Steve Jobs Inducted Into Bay Area Business Hall of Fame, Eddy Cue Gives Heartfelt Acceptance Speech

Steve Jobs was posthumously inducted into the Bay Area Business Hall of Fame last Thursday, and a video was posted of the ceremony a couple of days ago. Apple SVP Eddy Cue tweeted a link to the video, and was present at the ceremony to accept the award and to give a speech about his former leader and friend.

The video presented a montage of Steve’s greatest hits, overlaid with narration by the man himself. Former Apple VP of Marketing Bill Campbell, who now serves on the company’s board of directors (and as a CEO coach of some renown) speaks briefly about Jobs, his relationship with his wife and kids and his legacy.

Cue then speaks for a few minutes about his relationship with Jobs and gives an anecdote about the introduction of the Bondi Blue iMac.

“He was a colleague, but most important, he was my friend. We talked every day, we talked about everything,” Cue says. “Even in my darkest days, he was there for me. When my wife had cancer, he was there for us. He helped me with the doctors and the treatments, he told me a lot about what he was going through, and her. And in many ways, she’s here tonight because of him, so thank you, Steve.”

Cue then goes on to tell a little story:

He taught me many things but none more important than ‘do what you love’. That’s what he did every day. It wasn’t about fame, it wasn’t about fortune, it was about creating great products. And not accepting anything less than perfection. As I was coming in today, I was trying to remember a story of the first time I learned that from Steve. We were launching the iMac, in Bondi blue…we were doing this at the Flint center in Cupertino. Unfortunately we couldn’t get the venue, Stomp was there the night before, we were launching it the next day and we could only get in at midnight. So we come in at midnight, we were going to do rehearsals…one of the things we wanted to do was have the iMac come out from the stage as he was introducing it. And we’d shine some lights. I was sitting out in the crowd…and the iMac comes out and the light comes on it and I said “wow, that is so cool!”

Steve stops the whole thing and says “stop, this sucks!” He says, “it should come out at the side where you can see the color, the light should be shining at this side and when it turns to the front that’s when it should turn on…30 minutes later we do the whole thing again and when I see it come out I said ‘wow, he was absolutely right, it’s incredible’. He had that level of detail for everything he did, and that’s what he taught us.

Cue notes that induction into the BAC Hall of Fame would have been important for Jobs because he met his wife there, had his kids there and went to school there.

“Apple became the most valuable company on earth and it wasn’t even one of Steve’s goals,” says Oracle CEO and friend of Jobs’ Larry Ellison during the video. “He wasn’t trying to be rich, he wasn’t trying to be famous, he wasn’t trying to be colorful. He was obsessed with the creative process and building something that was beautiful.”