Who is the Steve Jobs of web3? 🍏

GM from Decentra Daily, the web3 newsletter for the rest of us.

Name the person who did the most to bring personal computing into our lives, homes, pockets.

Steve Jobs has to at least make your shortlist.

Q: call it web3, the metaverse, whatever – who will create the idea or product that brings the next phase of tech to the masses?

They are probably already in the space, somewhere...

Today:

• Who is the Steve Jobs of web3?

Can I start this email by saying that it's really hard to write about Steve Jobs?

He was so impactful, multifaceted, and discussed, that saying anything about him feels like struggling to get a foothold at the bottom of a giant Jobs mountain.

It's hard to know if you're being objective or entering Jobs' Reality Distortion Field.

-His what?

Jobs was known for a hypnotizing communication style that had people accepting his wild deadlines and blue-sky visions. Colleagues called it his "reality distortion field."

Web3 is still in its early stages. I’d say we're closer to Apple II than iPhone territory.

So if we're looking for Jobs 3.0, we should be thinking of early Jobs.

Jobs' early career: A quick timeline

• 60s. Grows up in the Bay Area, meeting Silicon Valley pioneers and best bud Wozniak

• College years. Dropped out of Reed to live on a hippy commune and grow apples

• Apple I. Started selling Wozniak’s first personal computer in 1976, then turns VC and gets an Intel executive to invest in Apple II

• Early 80s. Apple goes public. Steve is worth $200 million, at age 25. He gets laser-focused on GUIs, mice, drop-down menus and other UX

• Macintosh. Jobs gets kicked off Apple's headline project and joins Macintosh, a “computer for the rest of us“

• NeXt. Jobs gets kicked off Macintosh and builds NeXT, an expensive personal computer company that flops

• Pixar. Jobs changes tack and focuses on a small animation team he bought from Lucas Arts a few years back

• Toy Story. After getting by selling software, Pixar signs with Disney. They make movies, go public, and Jobs is worth $1.5 billion

• Mid 90s. Apple buys back NeXt and Jobs. He goes Rambo and makes interim CEO within a year, revealing the iMac the year after

After that: OS X, iPod, iPhone, world domination. You know the rest.

Here’s a longer timeline if you’re interested.

The criteria

If the next Steve Jobs' is anything like the one above, then they'll probably be born into the space. They'll come out of the gate with a unique vision and striking communication skills.

Like the original model, Jobs 3.0 will have a relentless focus on the user experience and will find mindblowing ways to apply new tech to our everyday needs.

Web3's Steve Jobs will also need to be comfortable with rollercoasters. They'll probably win big and fail hard, running different projects in different spaces – all while inspiring others to come along for the ride.

The contenders

So who's got the right web3 resume? Here are our nominees 🏆

Vitalik Buterin

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is already a Jobs-level poster boy for many in web3.

He's a personable tech visionary who's been a part of the scene since the early days, aiming to build the universal blockchain for web3 apps and assets.

Also: Is that a reality distortion field, or are you just pleased to see me?

Good Jobs?Vitalik is young, dropped out of college to find his calling, and has plans at the grandest scale.

He also has an innovative approach to system building thanks to his interest in RPG games, and works across multiple niches as a programmer and writer (he co-founded Bitcoin magazine).

Bad Jobs 😔Buterin is building layer 1 of web3. He's mostly down in the engine room, not in the design studio. And right now, interacting with the Ethereum blockchain doesn't exactly give you that satisfying iOS feeling...

Mark Zuckerberg

Another prodigy whose career overlapped with Jobs', Zuckerberg wants to be king of web3 real bad – but didn't he already shoot his shot in web2?

Good Jobs?He's user-focused (yeah, focused on our data), has super ambitious web3 plans, and is building products for tomorrow's mainstream consumer.

Bad Jobs 😔Right now at least, most people aren't sold on Meta's vision of the future. Plus, he was such a central figure in web2, it's hard to believe he'll define web3 too.

Jack Dorsey

Dorsey is reimagining social media in a decentralized form with his newest project, Bluesky. Could that be the key to unlocking web3 for the masses?

He's another college dropout with a strong look and a predilection for bizarre dietary habits. Very Jobsian. He also did the whole 'pushed out of the company and made a dramatic return' thing.

Gmoney

Gmoney is an influencer and builder who noticed the potential of NFTs early on, and is now involved in tons of web3 projects. Fortune describes him as “a Puerto Rico-based, karaoke-loving investor.”

Good Jobs?Gmoney is known for his insightful analogies that boil things down to Jobs-esque first principles (like describing NFT collections as “digital Rolexes”).

Bad Jobs 😔He might be an idiosyncratic thinker, but Gmoney is more of an investor than a builder.

Greg Solano & Wylie Aronow

Yuga Labs' founders struck it big with a different approach to web3 building – create a fictional universe in the form of Bored Apes Yacht Club and make it home to a thriving online community. Next stop: bring everyone into the "Otherside" metaverse.

Onboarding through a story? Sounds like some Jobs-level lateral thinking to me.

A 10 year-old child

Steve Jobs grew up in a neighborhood of OG engineers, working on side projects in their garages on weekends. He was second generation Silicon Valley.

So maybe web3's Steve Jobs is 10 years-old right now, watching their parents experiment with the first wave of consumer web3 tech?

Sam Bankman-Fried

He's the "effective altruism" trader who founded crypto exchange FTX and research-based firm Alameda. He's not 10 years-old, but he is young – and very, very rich.

Elon Musk

Jobs and Musk are both vision-driven leaders, and workaholics. As for Musk's web3 ambitions, he's voiced interest in turning Twitter into a super-app metaverse, and is now seemingly best buds with CZ, CEO of Binance.

How much can you really compare the two? They've both changed the world, but we'll defer to Bill Gates on this one. He said, "Elon’s more of a hands-on engineer, Steve was a genius at design and picking people & marketing."

Gary Vee

A candidate from the marketing world, Gary Vaynerchuk could be considered the next Steve Jobs because... well... we don't really know – we just get the feeling he'd love the comparison!

The user

Maybe Jobs 3.0 is the user, not the founder? 🤯

So what's the verdict?

A lot of the people above are damn good at building web3 products – but how many are outstanding at making things seem highly intuitive for users?

And by "users", I mean pretty much any human being.

Zuckerberg and Dorsey have the most obvious track records here. The Yuga guys and Bankman-Fried have made popular products, and we're about to see what Musk can do with a global content platform.

Vitalik meets so many of the criteria – he's young, idealistic, and developed his web3 vision during a college-dropout period of deep reflection. But does his current focus on engineering disqualify him from wearing Jobs' crown? 👑

Maybe we're too early

Whoever you like for the title of web3 Jobs, the new Steve probably won't look much like the old version.

Instead, they’ll be cooking up an original way of thinking about and interacting with tech that we won't know how much we needed until we see it.

Web3 is in a very techy place right now. True, there are people focused on storytelling, onboarding, and creating awesome consumer experiences. But the reality is that it's hard to get far into a project or protocol without running into non-user-friendly systems, unfamiliar language, and intimidating interfaces.

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Till tomorrow!

Next time: Twisted Hank’s Yarn Balls 🧶

Disclaimer: Nothing in this article/newsletter should be considered financial advice. The purpose is to inform readers of the current trends and news in the web3 space. We encourage every reader to do their own research and not act upon information put forth by Decentra Daily.