Remembering Steve Jobs

It is with a tremendous sense of loss but also a tremendous feeling of admiration that we mourn the passing of Steve Jobs. Small Dog Electronics would not exist without Steve Jobs. Sixty people work here and gain their inspiration from the work and vision of one man who celebrated the “crazy ones”:

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

I was in Cupertino at Apple headquarters in 1997 when Steve Jobs addressed a small group of independent Apple resellers and introduced the Think Different campaign. That was a day I will never forget as I sat there mesmerized as Steve showed incredible photos of many of my heroes and role models, from Mahatma Gandhi to John Lennon to Martin Luther King, Jr. to Rosa Parks. I remember thinking that who else but Apple, who else but Steve Jobs could trot out the people that I had learned so much from and admired so greatly in an advertising campaign that celebrated diversity, innovation and craziness. Steve Jobs is in that pantheon of world-changing genius.

Steve Jobs also had a remarkable approach to life itself. His 2005 commencement address at Stanford University is one of the most moving and inspiring speeches I have heard. He talked about life and death but his message was remarkably universal and directed at the young graduates. It rang very true for this old man, too:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Click here to see the whole speech.

We are going to miss Steve Jobs but his impact, legacy and the company he took from the brink of bankruptcy to become the most valuable company on the planet will survive. Our very lives have been changed so much due to Steve’s vision. He gave us a gift that is perhaps the most precious of all: time. He gave us tools to make our work faster, more accurate and more fun. Tools that give us more time to live our lives. Steve Jobs will live on at Apple but also at Small Dog Electronics and in each of us.