Sad news in the world of Apple today, as former Intuit chairman and longtime Apple board member Bill Campbell has succumbed to a long battle with cancer. Campbell was a longtime friend of late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
Campbell ran companies like Intuit and worked in key jobs at Apple, Claris and Go, and also served on a plethora of boards, including Columbia University, Intuit and Apple.
Campbell also provided advice to Google executives, something that didn’t set well with Jobs. Campbell told Fortune in 2014:
“Steve would say, ‘If you’re helping them you’re hurting me.’ He would yell at me,” recalls Campbell, whose normal banter typically needs to be sanitized for most publications. “I’d say, ‘I can’t do HTML, come on. I’m just coaching them on how to run their company better.’
Campbell first joined Apple during John Sculley’s reign as CEO, where he became Apple’s Vice President of Marketing. Campbell left Apple after numerous disagreements with Sculley, and founded Go Corporation, which was later acquired by AT&T.
Campbell then became CEO at Intuit, joining Apple’s board of directors when Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1997. Campbell remained on the board until he resigned in July of 2014.
“I watched him emerge as a CEO in real time,” Campbell once said of his time with Jobs. “I had a continuum with him. I watched him when he was general manager of the Mac division and when he went off and started NeXT. I watched Steve go from being a creative entrepreneur to a guy who had to run a business.”
Bill Cambell, dead at 75. Our condolences to his family and friends.
