The Steve Jobs Email That Outlined Apple's Strategy A Year Before His Death - Quartz

9/25/2016
TheSteveJobsemailthatoutlinedApplesstrategyayearbeforehisdeathQuartz
PRIMARY SOURCE
The Steve Jobs email that

outlined Apples strategy a year
before his death
Zachary M. Seward
April 05, 2014
Jobs said 2011 would be "the Year of the Cloud." (AP/dapd/Marcio Jose Sanche)
In 2010, a year before his death, Steve Jobs outlined Apples strategy in an email to the
companys 100 most senior employees. He heralded the Post PC era, vowed Holy War
with Google, promised to further lock customers into our ecosystem, and warned that
Apple was in danger of hanging on to old paradigm too long.
The email was an agenda for Apples annual top 100 meeting later that year. It was
released this week as part of Apples lawsuit against Samsung over smartphone patents.
http://qz.com/196005/thestevejobsemailthatoutlinedapplesstrategyayearbeforehisdeath/#/h/59327,1/
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9/25/2016
released this week as part of Apples lawsuit against Samsung over smartphone patents.
Here is the entire email:
From: Steve Jobs <sjobs@apple.com>
Date: October 24, 2010 6:12:41 PM PDT
To: ET <et@group.apple.com>
Subject: Top 100 A

Heres my current cut.
Steve
1. 2011 Strategy SJ
who are we?
headcount, average age,

VP count, senior promotions in last year
percent new membership at this meeting
what do we do?
pie chart of units/product line and revenues/product line
same charts with tablets + phones merged together
Post PC era- Apple is the rst company to get here
Post PC products now 66% of our revenues
iPad outsold Mac within 6 months
Post PC era = more mobile (smaller, thinner, lighter) + communications + apps +
cloud services
2011: Holy War with Google
all the ways we will compete with them
primary reason for this Top 100 meeting
you will hear about what were doing in each presentation
2011: Year of the Cloud
we invented Digital Hub concept
PC as hub for all your digital assets
contacts, calendars, bookmarks, photos, music, videos
digital hub (center of our universe) is moving from PC to cloud
PC now just another client alongside iPhone, iPad, iPod touch,
Apple is in danger of hanging on to old paradigm too long (innovators dilemma)
Google and Microsoft are further along on the technology, but havent quite gured
it out yet
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it out yet
tie all of our products together, so we further lock customers into our ecosystem
2015: new campus
2. State of the Company
Peter & Tim

FY2010 recap
FY2011 plan
where is our business
geo analysis (NA, Euro, Japan, Asia, possibly break out china) (present on map)
key milestones, trends & future goals
comparisons with Google, Samsung, HTC, Motorola & RIM3. iPhone
Joz & Bob
2011 Strategy:
plus iPhone 4 with better antenna, processor, camera & software to stay ahead of
competitors until mid 2012
have LTE version in mid-2012
create low cost iPhone model based on iPod touch to replace 3GS
Business & competitive update
show Droid and RIM ads
Verizon iPhone
schedule, marketing,
iPhone 5 hardware
H4 performance
new antenna design, etc
new camera
schedule
[CONFIDENTIAL]
cost goal
show model (and/or renderings)

Jony
4. iPad Bob, Jony, Dan Riccio, Michael Tchao ,Randy Ubillos, Xander Soren, Roger
Rosner
2011 Strategy: ship iPad 2 with amazing hardware and software before our
competitors even catch up with our current model
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competitors even catch up with our current model

Business & competitive update Michael
Apps, corporate adoption,
show Samsung, HP(?) anf iPad ads
2011 Product Roadmap
Bob, Dan & Jony
iPad 2
new ID, H4, UMTS + Verizon in one model, cameras,

EVT units & cases
HDMI dongle (use for projection of demos below?)
iPad 3
display, H4T
DEMOS:- PhotoBooth (Michael?)
iMovie (Randy)
GarageBand (Xander)
text book authoring system (Roger)
working display for iPad 3 (during break)
5. iOS Scott, Joz
Strategy: catch up to Android where we are behind (noti cations, tethering, speech,
) and leapfrog them (Siri, )
Timeline of iOS releases from rst until Telluride, including Verizon
Jasper tent poles
Durango tent poles (without MobileMe)
Telluride tent poles (with catch up and leapfrog notations on each one)
DEMOS:
Jasper: AirPlay to AppleTV video from iPad, photos from iPhone, ??
Durango: ?? (without MobileMe features)
Telluride: Siri, ?
6. MobileMe Cue, SJ, Roger Rosner
Strategy: catch up to Google cloud services and leapfrog them (Photo Stream, cloud
storage)
Android
deeply integrates Google cloud services
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deeply integrates Google
cloud services
9/25/2016
way ahead of Apple in cloud services for contacts, calendars, mail

2011
Apples year of the cloud
tie all of our products together
make Apple ecosystem even more sticky
Free MobileMe for iPhone 4, iPad and new iPod touch
Jasper Sign up with Apple ID, Find My iPhone
Durango
Find My Friends, Calendar, Contacts, Bookmarks, Photo Stream
April
iWork cloud storage
Telluride
cloud storage for third party apps
iOS backup
new iDisk for Mac
Growth
projected growth, cost/user
plan to scale to 100 million users
transition plan for paid members
what about email?
DEMOS:
Find My Friends
Calendar
Photo Stream
iWork cloud storage (Roger Rosner)
7. Mac
David Moody, Bob, Craig Federigi, Randy Ubilos & ?
Hardware roadmap
Lion plan
Mac App Store
Final Cut Pro DEMO (Randy & ?)
8. Apple TV 2- David Moody, Jeff Robbin
Strategy: stay in the living room game and make a great must have accessory for
iOS devices
sales so far, projections for this holiday season
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sales so far, projections for this holiday season

add content:- NBC, CBS, Viacom, HBO,
TV subscription?
where do we go from here?
apps, browser, magic wand?
9. Stores Update Eddy, Patrice
Music
Strategy: Leap even further ahead of Google in music

Beatles
iTunes in the cloud
App Store
Strategy: Leap even further ahead of Google in discovering great new iOS apps
10. iAds Update Andy Miller
11. Retail Update Ron Johnson
Read this next: Why Apples dream for television keeps falling apart
ORGANIZATION
This pioneering tech company

gured how to make work-fromhome work
Alice Truong
September 11, 2016
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(Maxime Francout for Quartz)
In this series, Perfect Company, we are examining pockets of excellence in the corporate
world. No single company is perfect, but together they show what the corporate ideal could
look like.
The platonic ideal

We like to give people the freedom to work where they want, safe in the knowledge that
they have the drive and expertise to perform excellently, whether they [are] at their desk
or in their kitchen. Yours truly has never worked out of an of ce, and never
will.Richard Branson, Virgin Group founder
The practice
The headquarters of Automattic, the maker of WordPress.com, is a bright and airy space
in San Franciscos South of Market district. Hawthorne, as its called after the small alley
it sits on, is decidedly industrial with its concrete oors and exposed beams. Like many
of its neighboring tech companies, there are ping pong tables, free snacks, and company
swag. But somethings missing here. Where are all the employees?
With a staff of 450 spread over 45 countries, Automattic is often regarded as one of the
largest and most successful examples of a fully distributed workforce. I used to be very
con icted, says CEO Matt Mullenweg. All I hear from my friends in San Francisco is
how hard it is to hire. Should I not tell them this secret? I decided its a great idea and
everyone should do it. Ill keep shouting from the rooftop because everyone should do
it.
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For Mullenweg, it was only natural the companys employees would work remotely given
its roots in WordPress, an open-source blog publishing network with collaborators all
over the world. (WordPress VIP, however, is a commercial product that powers many
news organizations websites, including Quartz.) Weve never worked any other way, he
says. While the company does pay for employees coworking spaces, overall its saving on
real estate and relocation costs, though it declined to say how much. The company
insists that ultimately cost wasnt a deciding factor.
To make the distributed model work, Automattic, which was founded in 2005, relies on
technology to keep employees in sync. Even if team members are in the same location,
the company encourages meetings to take place online in the spirit of transparency.
The worst possible thing when youre working from home is that you feel youre not in
the loop, says Toni Schneider, who served as CEO from 2006 to 2014. We want
everyone else who is remote to feel completely equal. (Like many WordPress employees,
Schneider likes to mix work with travel, as he did during a cross-country road trip with
his family in the summer of 2008.)
Automattic is a place with few hard and fast rules. In addition to letting staff work where
and when they want, it has an open-vacation policy and urges employees to use your
best judgment when it comes to expenses, according to Ingrid Miller, who works in
human resources. The company is broken up into about 70 teams varying in size from
two to about a dozen people. Mullenweg describes the setup as a collection of small
startups working in harmony with each other. Teams are empowered to try new tools if
they believe it can help them work more ef ciently.
A decade-plus of experimentation has led Automattic to its current set of tools:
Slack, a business chat app used for day-to-day communication
P2, a WordPress theme modeled after Twitters stream with in-line
replies for more in-depth discussions
Wikis, eld guides with content that rarely changes
Zoom video conferencing
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But there were many pain points before it arrived at this arrangement. Originally,
Automattic used Internet Relay Chat (IRC), a text chat protocol that predates AOL
Instant Messenger, for instant messaging. But with the proliferation of mobile devices,
employees sought an easier way to chat from their phones. Skype was far from a perfect
solution, but it had a mobile app, making it one of the better offerings in 2008. The main
drawback was that conversations were siloed into individual groups, which is terrible
for distributed companies, says Schneider.
There was an awkward transition period where employees were expected to be on both
IRC and Skype. Eventually, the company migrated to Slack en masse, but even that came
with its false starts, as various teams had used and abandoned the chat app before it
nally stuck for good in 2014. Our lifeblood today is Slack and [a WordPress theme] we
created called P2, says Mullenweg.
Slack checked off a number of boxes for Automattic. It had a mobile app, and it allowed
employees to chat in public channels, privately in groups, and directly with colleagues.
Still there were some holdouts, recalls software engineer Kat Hagan, who lives in
Oakland. Some employees worried about trusting a third party with its chat logs. Plus, in
an ideal world, all of Automattics tools would be open source. In this case, convenience
won out.
As with all chat apps, Slacks constant pings can be distracting, and its easy for
conversations to get derailed. To keep important discussions from disappearing into the
ether, the company has a speci c WordPress theme that keeps conversations focused
with threaded conversations. Created during a 2008 company gathering in Oracle,
Arizona, P2 (originally called Prologue) is like the WordPress equivalent of an activity
stream, says Davide Casali, a London-based designer whose team works on WordPress
themes.
For all the thought that went into chat, there are gray areas. There are times when a
discussion in Slack picks up so much chatter that it becomes better suited for P2. We
have an emoji for thata P2, says Casali. That usually prompts a person involved in the
conversation to transcribe and summarize the discussion in a P2 post.
But subtlety can get lost in text transmission. I would probably say the biggest
breakthrough for us was really when [Google] Hangouts started to come along, and really
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breakthrough for us was really
when [Google] Hangouts started to come along, and really
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the idea of group video conferencing all of a sudden became very doable, says
Schneider. In Automattic fashion, some teams later tried Zoom, a video conferencing
chat app that displays participants in a Brady Bunch-like grid, and now were all sort of
hopping on the Zoom train, says Hagan.
Of course, video is not a complete replacement for face-to-face interactions. Some
within the organization, including Mullenweg, have contemplated the role virtual reality
can play in collaboration, but thats a faraway future. For now, its hard to beat the real
thingsitting across from a coworker, able to read his or her body language and facial
ticks in person. This is why Automattic organizes a company-wide meetup once a year in
an exotic locale for a week. Teams are also encouraged to plan their own outings, mixing
work and play, two to three times a year with a budget of about $250 per person per day,
excluding airfare.
While its possible to work remotely, theres a bonding and a familiarity that develops
when youre in person together thats irreplaceable, says Mullenweg.
The takeaways
For a fully distributed company to work, everybody needs to be on the same page.
Automattic believes transparency is a key part of that, and that means making
conversations, documents, meetings, and leadership training sessions open to the entire
company. Furthermore, as Mullenweg wrote in a 2012 blog post, you have to be really
committed to keep the creative center and soul of the organization on the internet, and
not in an of ce.
Employees are drawn to Automattic because of the companys exibility, but that can
also make it tough to maintain a work-life balance, something employees have to gure
out for themselves. For example, Hagan, a night owl who says she works best from 9pm
to 2am, will offset a particularly long workday with a shorter one. Ultimately,
Automattics not the kind of company that feels the need to peer over employees
shoulders. Its less focused on setting rules as much as expectations that employees will
get their work done.
When Automattic grew to 50 people and later to 150 people, Mullenweg had concerns
around how the distributed model would scale. Much thought went into what tools to
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around how the distributed model would scale. Much thought went into what tools to
use and how to use them. Employees, who are in small, agile teams, are encouraged to
experiment with different ways of working. Sometimes these experiments are adopted
companywide (as was the case with Slack), and sometimes, they fail (like one teams
attempt at Holacracy).
If we make it look easy, its because were working incredibly hard at it, says
Mullenweg. At this point, though, he doesnt see an upper bound to it and says he can
imagine Automattic as a company with thousands of remote employees.
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9/25/2016

The Steve Jobs email that

April 05, 2014

Subject: Top 100 A

headcount, average age,

Peter & Tim

show model (and/or renderings)

competitors even catch up with our current model

new ID, H4, UMTS + Verizon in one model, cameras,

way ahead of Apple in cloud services for contacts, calendars, mail

sales so far, projections for this holiday season

Strategy: Leap even further ahead of Google in music

This pioneering tech company

September 11, 2016

(Maxime Francout for Quartz)

The platonic ideal

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