Build A Company That Attracts The Next Steve Jobs

Editor?s note:?Derek?Andersen?is the founder of?Startup Grind, a 45-city community in 20-countries, uniting the global startup world together through educating, inspiring, and connecting entrepreneurs. On Steve Jobs? first day at Atari in 1973, he walked into the founder/CEO Nolan Bushnell?s office unannounced. ?I think you have a really awesome company. I think that everything is pretty good, but I?ve seen your soldering connections and they?re really crappy.? Nolan Bushnell replied, ?Well, let?s fix them.? Jobs replied, ?I will.??So what did Atari do as a company and culture to become so attractive that Steve Jobs? literally walked in off the street and demanded a job? Recently Bushnell wrote a book called, Finding the Next Steve Jobs: How to Find, Hire, Keep and Nurture Creative Talent. In it he outlines how the culture that he helped create at Atari was critical to hiring and keeping creative talent like Steve Jobs.?While Steve Jobs eventually started his own companies, it wasn’t before he made significant contributions to Atari’s success which included building the circuit boards for Breakout (with the help of Steve Wozniak). Let’s also not forget that people like Jack Dorsey and?Kevin Systrom also?started out as employees. After moving to the Valley for his first job following college, Bushnell quickly?realized that working for someone else wasn?t in his DNA. ?One of the reasons that Silicon Valley exists is that we have all worked next to somebody who has gone off and been successful,? Bushnell recently told me at Startup Grind. “We know firsthand that the guy next to us, that went off and was very successful, was an idiot.? Bushnell went on to pioneer the video game industry with Atari, and after leaving Atari he founded a dozen companies, among other things the popular family restaurant chain Chuck E. Cheese’s. Atari was critical in changing Valley company culture and startups themselves. ?Every engineer in the valley in 1970 wore a white shirt and tie to work ? that was professional. But we decided we wanted to create a new kind of company that was a total meritocracy. Don?t care about process. Treat everybody like an adult. Let them wear what they want, come to work when they want, work hard or work easy. Where you minimize process, you maximize outcomes.? In this book he outlines dozens of ways that startups can create the type of culture to attract the next great creators. I had

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