Hi Friend,

Plenty of companies make money. Fewer make things people love. I’ve been thinking about that gap lately, and I think it starts at the top. Does the CEO actually care about the product? Not the quarterly numbers. Not the stock price. The product itself.

Walt’s Shadow

Walt Disney didn’t build Disneyland because he thought it would be a good investment. Everyone around him told him it would fail. His board of directors was against it. The banks wouldn’t fund it. So Walt cashed in his life insurance policy and mortgaged his house. He did it because he had two daughters and he wanted a place where he could take them and they could all have a good time together. That was the whole pitch. A dad who wanted to take his kids somewhere fun.

Once Disneyland opened, Walt was there constantly. He drove the train on Saturdays. He walked the park. He noticed details.

Back in the 80s, I worked at Disneyland. There was an old-timer painter on the crew, and he used to tell me how he’d be working first thing in the morning and feel someone’s shadow fall across him. He’d look up and there was Walt, making the rounds, checking on everything. Seeing the thing he’d built and making sure it was right.

That story has stuck with me for decades. Walt wasn’t checking a spreadsheet or reading a report from a middle manager. He was standing over a painter at 7 AM because the paint mattered to him.

Lasers

Steve Jobs was the same way, but louder about it.

The Apple stories are legendary by now, but the ones that stick with me are the ones from people I actually know. A friend of mine who worked at Apple told me about seeing Steve in the elevator after the MobileMe launch. MobileMe was supposed to be Apple’s big cloud services play, and it was a disaster. My friend said Steve looked like he had lasers shooting out of his eyeballs. The product had Apple’s name on it, and it was broken, and that ate him alive.

You could argue that’s unhealthy, but there’s something about a CEO who feels physical pain when the product falls short. That energy flows downhill. When the person at the top cares that much, everyone else figures out pretty quickly that they’d better care too.

The Leather Jacket

I see that same energy today in Jensen Huang at NVIDIA. The guy shows up to every keynote in the same leather jacket, and he talks about chips the way a woodworker describes the grain of a piece of walnut. You can tell he’s not performing enthusiasm. He’s genuinely obsessed.

NVIDIA could coast right now. They’re printing money. But Jensen keeps pushing, keeps showing up with that look on his face like he can’t wait to show you what they built. He still holds weekly meetings with engineers.

The Test

You can spot it pretty easily. When a CEO talks about their company, do they talk about the product or the business? Walt talked about the park. Steve talked about the iPhone. Jensen talks about the chip. The ones who love the product can’t help themselves. The ones who don’t talk about market share and strategic initiatives.

There’s a difference between a company that makes money and a company that makes something worth caring about. I believe it starts with whether the person at the top loves what they’re building. As a thing they poured themselves into, not a line on a balance sheet.

I try to pull this lesson into my own work. Sparky Media is a small company. It’s just me with a little help. But I only pursue products I’m passionate about. Before I start a new field guide or take on a new project, I ask myself whether I care enough to put my name on it. If the answer isn’t an immediate yes, I don’t make it. I’d rather publish less and mean it than fill a catalog.

I’m not building theme parks or GPUs. But I know what it feels like to care about the paint at 7 AM.

Your pal,
David
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Unite Pro: Your Browser Tabs Deserve Better (Sponsor)

My thanks to Unite Pro for sponsoring MacSparky this week.

I spend a ridiculous amount of time in web apps. My browser has become a second operating system. The problem is that browser tabs are terrible containers for focused work. They pile up, they blend together, and they make context-switching feel like excavation.

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Your first app is free to use forever. Set it up with whatever web tool you live in most and see if having it as a dedicated app changes how you work. MacSparky readers get 20% off this month using the code MacSparky.

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