Silicon Valley reactions to Steve Jobs’s departure
Pueng Vongs Y! SF editor
Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco in 1955, but spent most of his life in the Santa Clara Valley - what he would later help shape into Silicon Valley. Leaders and investors in the high-tech hub lamented the CEO's resignation and lauded the contributions of the Apple visionary.
"He is the Michelangelo of the digital age," LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner told Reuters. "He is also the most insightful business speaker I've ever heard. He speaks the way he designs product: not a single wasted word. To this day, some of the most valuable lessons I've learned in business came from listening to him on stage," Weiner added.
Friend and rival Eric Schmidt of Google Inc called Jobs the most successful American CEO of the last 25 years, according to the report.
"He uniquely combined an artist's touch and an engineer's vision to build an extraordinary company, one of the greatest American leaders in history," said the Google chairman.
According to the Atlantic, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg paid tribute to the tech guru the best way he knows how by "liking" Jobs's topic page.
News of Jobs's resignation dominated technology blogs and Twitter.
"Steve Jobs run at Apple is likely the very best CEO execution we will see in our lifetime," tweeted Bill Gurley, a partner at venture capital firm Benchmark Capital.
Jeff Clavier, a prominent Silicon Valley investor, tweeted: "Millions of us are feeling orphans of Jobs' leadership, who had so much impact on tech and design. Wishing the best to him and his family."
Stewart Alsop of Alsop Louie Partners, a venture capitalist firm in San Francisco thinks the concern over Apple 's future may be premature. He told Private Equity Hub he thinks Jobs will not stray to far from his duties as CEO.
"Clearly, on some level, he's sick enough that he doesn't think he can be CEO anymore," Alsop says. "But I don't think Apple has lost Steve yet, and that's really critical. It's not important whether he's CEO but whether he contributes his product vision to the company, and I believe that in addition to the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, Apple is working on another product that could be another $20 billion business eventually," one peHUB mentions is rumored to be a reinvention of the TV.
"I believe that Steve has done enough for the company to go forward for at least the next 10 years," Alsop added. "It's okay for him to resign."
