A startup has many options to get chips made. But if the startup was itself a fab then it needs to think outside the box. For example smaller wafers yield less ICs, so more $/IC. But, you also don’t need a $100M stepper, which helps.
Personally I think it’s never been a better time to be a hacker. $5 PCBs from free and good CAD software and one can even make their own ASICs now. I wish I was a kid today!
There's also the "to/from more conveniently located airports, bringing family pets along, having private conversations among the pax, having exactly the catering you wanted" perks, apparently. I've not had the pleasure to fly "private" yet so I wouldn't know. :)
It's easy to say no. The hard part is getting people to listen and that's what Steve Jobs did especially well. That was the point I was trying to make.
I've been on a ton of teams where everyone agreed we were not going to do a feature. Only to have that person go back to working on that feature because it was important to them and the work they were supposed to be doing, which the team depended on, didn't get done.
In my experience, this is a serious issue in large corporations and it happens at the individual, group and even division level. Apple, under Steve Jobs, didn't seem to have this problem and they seemed to get a ton done, with comparatively quite small teams, because of it.
I think Steve's most important skill was the ability to say no. But even more important, was his ability to say no and that the person he said no to listened, agreed he said no, and then stopped working on the thing and tried to do something better.
If you've ever worked in a large company you know how rare that is and how critical that is.