Featured Image Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Steve Jobs was famously the co-founder and face of Apple since its launch in 1976 but the late tech mogul nearly lost it all.
It might be shocking to find out that Jobs was once fired from the firm he helped to build.
The company was created in a garage by Jobs and co-founder Steve Wozniak.
Advert
While Jobs was in charge of the business and creative, Wozniak focused on the engineering.
However, the visionary behind Apple was ousted from the company’s board in 1985 and he didn’t make a return until 11 years later.
Issues began when Jobs expressed an ambition to become CEO of the firm, which sparked major disagreement amongst the other board members.
Some claimed that Jobs was known for creating a toxic work environment and was “abrasive” with people.
John Sculley, the CEO of PepsiCo, was hired in 1983 after Jobs convinced him to take on the CEO role at Apple by asking, “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?”
However, harmony wouldn’t last long and the pair became at odds when two new products - the Lisa and the Macintosh - failed to bring in expected sales targets.
Jobs was fighting for the focus to be on personal computers, which Sculley saw as a failed direction for the company.
When Jobs raised the issue with the board, he was ultimately fired from Apple, or quit, depending on differing accounts.
Afterwards, the tech mogul formed a computer business called NeXT, which manufactured high-end computers.
However, the firm struggled to make ends meet and, when it was acquired in 1996 by Apple for $429 million, it brought Jobs back into the company he’d created.
In a big u-turn later on, Sculley went on to say that Jobs was “the best CEO ever” and remarked on his effective leadership.
Jobs continued to have a legacy at Apple of being a “demanding perfectionist” and relied on having industry foresight in order to stay ahead of the game.
Making a keynote speech at the Macworld Conference and Expo in January 2007, Jobs quoted hockey player Wayne Gretzky, saying: “There’s an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love: ‘I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been’.
“And we've always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very, very beginning. And we always will.”
