Nivi · October 20th, 2008
Watch the master pitch man, Steve Jobs, analyze the market for NeXT workstations in Part 1 of his Chalk Talk. He explains:
“Who is our target customer? Why are they selecting our products over our competiton’s? And what distribution channels are we going to use to reach these customers?”
Steve covers a handful of the slides that you see in a typical startup deck: Marketing, Sales, Competition, and a little bit of Problem and Solution. We should all strive to present with Steve’s clarity and simplicity.
Here’s part two of the video. Thanks to Daring Fireball for pointing me to this video.
Topics Case Studies · Pitching
In retrospect he was right about the custom apps but was overly optimist on the numbers. NeXT sold 20,000 computers in 1992 (mostly to Wall Street and the CIA).
It’s curious that relatively little has been done to extend their custom app development strength over the last 20 years (now that NeXTstep is called OSX). OSX’s development environment is, IMO, only a small step above that of NeXTstep in 1990. The biggest change is the recent addition of garbage collection to Objective-C, though it still isn’t widely supported (some frameworks still don’t work with it).
Market analysis and the search of users’ needs.
This video should be taught in schools.
What is really impressive is Steve’s frontal attack on a competitor 10000 times his size. He isn’t afraid of any company, no matter their size.
His advantage: he never perceives himself as an underdog.
Great stuff. Covers the fundamentals very well.
What’s interesting-whether right or wrong in terms of final market share-is the clarity with which Jobs presents his ideas. He doesn’t waste words and, thus, gets one’s attention.
Steve Jobs is the don.
Wow, love the video. I think this format would be a great way to send out regular investor/team updates. Instead of calling an in-person meeting, you can communicate your thoughts with a video.
Very cool!
Andrew
Best pitcher ever. Nice to see it in him in 1990 and it’s still there 2008.
Just bad luck that the PC market grew into the power&networked market and killed the NeXT target market. But my NeXT color cube at the university was an awesome machine.
Peace
-stephan
Steve Jobs is magnetic in his simple approach to laying the foundation of taking a startup company head to head with the big competitors of the time.
Thanks for this timeless pitch!
Well someone has to point out to the drooling fanbots the folly of mindless prostration in His presence.
While you’re praising “market analysis and the search of users’ needs”, the “frontal attack”, and “best pitch ever”, perhaps you should take note of a couple inconvenient truths.
He was spectacularly wrong. About user needs. About the size of the market. About the market segmentation. About the basis of competition. About who the real competition was. About the value proposition. About the selling strategy. Almost everything He said in these videos was proven wrong.
NeXT was a failure because He was, in this case, clueless about the customers and the competition. He has done a lot of things well, but NeXT belongs in the Business Hubris Hall of Shame. What’s really sad for the fanbots is that even He has admitted it.
It doesn’t matter how beautiful the presentation, if the content is full of crap, as in these videos, then it is a horrible pitch.
>It doesn’t matter how beautiful the presentation,
> if the content is full of crap, as in these videos, then
> it is a horrible pitch.
You’re missing the point. One can always look backward and find mistakes. But business make decisions for tomorrow, not yesterday. Given what was known in 1990, Steve lays down a plausible, coherent, and compelling vision of the future. And that’s why he and others like him are leaders, rather than whiners.
Interesting video, thanks for posting it.
For anyone who is unable to view the video or would just prefer to read the content in text form, we have created a transcript of the video here:
http://public.youtranscript.com/zs/1.html
Thanks, YouTranscript
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[…] Bonus awesome Steve Jobs videos here and here (jump to 4:50). And if you love learning about how Steve Jobs pitches a startup most definitely check out this awesome Venture Hacks post. […]