‘Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview’

'Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview' is a 1 hour video on Netflix. A television interview that was filmed in 1995, it was assumed to have been lost all these years until one of the makers found a copy on VHS in his garage. It gives rare insight into the man beyond all overawed media coverage of him.

What struck me in particular about that 1 hour odd interview is how Jobs mentioned cold-calling HP co-founder Bill Hewlett at the age of 12 (1967) and asking for spare parts for something Steve Wozniak and he were working on, and Hewlett not only giving him the parts but also an internship that very summer. He went on to mention how he saw his 1st ever computer at NASA a few years later (maybe around 1970). He also mentioned how trips to Stanford’s Innovation Labs and Xerox PARC changed his life and gave him ideas that later went on to become primary components of computers across the World. He also spoke about how he started looking for Venture Capital in the early years of Apple (presumably around 1976) and got a 30-35 year old retired Product Manager from Intel who had made about a Million USD in stock to not just invest but also become a partner at Apple.

While there is no doubt that Steve Jobs was the primary factor in learning from these resources and galvanizing their energies into a vision that would substantially transform technology across the World, one cannot deny the role all these experiences played, the role of the ecosystem around him. The terms ‘innovation’, ‘Venture Capital’, ‘Research Lab’, ‘Product Manager’, ‘Stock exits’ became mainstream in India about 10-15 years ago and still remain inaccessible to most. These were made available to Jobs starting 50 years ago in America. And remember that Jobs was no second-generation millionaire, he was an adopted child of a blue-collar, non-college-educated couple!

If we want India to truly excel, truly become a center for innovation, excellence, research, growth, then we need to invest in pathbreaking research, we need to nurture truly exceptional brains, create world-class resources for them and not worry about tangible monetary RoI in the immediate future. We also need to create a culture where an established Founder gives an internship to a 12 year old cold-caller and not shun him away or tell him he should “act like a child”.

But tragically our political leadership has come up from amongst us and while the current regime believes in chest-thumping our despicable state while actually playing on religious divisiveness, our so-called hope for being rescued as well is a man who’s probably a nice guy who has inherited the nation but not displayed a single major ability to deserve our leadership. Moreover, almost everyone in our country thinks that one of these two is right for our country. Most of our businessmen don’t have ‘giving back’ as a core concept, the few good Universities that exist don’t have enough resources to truly revolutionise research and innovation, our media discourse is dictated by bathtubs and cows and most of our so-called heroes and celebrities have zero social consciousness.

All in all, there’s hardly any acknowledgement of the right problems, there’s hardly any will or intent to work towards the right solutions and most of all, we’re arrogant about how bad things are. That is why we as a nation are doomed and shall always play second fiddle to those countries the modern world revolves around!