According to D5, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have not appeared together in a joint interview since 1984. And despite the prevailing view that the two companies have always been at odds with each other, the interview revealed that the two computer titans had praise for each other’s companies:
Steve Jobs: “Bill built the first software company in the industry and I think he built the first software company before anybody really in our industry
knew what a software company was, except for these guys. And that was huge. That was really huge. And the business model that they ended up pursuing turned out to be the one that worked really well, you know, for the industry. I think the biggest thing was, Bill was really focused on software before almost anybody else had a clue that it was really the software.”
Bill Gates: “What Steve’s done is quite phenomenal, and if you look back to 1977, that Apple II computer, the idea that it would be a mass-market machine, you know, the bet that was made there by Apple uniquely–there were other people with products, but the idea that this could be an incredible empowering phenomenon, Apple pursued that dream.”
To my surprise, though, Steve had this to say about Microsoft and Windows:
Steve: “Windows 95, to whatever extent earlier versions of Windows had not had all the features, all the GUI stuff that the Mac had, and Windows 95 really was an enormous, enormous leap.
“You know, because Woz and I started the company based on doing the whole banana, we weren’t so good at partnering with people. And, you know, actually, the funny thing is, Microsoft’s one of the few companies we were able to partner with that actually worked for both companies.”
But for me, the most inspirational part of the interview came when each man offered these words of advice for today’s entrepreneur:
Gates: “The idea of being at the forefront and increasing in size has been one of our greatest challenges. Our business is really about the passion.”
Jobs: “If you don’t love it, you’re going to fail. You’ve got to love it and you’ve got to have passion. And you’ve got to be a great talent scout, you can only build a great organization around great people.”