Steve Wozniak on Hacking, Entrepreneurship, and What is Most Important
May 02 2009
Of all the titles I could apply to myself, the sexiest sounding would probably be “hacker.” Hackers are, at their core, people who just aren’t satisfied with the default state of the world around them. We see something that’s less than what it could be, and we try to fix or “hack” it. Like most hackers, my worldview has always been slightly skewed in this way, to always look at broken things and desire to fix them. On a small scale, this can mean taking apart toasters, jailbreaking your iPhone, or reading binaries in hex. On larger scale, fixing what is broken can mean starting a foundation to find a cure for AIDS, discovering tomorrow’s ubiquitous energy solution, or creating the next social web phenomenon. The truest hackers find joy in the process, not necessarily the solution, so tinkering to our own needs is often sufficient. However, when the needs of particularly Jedi-like hacker meets the needs of the greater community, amazing things can happen.
I believe that the hacker spirit is fundamentally married to that of the entrepreneur. Steve Wozniak, who needs no introduction, spoke about this marriage to Jessica Livingston, author of the phenomenal book Founders at Work, a series of interviews with some of the greatest entrepreneurs in recent history. I consider what he told her to be one of the truest and most important statements I’ve ever read. Below is what he said to her and I’m glad to report that has nothing to do with technologies or diagrams or even business plans, but with that which matters most.
Livingston:
What advice would you give to hackers who are thinking about starting a company or making something on their own?
Wozniak:
First of all, try to have the highest of ethics and to be open and truthful about things, not hiding. If you have to hide something for company reasons, at least explain what you’re doing. Don’t mislead people. Know in your heart that you are a good person with good goals because that will carry over to your own self-confidence and your belief in your engineering abilities. Always seek excellence: make your product better than the average person would.
