Great Tech
Entrepreneurs:
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul “Steve” Jobs[1] (1955 –
2011) was an American information technology entrepreneur and inventor. He was
born in San Francisco, California; and was adopted shortly after birth. He met
Steve Wozniak[2]
during high-school and both were hired at Hewlett Packard. He always interested
in technology, but also in arts, history, philosophy, literature and all kinds
of areas. He is considered the father of the digital revolution, a design
perfectionist and a master of innovation. In the 1960s he was very influenced
by the counterculture, he loved the Beatles, Bob Dylan, etc. He went to college
but dropped out to travel after just one semester. When he returned to
California he became interested in what was then a revolutionary concept: the
personal computer. In 1976, him and Wozniak started Apple Computers from the
Jobs family garage. Jobs was in charge of sales whereas Wozniak was the
engineer. Their first product was the Apple I. They then convinced a venture
capitalist to invest 90.000 USD to build the Apple II, which was a very easy to
use computer for the home.
In 1979, Steve Jobs was allowed
in the Xerox camp of Research and Laboratory. There he saw the future, the way
computers would be used, including the use of graphics and a device that had
not yet been revealed to the world: the mouse. Jobs immediately saw the potential
and wanted to integrate the user experience to his next project, but the Board
of Directors wanted an experienced person to be President of the company. Jobs
interviewed dozens of people before he chose a person from outside the tech
world, a person that was the CEO of Pepsi: John Scully. He attracted him to
Apple with one of the most famous phrases in the Tech World: “Do you want to
sell sugar for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change
the world?”. Apple needed now another successful product. Jobs took charge of
the McIntosh project, which he felt would revolutionize the market. To launched
this product, Apple released the infamous commercial “1984” to position Apple
in the competition against IBM.
But sales did not go as expected,
and Jobs had a showdown against Scully. The Board of Directors sided with
Scully, and Jobs was forced to resign.
Jobs immediately regrouped, taking
with him 5 top directors to build a new company: NeXT. The hardware was not
very successful, but it’s software was fantastic. These years were for Jobs the
most creative and fulfilling. He bought Lucas Arts film division and renamed it
Pixar with the goal of creating fully animated feature films. In 1995, “Toy
Story”, Pixar’s first feature film, was a blockbuster. When the company went
public, Steve Jobs became a billionaire.
Meanwhile, Apple’s products got
old and staled, while Microsoft took on stronger and stronger. While IBM lead
the market, Apple’s market share could not take off. NeXT was sitting on an
operating system that would save them. Apple computers then bought NeXT for
over 400 million dollars, and Steve Jobs returned to Apple as CEO. Steve lead
the most amazing turnaround in the history of Corporate America. The “Think
Different” campaign became the trademark for the comeback.
In October 2001, a groundbreaking
product was launched: the iPod. iTunes meant a unique position in online retail
for the music industry and Apple. In 2004, he was diagnosed cancer but
recovered. He tells his life in one of the most motivating speeches of all times:
In 2007, a product that had been
secretly developed for years was launched: the iPhone. It was far more than a Phone,
it was a handheld computer. In 2009, Steve was back on stage to launch the
iPad. Finally, in 2011 Jobs took another medical leave. He died on October 5th
2011 at his home on Palo Alto, at age 56, leaving Apple to be the most valuable
company in the world. He was a visionary, a unique individual, the greatest
personality and inventor after WW2. With his revolutionary products, but most
importantly, his personality and influential leadership style, he left his mark
for us ALL.
Steve Jobs is to me the most
legendary successful Tech Entrepreneur. He was not just smart, or a visionary,
he was simply CRAZY. His style was unique. And although everyone would argue
that Apple was his baby, his biggest creation, I am a personal fan of NeXT.
When he built NeXT, word was out that he was finished, he was down, there was
no getting back on his feet after such a public demise. But you can never rule
out a man like STEVE JOBS. See how he leads. He involves all the people in the
discussion, and asks supports from his technical specialists. His dictatorial
reputation is very much not deserved. He was really a Project Manager,
specialized in Sales and Marketing, and knew where the business was in the IT
industry. But the ideas came from other people, the people he worked most
closely with and who he consulted: the programmers. He got them engaged, he
consulted with them, he made them feel important. See the following video,
which shows him at a Start-Up meeting at NeXT:
In his youth, he travelled a lot
and did a lot of soul searching. He was not economically driven, but was more
orientated to the product he was selling and the team he was building. Not
being crazy about money is one of the most important factors for
entrepreneurial success, since it provides a better ability to bounce back. Successful
entrepreneurs always have other motivations. He did not change the world, but
definitely revolutionized the IT industry, which has been the fastest growing
industry and most transforming of society since then. No other leader can
provide so much inspiration than Steve Jobs, to those who THINK DIFFERENT. We
will always miss you, and worship you, man of the JOBS!!!
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