"I sold my most valuable possession, but I knew that because I worked at Hewlett Packard, I could buy the next model calculator the very next month for a lower price than I sold the older one for!"
About this Quote
A joke with a spreadsheet’s soul: Wozniak frames sacrifice as arbitrage, turning what sounds like a sentimental loss into a smug little victory over the pricing curve. The “most valuable possession” lands first as a human detail - the kind that’s supposed to signal risk, desperation, devotion. Then he undercuts it with the engineer’s punchline: the future is already discounted. In one sentence, you get the emotional mythology of startup origin stories and the cold math that actually powers them.
The intent is less confession than calibration. Wozniak isn’t trying to make himself look reckless; he’s showing a particular kind of confidence: not faith in destiny, but faith in technology’s predictable momentum. Working at Hewlett Packard isn’t just a resume note, it’s insider proximity to the machine of progress. He knows product cycles. He knows depreciation. He knows that “valuable” in tech is always temporary.
Subtextually, the line is a neat preview of Silicon Valley’s core psychology: scarcity is solvable, and urgency is an opportunity. He sells the calculator because he can already see the replacement; he treats personal possessions like components in a build. That mindset makes the romantic story of entrepreneurship sound less like a leap into the void and more like a cleverly managed risk, where tomorrow’s version will be better, cheaper, and closer than you think.
Context matters: calculators were prestige gadgets in the early 1970s, not throwaway tools. Wozniak’s brag is that he’s positioned inside the pipeline where prestige becomes commodity. It’s funny because it’s true - and a little chilling because it’s still the playbook.
The intent is less confession than calibration. Wozniak isn’t trying to make himself look reckless; he’s showing a particular kind of confidence: not faith in destiny, but faith in technology’s predictable momentum. Working at Hewlett Packard isn’t just a resume note, it’s insider proximity to the machine of progress. He knows product cycles. He knows depreciation. He knows that “valuable” in tech is always temporary.
Subtextually, the line is a neat preview of Silicon Valley’s core psychology: scarcity is solvable, and urgency is an opportunity. He sells the calculator because he can already see the replacement; he treats personal possessions like components in a build. That mindset makes the romantic story of entrepreneurship sound less like a leap into the void and more like a cleverly managed risk, where tomorrow’s version will be better, cheaper, and closer than you think.
Context matters: calculators were prestige gadgets in the early 1970s, not throwaway tools. Wozniak’s brag is that he’s positioned inside the pipeline where prestige becomes commodity. It’s funny because it’s true - and a little chilling because it’s still the playbook.
Quote Details
| Topic | Technology |
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