In an interview with CNN, Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder, talked about Steve Jobs and how he could cast spells on people to motivate them and get work done.

The Microsoft founder said that only Jobs could have taken a dying company like Apple and turned it into the world’s most valuable one. He achieved this partly by “casting spells.”

“I was like a minor wizard because he would be casting spells, and I would see people mesmerized, but because I’m a minor wizard, the spells don’t work on me,” said Gates.

The former Microsoft CEO said that Jobs had a talent to hyper-motivate people and the talent they had. The late Apple CEO also had an eye for design which is why despite the failure of NeXT in 1988, its design ended up winning the hearts of a lot of people.

“I have yet to meet any person who” could rival Jobs “in terms of picking talent, hyper-motivating that talent, and having a sense of design of, ‘Oh, this is good. This is not good,’ ” Gates added of his sometime collaborator and competitor.

Gates did also say that Jobs could also be an “asshole” at times, but he managed to bring some incredible positivity along with his toughness.

This is the same interview in which Gates had said that his ‘biggest mistake ever’ was Microsoft losing to Android and creating a suitable rival to iPhone. The full interview is not yet available which should provide insight and details of what Gates said about Steve Jobs.

[Via Bloomberg