You’ve gotta start somewhere.

I always hate when designers talk about how Steve Jobs is so amazing and how he’d never settle for anything but the best, blah blah blah. Yes, that’s true, but they’ve been a public company since 1980, they’ve had billions of dollars and 1000s of amazingly talented people on their team.

Before the IPO, at the very beginning when it was just the founders, their first product was the following:

“The Apple I, Apple’s first product, was sold as an assembled circuit board and lacked basic features such as a keyboard, monitor, and case. The owner of this unit added a keyboard and a wooden case.”

It was a motherboard. Not even a computer – just a motherboard.

I think it’s important to remember when we’re all trying to start something from scratch that you have to start at zero, and the first product will probably suck. It’ll be a motherboard, when what you really wanted to build was an all-aluminum Macbook Air with a Retina display.

But you gotta start somewhere.

This post originally appeared on Andrew Chen’s personal blog.
Image Credit / BNPS