Yogen: Well, clearly Facebook is the next company being created but the point I was making is that we’ve moved away from Silicon to what we now think of as Internet Media. And the vibrancy of the Valley is that it keeps on re-inventing itself from building electronics to building chips to building routers, now to building experiences that each and every one of us want.
Kamla: Let’s stay with the 70s. You were part of Vint Cerf who just became a professor in ’73. He was a fresh grad and you were involved with him in creating TCP. What made you take that fork on the road as Yogi Berra would say, and work with Vint?
Yogen: Two things. You know when you meet somebody who is truly remarkable as we’ve discovered he is, he just was inspirational the first day I met him. But I, as an undergraduate of IIT Bombay was fascinated by this whole notion that computers were more than just machines where you solved complex equations and the notion that computers could communicate with each other and that we as individuals, could use computers to communicate with each other was just fascinating. And so when I read all the work he had done on the Arpanet, I knew this was the person that I wanted to hitch my wagon to.
Kamla: What has surprised you about the growth of the internet?
Yogen: Well, the growth of the internet is that it’s unstoppable. It’s one of these standards that continues to evolve; it’s an organic system, not controlled by any one company. You might say that Google controls one aspect of what people want from search but the fact is that the technology underlines the internet that can be constantly improved upon by any one who knows how to make it better.
Kamla: Let’s switch to apple because after Stanford, you went to Xerox Parc and then you went to Apple and you were a part of ClarisWorks where you were with Bill Campbell who is regarded as the coach of Silicon Valley CEOs. What was it like working at Apple because it is one of the companies that had tremendous ups and downs.
Yogen: Well, you know I helped Bill start Claris in 1987 which in some ways was a spin-off out of Apple even though in many ways regarded as a wholly owned subsidiary that Apple eventually bought. But Bill Campbell is exactly as everybody says. He is the ultimate coach. He knows how to motivate people. He’s a brilliant marketer and for me, it was the first time in my career that I went from being a purely technologist to somebody who was building products that would have mass market appeal. In this case, application software for the Macintosh. So I’ve just always been a big believer that Apple is one company in the world that will constantly transform the world. Even though it’s had some bad times in the past, it’s managed to survive them because the fundamental notion that the people at Apple know what it is that consumers want has not changed ever since Steve Jobs started at Apple way back in the late ‘70s.
Kamla: Are there times when you look at it and wonder what is it that this company is doing right and how is it that they are able to change course and correctc ourse so frequently?
Yogen: Well, I think what Apple really stands for is excellence- excellence in terms of the user experience. I mean, they are masters at making sure that all the details are right.