I’ll never forget the wonder and excitement of turning on my first Mac as a kid or of connecting a 50 foot telephone cord to our second Mac to create my first Appletalk network. It’s a feeling I got to experience over and over with other Apple products (and even a few PCs too). Those early days of being enamored with the digital world ignited a passion that guided me through my undergrad days in computer science and ultimately led to my summer with Shelby.tv.  With the news of Steve’s passing today, I’m thinking a lot about how far I’ve come and how much Steve’s vision (along with the support and guidance of a whole host of others) helped get me here. There are a ton of great videos of Steve doing his thing, but I think his 2005 commencement address at Stanford sums up a lot of why I found him so inspirational: “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” Steve, thanks for inspiring a generation of entrepreneurs to chase dreams and think different. “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” Rest in peace.
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I’ll never forget the wonder and excitement of turning on my first Mac as a kid or of connecting a 50 foot telephone cord to our second Mac to create my first Appletalk network. It’s a feeling I got to experience over and over with other Apple products (and even a few PCs too). Those early days of being enamored with the digital world ignited a passion that guided me through my undergrad days in computer science and ultimately led to my summer with Shelby.tv.  With the news of Steve’s passing today, I’m thinking a lot about how far I’ve come and how much Steve’s vision (along with the support and guidance of a whole host of others) helped get me here.

There are a ton of great videos of Steve doing his thing, but I think his 2005 commencement address at Stanford sums up a lot of why I found him so inspirational:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Steve, thanks for inspiring a generation of entrepreneurs to chase dreams and think different.

“Stay hungry, stay foolish.”

Rest in peace.

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