I just got this in an email from Tom Batten.

“I’ve relayed this story to several folks already. But, its an
entrepreneur’s classic and anytime I get discouraged I think of it.

A former Bain colleague and good friend of mine, David Morton (founded
Letslink.jp – at one time a legitimate competitor to Mixi) has an uncle
who was one of the early ones at Apple (in charge of monitor design I
think). Morton went out to see his uncle in the Valley and swung by his
office one day. His uncle asked him if he’d like to meet Steve Jobs.
Morton, of course, said ‘hell yeah’.

Morton rolled into Jobs’ office and they shot the bull for about 5 minutes
about all sorts of things. Then they got into a discussion about what
Dave was doing. The dialogue went something like this:

Jobs: So, what are you doing now that you’re out of Duke
Morton: I work at Bain, its a (interrupted by Jobs)
Jobs: Consulting, I see (in quite a derogatory tone)
Morton: Yeah, but it pays well and I’m paying down university debt, the
people are smart, the work is interesting, its low risk (interrupted by
Jobs)
Jobs: (thundering) Everybody dies! If that wasn’t the case then I might
buy this low risk bull sh$t. When Waz and I started this company we were
in a garage with no…(proceeded to go on about throwing it all in on
something you believe in, with most four letter words in the English
language included of course)

The conversation quickly became a monologue from Jobs about why a guy like
Dave should put his energies and training into starting a business.
Morton wasn’t the same afterwards. When he got back to Atlanta it was as
if seeing Moses coming down from the Mount. Bain became a classroom until
the real thing, starting a business.

That’s just a simple anecdote but it gets me fired up every time I think
about it. Its what gets us all jazzed about everything we are working on.
Its why we can think of Zenopy as a hive – everyone is buzzing off each
other’s energy and as a collective, sharing shortcuts to meet our
respective goals.”

Cheers Tom!