Jun 22, 2025
2 min read
Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They're not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world,
are the ones who do.
When I got my official Apple new hire packet, this poem was printed on the opening page. Just that. No explanation. No instruction.
I remember sitting with it, reading each line slowly. Something clicked.
It wasn’t just a clever ad. It was a signal. A calling. I realized in that moment: I wasn’t just joining a company—I was being invited into a mission. I was being asked to believe that changing the world was possible. And more than that, I was being asked to help do it.
And the people who handed it to me believed it, too.
Steve Jobs believed it. Deeply. He knew that if you could get someone to feel that—to feel that their work mattered, that it meant something—you’d get the best of them. You’d awaken their creativity, their focus, their defiance of mediocrity. That was the core energy Steve gave off. Not just brilliance. Not just intensity. It was belief. And that belief was contagious.
To work at Apple in those days was to be considered irrelevant.
The press had written us off. Analysts mocked us. Michael Dell said the best thing we could do was sell off the company and give the money back to shareholders. Inside, things were tense. The hallways felt like they were holding their breath. But for those of us on the inside—especially on the tiny team tucked away in Valley Green 6—something different was happening.
We weren’t just building a product. We were fighting for an idea.
That’s what people forget. Being a rebel isn’t about being loud or edgy. It’s about refusing to conform to what’s expected. It’s about seeing what’s broken in the system and saying: not this. Not anymore. Being a rebel means holding strong principles in a world that tells you to let go of them. It means believing in something so deeply that you’re willing to build an entirely new reality to protect it.
That’s what Think Different was about. It wasn’t just marketing. It was a manifesto.
People saw the commercials and thought it was meant to win over the world. But really, it was for us—the people inside Apple. It was a reminder that we weren’t crazy for believing this company could matter again. That creativity, design, and intuition weren’t luxuries. They were the whole point. They were why.
When Steve came back, the culture started shifting fast. He cut through noise with brutal clarity. Projects were slashed. Teams were refocused. And behind it all was that belief: that technology should serve people, not enslave them. That the system could be rebuilt—simpler, more human, more beautiful.
Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy. But under that pressure, something rare was happening. A kind of creative rebellion. A rejection of the industry’s sameness. A decision to care, fiercely, about the experience of making and using something that mattered.
This was the place where Apple was reborn.
And it wasn’t through compromise or caution. It was through rebellion.