Chet Kapoor, the current chairman and CEO of DataStax, had a lifelong dream of working for tech mogul Steve Jobs. This dream became a reality when he was hired as an intern at NeXT, a software company founded by Jobs. Kapoor started as the person who got coffee for those higher up, but he worked just 20 yards away from Jobs every day. He later became the CEO of cloud software company Apigee, which was acquired by Google in a $625 million deal in 2016. Kapoor credits a large portion of his success to his experience working as an intern for Jobs.
Kapoor was born in Kolkata, India, and a key moment in his life was when his mother took him to the British Council library and he read a book called “A Little Kingdom,” which was about Steve Jobs and Apple. Inspired by Jobs, Kapoor took computer classes and eventually ended up at Arizona State University. In 1988, he joined NeXT when the company started a program called Campus Consultants. Although he started working at NeXT five years after he imagined he would, Kapoor recalled the significant impact Jobs’ leadership had on him.
Jobs cultivated a strong engineering culture at NeXT, focusing on the user experience and design-centric approaches. This mirrored Apple’s culture, where Jobs emphasized creating great products with talented people. Kapoor reflected on Jobs’ attention to detail and the importance of balancing engineering excellence with user experience. Jobs created a highly regimented schedule to ensure projects did not devolve into science experiments and focused on driving an engineering-centric culture that prioritized the user experience.
Kapoor spoke about the exposure he gained working closely with Jobs and how it significantly contributed to his success in the tech industry. Kapoor highlighted the value of understanding Jobs’ thought process and the questions he asked during all-hand meetings. Kapoor’s early exposure to Jobs’ leadership style and product-centric approach at NeXT shaped his own leadership style in subsequent roles at companies like Google and IBM. His experience working for Jobs left a lasting impact on his career trajectory and success in the tech sector.
Through his time at NeXT and subsequent leadership positions in the industry, Kapoor acknowledged that Jobs’ influence continued to shape his approach to technology and leadership. The engineering-focused culture and emphasis on user experience that Jobs instilled in him at NeXT carried over into his roles at other tech companies. Kapoor’s journey from a teenage dreamer reading about Jobs in a library to a successful CEO in Silicon Valley is a testament to the lasting impact of his experience working with the iconic tech mogul. The invaluable lessons Kapoor learned from Jobs continue to inform his leadership style and approach in the tech industry today.
