Return to the Little Kingdom_ Steve Jobs and the Creation of Apple - Michael Moritz [124]
Murray nodded and reverted to the nagging prospect of IBM. “It’s scary to think how small we are and how slick IBM is.”
Morris replied with assurance, “You’ve got to play guts ball. You will fail if you’re only as good as IBM. It’s just like women in business. You’ve got to work twice as hard to get half the recognition.”
Some mornings later a group of marketing managers from all the Apple divisions gathered for their monthly meeting. Joe Roebuck, a marketing manager, placed his Styrofoam coffee cup on the table near an overhead projector and surveyed his companions. “This place is beginning to look like IBM. Everybody’s got ties. No blue shirts yet. But we’re getting there.” The chief topic of discussion was the avalanche of magazines, brochures, newsletters, buyers’ guides, flyers, catalogs, and data sheets—the “pieces”—that Apple published to help persuade customers to buy its products. Phil Roybal, who headed Apple’s marketing publications, showed a series of slides about the importance of these publications and said, “Literature is not an event. It’s part of a process. We have to sell prospects what they want”—he paused for effect and added—“which is a solution.” He associated each of Apple’s publications with customers in varying states of anticipation and noted, “The average prospect walks into a store and takes five hours to make the connection between what he wants and what he should buy. Most don’t care whether it’s an Apple II or III or an IBM PC or a sack of walnuts. The dealer will grab anything that says apple, shove it into the prospect’s hand, and hope he’ll buy. They’re not selling solutions. The literature has to start pulling the products together into solutions for people.”
Joe Roebuck interrupted. “We’re churning out requirements for literature like crazy.”
“When I look at the business plan for the coming year,” Roybal responded, “I find I’m running a shortfall of five writers a week. I can kill some projects or I can kill some writers.”
THE BOZO EXPLOSION
Apple Computer started life as a business, not a company. The gradual change from a bloated garage operation into something resembling a corporation was arduous and protracted. Once Apple announced its disk drive in the summer of 1978, orders increased, the backlog of unsold computers disappeared, and the pressure to grow mounted. The headquarters was moved to a building fifteen times larger than the office Apple had occupied behind the Good Earth Restaurant. It was set among orchards a block or so from Stevens Creek Boulevard, and Apple’s new neighbors were a plant nursery and a couple of wooden frame houses. When the ninety or so employees wandered around their empty new building, most were convinced that it would last, if not for a lifetime, certainly for several years.
Within three months the packing cartons arrived and again Apple commandeered a couple more buildings. The second shuffle was made in such a hurry that interior alterations were performed without any building permits and equipment was brought in over a weekend from trucks discreetly parked by some rear doors. Packing cartons, new offices, fresh surroundings, and unfamiliar companions became a disconcerting way of life.
Over the course of about two years a sheaf of professionals arrived. For newcomers accustomed to the struts and underpinnings of a large company, the turmoil of a start-up was entirely foreign. There were few of the services most companies devise to make life easier. When a sink or lavatory got clogged, there was no maintenance department to call. When the telephones broke, no communications consultant came tripping down the hallway with a handpiece clipped to