An Overview of Steve Jobs’ Journey to Success

Despite his lack of passion for formal education, Steve Jobs developed a love for engineering.

When Steve Jobs studied at Homestead High School, Bill Fernandez introduced him to Steve Wozniak, and they became good friends. However, he increasingly became rebellious at school, leading him to drop out. Before dropping out, he had enrolled in an electronics class due to his passion for engineering. 

The birth of Apple and his next ventures

After years had passed, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak remained friends. When Steve Wozniak designed a low-cost digital “blue box” device, Steve Jobs sold it. He then split the profits with Steve Wozniak. It is said that the successful sales of the Blu Box could have inspired Steve Jobs to consider pursuing electronics for fun and profit.

By 1976, Steve Wozniak had designed the Apple 1 computer, which he then showed Steve Jobs. They sold the computer and then formed the Apple Computer Company in Steve Job’s parents’ garage. 

As the company grew, his net worth also grew. The company invested in making other products like the Macintosh in 1981. Macintosh became a sales hit, but its demand declined because of poor performance issues. 

Earlier, Steve Jobs had hired John Sculley to serve as Apple’s CEO. Over time, Steve Jobs and John Sculley started to disagree on the best way to design computers. John Sculley preferred creating computers using Open architecture, but Steve wanted to use closed architecture. At the time, Steve Jobs was the company’s Board Chairman and had much power to influence everything. The growing rift between the two affected the company. 

When Macintosh failed to outrival IBM PC, John Sculley used it as an opportunity to trim Steve’s powers in the company. John Sculley had gathered majority votes to demote Steve from being the board chairman, and he wanted him to head the “New Product Development.”

Steve Jobs and NeXT Computers

Steve devised a plan to get rid of John Sculley for his betrayal but failed. Eventually, Steve tabled in his resignation to the board and set up a new company called NeXT. The company started to make advanced computer workstations primarily for institutions. However, NeXT workstations were pricey, and the market didn’t embrace them well. 

Later, Apple acquired NeXT for $429 million and 1.5 million shares of Apple stocks. 

Joining Pixar and Walt Disney

In 1979, Lucasfilm, an American film and television company, had started a computer division called the Graphics Group. However, the division was turned into an independent corporation which was then named Pixar.

After the company had been founded, Lucasfilm started to look for investors, connecting them to Steve Jobs for funding. By then, Steve Jobs was already running his new company, NeXT. Still, he joined Pixar’s board as Chairman after giving them $5 million for technology rights and investing an additional $5 million cash as capital into the company.  

By the late 1980s, computer animation technology was not advanced, and production costs were high. Thus, the company faced some challenges for a short while.

In 2006, Pixar was bought by Walt Disney for $7.4 billion, making Steve Jobs the biggest shareholder of the company. This also ultimately made him become a board member of Walt Disney. Currently, his family still holds shares in Walt Disney, which owns Pixar Animation Studios.