Business Actor | Steve Jobs: From rags to riches
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Macbook. iPod. iTunes. iPhone. Pixar. All these names have one thing in common: They are the products of one man’s designs and successes. This man is Steve Jobs.
Born Steven Paul Jobs on the 24th of February, 1955 in San Fransisco, California, Steve Jobs shared a similarity with another well-known multi-millionaire and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Bill Gates: Both men had dropped out of college without finishing their degree, and judging from their success, did not harm either men in the least. His career began as a technician at Atari – while attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club with Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak.
His career as an entrepreneur started in 1976, when he, Steve Wozniak, Ronald Wayne, and A.C. “Mike” Markkula Jr. founded Apple. The company produced the Macintosh, the first commercially successful small computer with a graphical user interface, which was first developed by Jef Raskin, and later taken over by Jobs himself. Despite his role by the founding of the company however, then-CEO John Sculley relieved Jobs of his job as the head of the Macintosh division following the industry slump on 1984-1985.
Around this time, Steve Jobs founded another company, NeXT computer, which produces a technologically advanced but cost-prohibitive workstation that nevertheless managed to garner a strong following amongst those that could afford it, generally those in the scientific and academic fields. NeXT eventually transitioned into full-time software development in 1993, after having sold only 50000 machines.
Also around 1986, Steve Jobs had purchased The Graphics Group from Lucasfilm’s computer graphics division. Later renamed Pixar, this new company was originally intended to be a high-end graphics hardware developer, but after years of low profit, contracted with Walt Disney Studios to produce computer-animated feature films which Disney would co-finance and distribute for them. After multiple box-office hits (and four Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature), Disney acquired Pixar for $7.4 billion, which resulted in Steve Jobs being the Walt Disney Company’s largest single shareholder.
When Apple purchased NeXT in 1996, Steve Jobs returned to the company he co-founded, and soon became its interim CEO. By terminating several projects, he concentrated on returning Apple to profitability, at the same time changing the licensing program for the Macintosh clones to make it too costly for the manufacturers making these machines to go on producing them. Many of NeXT’s technology became integrated into Apple products, like the NeXTSTEP, which evolved into the Mac OS X.
Under his guidance the company’s profitability increased, especially so with the introduction of the iMac, and various other new products. At 2000, Steve Jobs became Apple’s permanent CEO, and continued to build a reputation for appealing designs and powerful branding that had kept on working well for Apple.
The company had branched out in recent years, delving into new fields with the iPod portable music player, iTunes digital music software, and the iPhone multi-touch display cell phone. Steve Jobs is both admired and criticized for his consummate skill at persuasion and salesmanship, and while he stimulated innovation, he also reminds employees that delivering working products on time is just as important as innovative and attractive design.
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