It was late winter of 1979 with the holiday police debacle behind me, and I’d been working at Apple for the better part of two years. I was feverishly attempting to finish up the first pass of my Apple /// graphics core routines for eventual integration into the Sara Operating System (SOS). I lived in an apartment complex close to Apple, and I’d recently begun talking to my neighbor about what I did for a living, and he indicated to me that he was an attorney. My neighbor’s name was Grant Jasmin, and he seemed like a bright and energetic fellow. Over the course of several weeks, (we) would get together for meals or wine tasting and discuss what was going on in the world and in our lives. I disclosed to Grant that I’d developed this new video hardware for the Apple II and was thinking of marketing it somehow. Grant offered his opinion and impressed me with his business acumen and the speed at which he grasped my product’s concept and benefit.
Grant could be a real asset, I thought. I felt his business prowess just might come in quite handy. I was approached at work a few days later by Steve Jobs, who’d heard about my 80-column card and indicated Apple was interested in seeing it produced. He made it clear that Apple supported the entrepreneurial spirit and said he would sign a letter of release that agreed I was the sole owner of the technology, that Apple had no claim or proprietary interest in it, and I could pursue selling it outside of Apple. Steve then indicated that if after securing my release I wanted to pursue my own destiny, Apple would support me by purchasing my 80-column card as a distributor! It was a mighty tempting offer!
Everyone was encouraging me to take the plunge, quit Apple and start my own company to produce my 80-column video card. I asked Grant if he’d like to join me, and he said yes. Grant and I then wracked our brains yet again for a descriptive name and I hit upon Advanced Logic System, Inc. No ordinary run-of-the-mill logic systems from us! My role was to handle all things engineering and manufacturing, and Grant would handle all the business-related functions.
About a week later Steve handed me the release letter stating that I owned my 80-column card design. I showed it to Grant, who approved. Steve also invited Grant and I to a sit-down meeting at his favorite local restaurant, The Good Earth. Grant met Steve and I at Apple’s lobby, and the three of us walked over to the Good Earth to discuss business. As we crossed the street in front of Apple, Jobs started the negotiations with the claim that Apple should own the rights to my 80-column card design because I must have used proprietary knowledge gained while working for the company. But, I countered, I only used information that was publicly available, such as schematics and code listings published in the manuals for typical peripherals like the COM or Serial card. Ding! End of round one. Chuck:1, Jobs:0.
He then tried other tactics such as appealing to my sense of loyalty to the company. Seeing as he wasn’t rattling my cage hard enough, he then lobbed at me his now infamous major salvo.
He said to me: “you know, if I wanted to, I could squash you like a bug…” and at that, he managed to finally make me flabbergasted! Really, threats before anything meaningful was yet to be discussed? This was his best foot forward? (Frankly, that’s classic Steve Jobs as others could attribute.) Being young and naïve, I didn’t quite understand that this was a tactic designed to make us cave to a lesser deal more favorable to Apple. Grant saw that I was distressed since I’d declined to respond, so jumped in and made it clear that threats weren’t going to work. I think the reason Steve started that way was because he felt at a disadvantage. I basically was holding all the cards: he’d pissed away any rights Apple might have had when he signed and delivered that release letter to me. That letter was worth a lot of money!
My understanding today is that Steve had mentioned my design and the release he gave me at an executive staff meeting earlier in the week and was then duly chastised for giving away something so valuable. Jobs needed to find a way to wrest some form of concession out of me and basically get things back under Apple’s control. In other words, this ridiculous posturing was Steve simply trying to save face. We soon reached the restaurant and settled into our meal. I let Grant take the lead on our side of the negotiating table.
Over the course of an hour we settled on Apple placing an initial 1000-piece order at $225 each. Apple would also option 9000 more boards with a schedule to be determined if sales went well with the first 1000. Good god, $2.25 million dollars of initial sales volume? How could I not leave and start my own business?
Steve sweetened the deal by offering me access to the high-volume price leveraging of Apple’s purchasing department as well as for Apple to purchase the raw material (electronics components) I needed on my behalf! Apple was essentially saying we believe in you, here’s some seed capital to get started! And, oh yeah, you get access to our expert purchasing department free of charge! I was also allowed to keep my Apple ID and retained permission to come to Apple and use the facilities for things like printing out software listings and my operator/owner manual. Frankly, over the course of perhaps an hour, life went from precarious to suddenly sweet.
Excerpt from
https://books.by/john-buck
