--- title: I Am Not Steve Jobs and Steve Would Have Wanted It That Way description: Ok, I admit i image: https://www.onstartups.com/hs-fs/file-13149306-jpg/images/steve-jobs-ipad.jpg --- # I Am Not Steve Jobs and Steve Would Have Wanted It That Way Written By: [Brian Halligan](https://www.onstartups.com/author/brian-halligan) October 6, 2011 I Am Not Steve Jobs and Steve Would Have Wanted It That Way Written by [Brian Halligan](https://www.onstartups.com/author/brian-halligan) on October 6, 2011 - - - - *The following is a guest post by Brian Halligan.  A friend, my co-founder at [HubSpot](https://www.hubspot.com) and a fellow Jobs fanboy.  * Ok, I admit it, I'm a Steve Jobs fanboy.  I use virtually all of his products, I've read every book there is about him, and I probably never would have founded my company had it not been for his inspiration. As our company's defacto first product manager, I did what any new product manager probably does, I gobbled up virtually everything I could on how Steve Jobs builds products at Apple.  I read how Steve obsessed about every detail, his brilliant aesthetic, his occassional mercurial management style, etc.  After reading so much about him, I started copying everything I could.  After all, how hard could it be?  ...Well, it turns out its a lot harder than it looks! ![steve jobs ipad](https://www.onstartups.com/hs-fs/file-13149306-jpg/images/steve-jobs-ipad.jpg)   If I watched every minute of basketball Michael Jordan played, read all of his biographies, listened to his interviews, and practiced his moves non-stop, I'd become an adequate basketball player, but I'd be missing the genetic code that makes him a great basketball player.  For starters, no matter how much I practiced and learned, I was never going to be 6 feet 6 inches tall.  It turns out the same is true for Steve Jobs.  No matter how much I read and practiced, I was not going to develop his design aesthetic and was not going to develop his attention to detail.  As you read all the content that comes out today on Steve, my advice would be to take in the inspriration and emulate what you can, but also be true to yourself.  You have your own super powers -- don't completely forget those and try to be someone else.  Or, in Steve own word's from his [Stanford commcencement address](http://dharme.sh/nItwg7): ### "Your time is limited so don't waste it living someone else's life."   ## Related Posts [Prehistoric Steve Jobs Introduces The New Apple iRock Tablet [cartoon] cartoon January 27, 2010 Though it's easy to get caught up in Apple's new tablet announcement, let's not forget the original idea that sparked the whole thing. It's the iRock -- it transformed how people… Read Post ** ](https://www.onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/11677/Prehistoric-Steve-Jobs-Introduces-The-New-Apple-iRock-Tablet-cartoon.aspx) [16 Brilliant Insights From Steve Jobs Keynote Circa 1997 July 1, 2011 Like millions of others, I'm a big fan of Steve Jobs. He's a genius and an exceptional communicator. I came across this old video recently of Jobs doing a keynote at the Apple WWDC in… Read Post ** ](https://www.onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/58082/16-Brilliant-Insights-From-Steve-Jobs-Keynote-Circa-1997.aspx) Subscribe ### Get OnStartup News and Updates in your Inbox. ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Brian Halligan", "url" : "https://www.onstartups.com/author/brian-halligan" }, "datePublished" : "2011-10-06T14:32:00.000Z", "headline" : "I Am Not Steve Jobs and Steve Would Have Wanted It That Way", "image" : [ "https://www.onstartups.com/hs-fs/file-13149306-jpg/images/steve-jobs-ipad.jpg" ], "mainEntityOfPage" : { "@id" : "https://www.onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/68888/I-Am-Not-Steve-Jobs-and-Steve-Would-Have-Wanted-It-That-Way.aspx", "@type" : "WebPage" }, "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "url" : "https://www.onstartups.com/hubfs/mjtw-assets/logos/onstartups-logo@2x.png" }, "name" : "OnStartups" } } ```