Unlike typical co-branded credit card portfolios that sell for a premium, Goldman Sachs offloaded the Apple Card's debt to JPMorgan at a significant loss. This underscores the program's unprofitability, driven by high defaults and operational costs, despite the prestigious Apple brand.

Solomon admits a major error in launching their consumer business was relying on the firm's insular belief that its 'smart people' could figure anything out. He now believes that for new ventures far from the core business, acquiring a platform with existing expertise would have been a better strategy.

Apple insisted all card statements be sent on the first of the month to enhance customer experience. This forced Goldman Sachs to staff a massive, costly customer service team that was overwhelmed at the start of the month and idle for the remainder, unlike the staggered billing used by other banks.

Apple insisted all statements drop on the first of the month for a better user experience. This created massive spikes in customer service demand, requiring inefficient staffing. It reveals that what seems like a sloppy incumbent practice (staggered billing) is often a deliberate and crucial cost-optimization strategy that a disruptor ignores at its peril.

Don't treat partnerships as a magical fix. They are a scaling mechanism. If your core sales process, messaging, or product-market fit is weak, a partner channel will only magnify those problems across a wider audience, just as it would with your successes.

Steve Jobs fostered an inclusive premium brand accessible to anyone with money. Applying this to the Apple Card meant low credit score requirements, which conflicted with the financial necessity of risk-based rejection in lending. This philosophical mismatch contributed significantly to Goldman Sachs's portfolio losses and the partnership's failure.

Goldman Sachs is divesting consumer-facing businesses like Marcus and its credit card to refocus on high-margin corporate advisory. Its stock is at an all-time high, validating a strategy where earning a small percentage (e.g., 0.2%) on multi-billion dollar transactions is far more profitable than serving millions of smaller retail customers.

Steve Jobs' vision of Apple as an inclusive brand conflicted with the necessary exclusivity of credit risk assessment. This led to lower underwriting standards (credit scores around 600) for the Apple Card, contributing to its poor performance and eventual sale by Goldman Sachs at a discount.

Drawing from his experience partnering with Apple, Solomon cautions that most large-scale partnerships fail. For a partnership to succeed, it must have 'compelling glue'—meaning deeply aligned incentives, a shared purpose, and a governance structure that can overcome the natural friction between two different organizations.