health issues over recent years, and though it’s pure speculation at this point (Steve is respectfully and correctly private about these things), most have concluded that Steve’s health issues are what led to this decision.
Steve Jobs is a man that I respect very much. I would go so far as to say that Steve is one of the greatest visionary corporate leaders the world has ever seen. Perhaps even singularly the greatest.
Because of Steve’s leadership and vision at Apple, you and I get to enjoy carrying our entire music collection in our pockets, on devices that bring the entire Internet to the palm of our hand and spawned a vast ecosystem of applications and games that help improve our existence. We get to enjoy computers that not only work extremely well and do what we want them to do, but they look great doing it. And because of that, countless others have been inspired.
Computers never used to make me smile. Now they do. Steve did that. And he did it all with unbelievable return to shareholders (a decade ago, Apple traded at $9 per share. Yesterday they closed at $384.83 per share), and on an annual salary of just $1. Yes, $1.
So it’s befitting, then, that this video has surfaced and gone viral. Because, in this video, Steve sums up for the rest of us what drives him as a leader, as a visionary, as an inventor, and as an innovator. This video is his graduation speech at Stanford. I implore you to watch this.
Stay hungry. Stay foolish. Thank you, Steve.
