Startup insights from Jony Ive, Travis Kalanick, Aaron Levie, Tony Xu, and Carl Pei

Every Sunday, we send out 1 free insight + 4 new bonus insights for premium subscribers (upgrade to Premium for $5/mo here).

Today’s insights:

1. Jony Ive explains the Steve Jobs product philosophy that saved Apple from bankruptcy in 1998

2. Uber founder Travis Kalanick on how to avoid bad advisor relationships for your startup

3. Box founder Aaron Levie: “Spend a lot of time with your most futuristic customers”

4. DoorDash founder Tony Xu: “No startup on day 1 should be thinking about moats”

5. Carl Pei shares the design insight he learned from the founder of Teenage Engineering

Jony Ive explains the Steve Jobs product philosophy that saved Apple from bankruptcy in 1998

“Our job isn’t to make money for Apple. Our job is to try and make the very best products we can.”

Jony is aware that this sounds simplistic and easy to say given that Apple is one of the most valuable companies in the world today. But he points out that Steve Jobs stuck to this philosophy when Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy in 1998:

“When Steve came back, that’s how he articulated what the goals of the company needed to be… It takes a tremendous courage when you’re losing fabulously large amounts of money to say ‘Our goal isn’t turnaround. Our goal is to make a great product.’ That’s not a natural reflex to that situation. The reflex is: let’s not spend this money and let’s try to get a little bit more because we’re about to go out of business.”

Full video: Mohammad Hossein Eslaminia “What makes Apple, Apple“ (Mar 2016)

Uber founder Travis Kalanick on how to avoid bad advisor relationships for your startup

“Many entrepreneurs have had really bad advisor relationships… One of the main reasons is the entrepreneur tries to squeeze how much they offer to amazing advisors.”

He continues:

“The best way to get amazing advisors doing amazing things for you is to figure out first - if you were to bring them on full-time what would you give them cash and equity?”

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