What Steve Jobs taught me

Today marks fifteen years since Steve Jobs died.

I was still very young when he was alive, but he had an enormous influence on me once I was old enough to understand his work.

Some people leave a mark on the world. Others change it. Steve was one of the latter.

I'm grateful for how much he brought into the world. And I don't even mean the obvious things: the iPhone, Mac, iPod and everything else. For me, his influence goes much deeper.

Without Steve's example, perhaps I wouldn't have become the person I am today. A great deal of his philosophy lives in how I build products and teams, and in how I approach work itself.

I want to leave a few of my favourite ideas and quotations here. They aren't just attractive phrases I once saved. I actually use these principles almost every day.

The first is his story about a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers. You wouldn't use a piece of plywood for the back just because it faces the wall and nobody will see it. You would know it was there. To sleep well at night, the quality has to go all the way through.

That probably describes my approach to Chota better than almost anything else.

My team can tell you how much I fuss over the design of our systems, the interfaces and the tiny things most users may never consciously notice.

I enjoy making a product feel considered everywhere, not just on the first screen. That's why our products contain little details and Easter eggs. I love it when someone finds one, or simply notices the attention we have given to design and the user experience.

I also try to notice that plywood back in other people's products. I look at the design of everything, whether it is a milk carton or a pen. I try to get inside the mind of the person who made it and understand whether they put care into their work.

I always appreciate finding something the creator left for people like me, who look closely. Sometimes I won't buy something because its maker didn't win me over with the design.

Another thought that feels very close to me is this:

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful, that's what matters to me.”

Of course a business has to make money. But if money is the only reason to do something, I think it gets boring pretty quickly.

It feels much better to finish the day knowing you made something you can actually be proud of. That quotation is on my team profile at Chota, too.

Then there is the idea often attributed to Steve that we should hire talented people to tell us what to do, rather than hire them and dictate every move.

It took a long time to form the core team we have today. Many people have passed through our startup. I now understand how important that approach is.

I don't need people around me who wait for instructions from morning until night. I'd much rather work with people who can come to me and say, “Nikita, what we're doing is crap. We should do it this way.”

Sometimes they understand their field much better than I do. That's the point. If we had built the team differently, Chota would be much weaker today.

And one last thought, though there are so many more I could write for a week: you have to find what you love. That applies to work as much as to relationships. Work takes up a large part of your life, and the way to be satisfied is to do work you believe is great. To do that, you have to love it.

You can spend a long time searching for the “right” profession, the right niche, the most promising market or the place with the most money.

But when you find something you want to do from morning until night simply because you love the process, it feels completely different.

I think I was very lucky to find that fairly early.