In
Oct. 2011, Steve Jobs passed away at the age of 56. He had just left the CEO post at Apple, the company he
cofounded, for the second time. Jobs was an entrepreneur, through and through,
and the story of his rise is the story of Apple as a company, along with some
very interesting twists. In this article, we'll look at the career of Steve
Jobs and the company he founded, as well as some of the lessons there are for
would-be entrepreneurs.
From
Blue Boxes to Apple
Steve Jobs got his start in business
with another Steve - Steve Wozniak - building the blue boxes that phone
phreakers used to make free calls all around the nation. The two were members
of the HomeBrew Computer Club where they quickly became enamored with kit
computers, leaving the blue boxes behind. The next product the two sold was the
Apple I. It was a kit for building a PC; one that the customer needed to add a
monitor and keyboard to before they could do anything with them.
With
Wozniak doing most of the building and Jobs handling the sales, the two made
enough money off the hobbyist market to invest in the Apple II. It was the
Apple II that made the company. Jobs and Wozniak created enough interest in
their new product to attract venture capital.
This meant they were in the big leagues and their company, Apple, was
officially incorporated in 1977. Steve
Jobs was a month shy of his 22nd birthday and would be a millionaire by his
23rd.
The
Roller Coaster Begins
By 1978, Apple was making $2 million in profits solely on the strength of the
Apple II. The Apple II wasn't state of the art, but it did allow computer
enthusiasts to create and sell their own programs. Among these user generated
programs was VisiCalc, a type of proto-excel that represented the first
software with business applications. Although Apple did not profit directly
from these programs, they did see more interest as the uses for the Apple II
broadened. This model of allowing users to create their own programs and sell
them would reappear in the app market of the future, but with a much tighter
business strategy around it.
By
the time Apple went public in 1980, the dynamic of the company was more or less
set. Steve Jobs was the fiery visionary, with an intense and often combative
management style, and Steve Wozniak was the quiet genius who made the vision
work. The board of Apple wasn't too fond of such a power imbalance in the
company, however. Jobs and the board agreed to add John Sculley to the
executive team in 1983. In 1985, the board
ousted Jobs in favor of Sculley.
The
Gap Years
Steve Jobs was rich and unemployed.
Although he wasn't working at Apple, he was far from idle. During this time,
from 1985 to 1996, Jobs was involved in two big deals; the first was an
investment. In 1986, Jobs purchased a controlling stake in a company called
Pixar from George Lucas. The company was struggling, but their eventual success
in digital animation led to an initial public
offering (IPO) that earned Jobs around $1 billion at the time of the
IPO.
The
second was a return to his old obsession with computers, founding NeXT to
create high-end computers. These were expensive machines with an operating
system that represented the best attempt, yet, at making the power of UNIX fit
into a graphical user interface. When Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide
Web, he did so using a NeXT machine.
Of
these two deals, NeXT proved the most important, as it turned out that Apple
was looking to replace its operating system. Apple bought NeXT in 1996 for its
operating system, bringing Steve Jobs back to the first company he founded.
Getting
Apple Back on Track
Unfortunately, the company Jobs
returned to wasn't in a very good condition. Apple had begun to flounder as
cheap PCs running Windows flooded the market. Jobs found himself in the
driver's seat again in short order and took some drastic steps to turnaround
Apple's decline. The company asked for, and received, a $150 million investment
from Bill Gates. Jobs used the money to ramp up advertising and highlight the
products Apple already offered, while choking off R&D
money in non-producing areas.
The
NeXT operating system was used to create the iMac, Apple's first hit PC in a
long time. Jobs followed this up with a list of successes from the iPod in 2001
to the iPad in 2010. The years between saw Apple dominate the smartphone market
with the iPhone, open up an e-commerce
store with iTunes and launch branded retail outlets called, what else, the
Apple Store. When Jobs stepped down as CEO, Apple was scrapping with Exxon for
the world's largest market cap.
The
Bottom Line
It's impossible to sum up Jobs'
career in a single article, but a few lessons stick out. Firstly, innovation
counts for a lot, but innovative products fail without proper marketing.
Secondly, there are no straight paths to success. Jobs did get wealthy very early
on, but he would be a footnote today if he didn't return to Apple in the 90s.
At one point, Jobs was kicked out of the company he helped create for being
hard to work with. Rather than change, he bided his time and then took over
again, except that his attitude was seen as part of his genius.
There
is much more that can be learned from the life of Steve Jobs, as there is in
the life of every entrepreneur. The sheer
hubris of the entrepreneurial spirit, the idea that you can do something bigger
and better than it has ever been done before, always bears watching and
studying, whether in order to imitate or just to marvel at what that hubris can
create.
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