Apple's original business plan

http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/akdiamond/original-apple-business-plan

by sirteno • 11 years ago

186 69 11 years ago

mkaroumi• 11 years ago

Omg, THANKS for sharing this!

visakanv3• 11 years ago

I appreciate your enthusiasm! Sorry you're getting downvoted, Hacker News is a pretty tough community to crack. The secret is to always add value to any conversation by introducing some relevant perspective or piece of information.

ezl• 11 years ago

I wouldn't invest. That growth curve doesn't seem reasonable.

VC's: I don't really see there being an interest in this. What's the viral coefficient?

paul• 11 years ago

It has been years since I heard anyone ask about viral coefficients.

aragot• 11 years ago

And yet the graph seems exact: According to the Telegraph, Apple's sales in 1982 were indeed $1b. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/steve-jobs/8810045/Ste...

TrainedMonkey• 11 years ago

They did note that home computer market had been growing by 250% per year, that is mostly what that exponential curve is based on.

sliverstorm• 11 years ago

In fact that means they underestimated. Read more closely, the graph is their estimate of PC Market Total Revenue and they predict only 35% market share of that pie.

So they projected a 350M slice of a 1B market, and got a 1B slice of a... ??? market

porter• 11 years ago

Has there even been a market as big and as fast growing as PCs since then?

ianmcgowan• 11 years ago

Completely off-the-cuff, but mobile?

mikeyouse• 11 years ago

Mobile is a much larger market and a much faster growing one..

I can't find the chart I'm looking for, but on any reasonable time scale that includes PC saturation vs. mobile saturation vs. smartphone saturation, the 'Smartphone' line is damn near vertical.

Here's a decent look:

http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2015/1/11/home-and-the-mo...

Even more impressive that Apple took a big piece of both.

AndrewKemendo• 11 years ago

"Smart" device adoption

coreyh14444• 11 years ago

Modern conventional wisdom would tell them to "focus".

visakanv3• 11 years ago

I don't know the details very much, but maybe things were different back in their time when the market wasn't yet saturated? (My tech business history is pretty sketchy, so I'd welcome any clarification!)

api3• 11 years ago

There were many hobbyist computers on the market when the Apple II launched.

phkahler• 11 years ago

Visicalc played a large roll. The father of a friend of mine bought an Apple II in large part to do spreadsheets. While we're at it, I remember reading the inventor of the spreadsheet went to the computer clubs as showed his work. They all said "well yeah it can do that, so what" and he showed it to accountants and they all ran out to get Apple computers to run it. I think a lot of hackers focus on neat hacks that interest themselves, but overlook relatively easy solutions that could be a big deal to others.

solve• 11 years ago

How is that buzzword so huge now? Does no one using it realize that the word "focus" by itself... conveys nothing!

At least 20 different ways that I could see "focus" being interpreted, most of those conflicting with each other. I suppose that the advice giver is allowed to retroactively choose which definition of "focus" that they actually meant at the time they gave that advice.

api3• 11 years ago

It would also tell them to develop minimum viable products -- which as commonly interpreted means slap together crap to test the market. Had they done this they would have been forgotten in short order.

Xixi• 11 years ago

I would argue that the Apple I was exactly an MVP (as I understand it): not crap, limited in functionality, and impossible to mass-produce.

swamp40• 11 years ago

I wonder why "Apple" is whited out? The "Staff" page pretty much gives it away.

jccc• 11 years ago

So does the word "Apple" on page 3.

sjwright• 11 years ago

Given the sloppy way most instances of "Apple" were removed -- ultimately concealing nothing -- it looks like a lame attempt to make the documents appear to be genuine leaks. Which makes me consider whether they're actually fake.

chrispeel• 11 years ago

From a couple of sources it looks like their revenue forecasts for the PC market were too low: http://www.etforecasts.com/products/ES_pcww1203.htm

I'm curious who the target of this was; was this aimed at the banks who they got the $250k loan from that Markkula signed for?

eddywebs• 11 years ago

The source of this document is computer history muesem website. linky >> http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/2009/10271...

alain94040• 11 years ago

Plans for the Apple III were a little bit optimistic:

"Voice and character recognition are both being considered as built in features. Possibility of UHF very short range transmitter for wireless display capability depending on FCC approval."

Osmium• 11 years ago

It's interesting to consider how different technologies alter the evolution of each other: e.g., if hypothetically display technology had stalled and we were limited to 512x342 black and white pixel screens, I can easily imagine that wireless displays would be the norm. So it sounds crazy reading that now, because we have these huge colourful displays, but back then maybe it was reasonable. It's just that history turned out differently and display technologies progressed far faster than wireless transmission standards (and the processors necessary to drive them).

spiritplumber• 11 years ago

At least in Europe, the Amiga had this... the RF output was strong enough that you could use it as an antenna and get it from the other side of the room, complete with snow effects :)

maxsavin• 11 years ago

Interesting - Jobs went to Stanford?

Also, surprising he let him self be #3 on the list after apparently picking a fight with Woz about who would be employee #1

presty• 11 years ago

Interesting that he attended Stanford. Never saw any reference to this before. Does anyone know the story?

jaredmck• 11 years ago

He didn't? Steve Jobs attended Reed College (and according to his biography, it was the only college he applied to)

wl• 11 years ago

The Isaacson biography mentions that he audited and crashed engineering and physics classes at Stanford.

NhanH4• 11 years ago

He was outranked by the first two, you can't list a VP before the President.

NhanH4• 11 years ago

The plan itself looks reasonable to me. It's fairly buzzword-free (comparing to the plans nowadays), but maybe the buzzword back then just became common vocabulary to us.

The most interesting thing on the plan to me is the staff page: specifically how non-impressive the credentials of everyone on the team is. It's fun to think that Jobs might have embellish a little there (attended Stanford part) just to look better. Even the one with most credentials (Markkula, I believe) just read like a normal upper-middle management bio nowadays. And Woz & Jobs ... well, I don't think any company nowadays would be able to raise fund if the founder s' bios look like that.

Am I wrong?

defen• 11 years ago

Wozniak's is only not impressive because they left off "invented the personal computer."

NhanH4• 11 years ago

"Invented the personal computer" might be a bit of a stretch to me. Apple I was one of the first (popular?), but iirc it wasn't the very first one of its kind, nor the only one at the time.

But even if it was the first and only of its kind. At the time, "invented the personal computer" still wouldn't be anything would be counted as "credentials", let alone "impressive credentials". Someone who has been around the block might correct me if I'm wrong, but personal computer was nowhere near influential, or well known back then as it is now.

PinguTS• 11 years ago

You know, that the Altair was before and Woz did his own design just because he couldn't afford the Altair.

jdswain• 11 years ago

"Inventing the personal computer" is something that is completely open to interpretation. I've heard Woz say something similar, and if you look at it a certain way then it's easy to agree with him. What he means by that is that the Apple ][ was the first computer that came with everything so you could plug it in and start work. The Altair and other's that people may consider as contenders for the first personal computer required more technical skills, like not coming with a keyboard, or requiring you to do a certain amount of assembly. So by one definition the Apple ][ was the first computer that you could buy, plug together and boot up Basic or VisiCalc and start doing some work.

At least with the first Apple ][, Woz designed the whole of the hardware, the ROM, and the first Basic. Later on that Basic was replaced with Microsoft Basic, which caused problems for Apple later on with the Macintosh when it came time to renew the MS Basic license. Steve Jobs did have some influence on the Apple ][, but far less than Woz, he worked on the PCB layout (as far as making it nice and everything line up, not the actual routing), and the case design (designed by Jerry Manock), which was revolutionary at the time. The switch-mode power supply was also unique in a computer at that time, and was not designed by Woz, but by Rod Holt. Woz's disk controller is probably the most impressive piece of design from that period though.

It was a very close thing though as the Commodore PET was actually released only a few months later, and was even more easy to set up as it came with a built in cassette drive and display. It's interesting that in most of this history Chuck Peddle, the designer of the PET, gets very little recognition, much less than he should. As well as designing the PET (which led on the the Commodore 64 and others), he was the main designer of the 6502, the processor used in the Apple ][. There's also a story that he met Woz and helped him debug one of his 6502 designs.

S_A_P• 11 years ago

The thing I noticed was that Steve Jobs had the least impressive credentials on the page.

jsprogrammer• 11 years ago

Credentials generally just mean that some institution decided to give you a title.

wamatt3• 11 years ago

Sometimes I do wonder about the double standards involved in characterizations of certain people.

Like if it's someone we like, then that person "embellished" their record, but if it's someone we don't then, they "lied".

So thinking aloud, does that mean I can go crash some courses at Stanford too, then put it in the pitch deck as "Attended Stanford". Knowing full well, physical access, is not what is meant by the use of the term and that investors may be misled?

It seems to me, this might qualify as evidence of the reality distortion field at work.

arrrg• 11 years ago

“Embellish” is used here because this happened a long time ago and it’s just completely, utterly irrelevant to anything at all …

People around here seem so, so convinced that everyone here loves Apple and anything to do with it, all the while all I ever see is complete, unfettered hate. And that’s ok, definitely, nothing wrong with that, but to me this perception of Apple being irrationally loved by anyone around here is just so, so weird and unrelated to reality.

NhanH4• 11 years ago

Besides what arrrg said, part of the reason I used embellish is that I don't know how close it is to the fact: certainly this is the first time I've heard/read about Jobs "attended" Stanford, but I have no idea whether he might have crashed there for a few semesters (if he was crashing the courses similar to how he did after dropping out of Reed, "attended" would only be a bit of a stretch).

Also, using the word "lie" is mean, and I'm with the camp that being mean for no reason is unnecessary.

xiaoma• 11 years ago

Atari and HP both had some serious cachet back then

The 2015 equivalent would be an ex FB engineer and ex-Blizzard engineer team. Totally fundable.

rwhitman• 11 years ago

It's easy to forget that Apple and a number of the corporate giants of today were born in a time when there was much less competition, not just in the tech business but in life in general.

In 1977 California's population was almost one half what it is today, heck the world population was almost one half what it is today. We see the vast pool of smart educated people on the planet as normal right now, but back even 40 years ago a tiny fraction of people really fit the bill.

I'm a firm believer that most of the heroes of history would be considered average shlubs today. They just happened to be possessing the right balance of intelligence, vision and work ethic at the right time in history.

davidf18• 11 years ago

Not certain that "timing" would apply to Intel founders Gordon Moore, Bob Noyce, Andy Grove and perhaps some others in the semiconductor industry (Shockly, ....). Also Seymour Cray.

cylinder• 11 years ago

In developed countries, yes. That's basically what developed means -- there's less opportunity except at very high specialized areas often requiring lots of expertise and capital. Not so in lesser developed countries. People would be shocked if they realized how many rather mediocre people in "third world countries" are very wealthy doing pretty basic things.

If one is up for lower competition they can head to Africa now.

nsxwolf• 11 years ago

Whatever that reader app they are using is... Wow does it suck on iOS Safari. I can't figure out what the heck is going on.

caublestone2• 11 years ago

I don't think this is Apple. On page 5 it specifically calls out Apple as being part of the Hobbyist market. That right there makes this even more interesting as this thorough business plan was beat out by a company recognized as Hobbyist instead of a pc manufacturer.

So who is this?

RadioactiveMan• 11 years ago

Slide 6 lists staff, including S Jobs and S Wozniak. That leads me to believe it is Apple, though I have no idea if they were involved in other companies.

caublestone2• 11 years ago

I see the confusion. That is listing the staff of Apple as discussed in the Hobby Manufacturers as competitor analysis. As in, this is who our competitor is.

Retra• 11 years ago

What other word do you know that starts with an up-left slanted character, has two descenders immediately following, is less than 6 mono-spaced characters long?

Is it Aqqle?

kgc• 11 years ago

Direct download link: http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/2009/10271...

staunch• 11 years ago

Because of the applications development ability of the software oriented hobbyist, Apple will continue to service his needs.

Developers. Developers. Developers. Developers. Developers.

mraison• 11 years ago

Interesting to see that the "growth curve" was already a thing back then.

zachrose• 11 years ago

And that it's convex (like an ant hill) rather than concave (like a hockey stick).

wanderingstan• 11 years ago

Note that it has a logarithmic scale. On a linear scale it would be close to a hockey stick.

fit2rule• 11 years ago

Is it usable as a template for a business plan today?

Apple's original business plan

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