Exclusive: Five minutes with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak

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Scott Paulus

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was the featured speaker June 27 at Flying Car Milwaukee.

Lauren K. Ohnesorge

Staff Writer- Triangle Business Journal

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Steve Wozniak, the affable co-founder of Apple, is delivering the keynote at Thursday's Internet Summit in downtown Raleigh. And he took a five minute break from greeting his fans to talk about North Carolina and one of its growing phenomena: entrepreneurs.

"Coincidence as much as anything" fuels his interest in North Carolina, he says. "After getting my honorary degree from North Carolina State University, I always tell people 'Go Wolfpack,' I've been favoring them a bit."

He calls North Carolina universities – particularly High Point University, where he is a member of the board – "very close to my heart." He is also scheduled to be this year's commencement speaker at Elon University.

But, post-graduation, it's a different world than when he and Jobs founded Apple.

"When I was young, you didn't come out of college thinking other than, 'I want to find a big company and get a job there,'" he says. "Now, everyone is thinking, 'if I ever hear of a chance to be involved in one of these startups, I want to be there. So it's a big change from when I was young."

Wozniak has advice for budding entrepreneurs.

"First of all, it's important that you have some income to pay for a house or family," he advises. "Pay for your apartment. Get a job anywhere. But you know what? If you're going to work and you have some ideas and dreams of your own and wonder if they could ever be made into a product, work on them at night."

Use your own money as much as possible, he says.

And "always include the engineer in your thinking," he says, perhaps speaking from experience.

"Don't think that the businessman alone is going to go very far or the engineer alone is going to go very far," he says. "It generally takes the talent of one person analyzing the business, who knows how to keep things running straight, and an engineer that has the clever ideas and can make the products work. ... Don't think, I'll write a business plan. I'll get funded as an entrepreneur, and maybe if I'm lucky and talk to a hundred VCs, I'll get funded. ... That's a bad way of thinking."

Lauren Ohnesorge covers information technology and entrepreneurship.