What It's Like When Steve Jobs Calls You Into His Office And Offers To Acquire Your Company - And You Say 'No'
Jobs asked them to come in for a meeting. He told Houston and Ferdowsi they had a good product and they should consider joining Apple. Houston says he remembers the day clearly and recalled it on stage with CNN's Laurie Segall at Web Summit in Dublin:
"When you work on a company and you start to see progress, all the big internet companies are going to want to meet with you. [But meeting with Apple] was kind of surreal. I remember the day the meeting was set up. Arash and I get in our Zip car. We had to figure out the map to Apple's headquarters. We start typing '1 Infinite Loop and of course, it's already in the phone. We show up and then what do you say? 'We're here to see Steve?'
"He was complimentary. He said, 'You have a good product and you should consider joining Apple'...We didn't talk about numbers.
"I didn't want to talk about numbers. I got a piece of advice from a friend who said, 'If you don't want to sell your company, don't talk about selling your company.' It was a really complimentary meeting and definitely an interesting life experience.