Editor’s note: This article was first published in November 2014, and its statement that Amazon is now valued at $141 billion is a 2014 figure.
Between 1980 and 1990, Silicon Valley was going through a crucial period of innovation that would change the world, the way we communicate and the way business was done as it was known back then.
Very few people realised it at the time. One of them was the photographer Doug Menuez. When he heard that Steve Jobs had been fired from Apple and was founding a new company called NeXT, he decided to call Jobs and ask whether he could document how that company was built.
To Menuez’s surprise, Jobs agreed. The photographer then spent more than a decade of his life as the shadow of many of the young entrepreneurs who were building little-known technology companies at the time, photographing their most intimate business moments.
(Read: The dark side of Steve Jobs: the CEO inside the genius)
Those photos came to light in June 2014, when Menuez published his book Fearless Genius, which gathers all of that work photo by photo and explains what was happening at the moment each picture was taken.
His work covers practically the whole development of Microsoft, with an enthusiastic Bill Gates, as well as Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and many other entrepreneurs who, in one way or another, changed the world by building their companies in Silicon Valley.
These are some of the photos in the book (you can see them on the Fearless Genius website):
Jobs explaining NeXT. Steve Jobs had been forced out of Apple Computer, the company he founded. Full of enthusiasm and excitement once again, he explains the idea behind NeXT, whose vision was to change education and make the personal computer affordable for any student or family.
The lunch that funded NeXT. A photo taken in 1986 during a lunch in an abandoned warehouse where Steve Jobs would later build NeXT. After that meal, Ross Perot invested $20 million in Jobs’s new company, becoming a key member and giving NeXT the oxygen it needed to launch and become a great company.
A bad answer. Steve Jobs weighing up a bad answer from his design director, who has no idea that he is about to be told where to go and flattened by Jobs.
At the whiteboard. An excited Steve Jobs, his shirt creased from sleeping at the office, explains on the whiteboard how they will drive the revolution from analogue to digital.
Kicking a beach ball. Jobs was always a tense person who never seemed to relax, so the photo of him kicking a beach ball on the company lawn is an epic moment. In fact, he was happy because the company was making progress.
Cheering on the staff. Jobs could be extremely rude, critical and at times vindictive, but according to the photographer he was also incredibly cheerful, with a smile and an energy that were contagious. This picture shows him cheering on the company’s employees after a visit to the factory.
Steve Wozniak. The Apple co-founder testing one of the first prototypes of the famous Game Boy in 1991.
Bill Gates. Gates talking to journalists about the progress of Windows after a conference in 1992.
Jeff Bezos. And finally, Jeff Bezos in 1995, excited about creating the company called Amazon, which is now valued at $141 billion.
In an interview with Business Insider, Doug Menuez said he put the photos away in boxes and forgot all about them until, in 2000, he saw how the geniuses he had photographed had become key figures in innovation. So he got to work, matching the photos with the notes he had taken, and started on his book.
Without realising it, Menuez lived first-hand through the change these entrepreneurs brought about. He says it was not easy for them, but that new entrepreneurs can learn many lessons from this work, which captures moments of enthusiasm and sacrifice. That, after all, is the race every entrepreneur starts.
Further reading
- What Steve Jobs and Bill Gates really thought of each other
- 7 strange stories in which Steve Jobs behaved like a jerk
- The fascinating life and career of Bill Gates
Featured image: Rama & Musée Bolo, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
