Steve Jobs Stories on Clubhouse

Most of you have probably seen this by now, but for the record — journalist Steven Levy, investor Esther Dyson, and First Round partner Chris Fralic (a board member of the Computer History Museum) hosted a Clubhouse on February 23, the day before what would have been Steve Jobs’ 66th birthday, inviting people to share stories about him.

People who follow this know I’m a sucker for Steve anecdotes — in fact, we have a whole section of the website filled with them. So this is perfect clickbait for me of course.

Fortunately, the session was recorded and shared on the Computer History Museum’s YouTube page, you can watch it below. For those short on time, here is a brief walkthrough to help you navigate the video:

• At 0:06:07, Esther Dyson recalls when she met Steve Jobs at an event hosted by Regis McKenna.
• At 0:07:30, Regis McKenna talks about how he got to work with Steve Jobs as he was hired by him and Mike Markkula (who knew him from Intel) to handle Apple’s marketing.
• Former Apple CEO John Sculley jumped in at 16:00, and retold for the umpteenth time the story of how Steve Jobs seduced him to join Apple with the sugared water line. (I wish he had told a new one, considering how much time he spent with Steve in 1983-84).
• At 0:24:00, Steven Levy recounted his first story on Steve Jobs and the Macintosh team.
• At 0:27:40, Andy Cunningham, who used to run Apple marketing in the 80s, talked about how she had to play Billie Jean to get Steve Jobs to smile during a photoshoot. She compared Steve Jobs to “a big baby”.
• At 0:30:45, Andy Hertzfeld told the story of his first meal with Steve Jobs, where Steve said that after fasting, eating a pea could make your stomach explode, then refused to pay the bill despite having recently become a centimillionaire.
• It was Bill Atkinson’s turn at 0:33:00, explaining how Steve wooed him to join Apple in 1978.
• At 0:36:35, Dan’l Lewin, who ran education sales for Macintosh, then became a founding member of NeXT (and is now president of the Computer History Museum), told the story of the lunch in London where NeXT and Canon celebrated their partnership, and the chair of Canon’s chairman collapsed (there was nothing particularly about Steve Jobs in his story unfortunately).
• At 0:41:40, photographer Doug Menuez, who documented the early days of NeXT, explained how one time he was challenged by Steve Jobs (and screamed at) on a photo shoot.
• At 0:48:00, Mike Slade, who left Microsoft to join NeXT in the 90s, told the story of how Steve wooed him to move to the Bay Area to work at next with a line he stole from the Il Fornaio restaurant menu.
• At 0:52:30, Steven Levy told another story about when he wanted to make a cover story about the iPod, and Steve berated him for having put a case on his iPod.
• At 0:54:45, Mike Slade told a moving story of when Steve Jobs told him about his cancer.
• At 0:59:07, Esther told the story when Steve Jobs told her he’d make up for a missed public appearance by speaking twice the next time.
• At 1:01:20, analyst Tim Bajarin recalled when Steve Jobs told him he would save Apple with industrial design in early 1997.
• At 1:05:15, Steven Rosenblatt, formerly of iAd, talked about his first meeting with Steve Jobs and how he later pushed him to sign ever-bigger ad deals in the early days of the product.
• At 1:14:00, Chris Fralic told of the story when Steve Jobs refused to sign his Apple II (even though Woz had signed it already).
• At 1:15:30, angel investor Bill Raduchel, formerly of Sun, told the story of when he met Steve Jobs at NeXT to negotiate a potential acquisition (probably in the 1994-96 timeframe).
• At 1:20:00, Buzz Wood, who worked in Apple’s education sales, told of when he attended a Steve Jobs Q&A in 2002, where Steve told one of the audience members who suggested to run an ad for education that Apple could do it with the money they’d save by firing him.
• At 1:23:00, music industry mogul Ted Cohen told a story of a Steve Jobs meeting with a McKinsey consultant and the ensuing email followup.
• At 1:25:30, Sonal Chokshi, formerly of Xerox PARC, told of an email she sent out of the blue to Steve Jobs and his brilliant response.
• From 1:30:50, Steven Levy shared the last story, that of his last meeting with Steve.

It was overall quite an enjoyable discussion, and definitely worth your time.