The tech world is in a very different place from where it was during the era of Steve Jobs.
Even since his tragic passing in 2011, we’ve seen a boom in artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, and a reinvigorated space race.
Jobs made his name by co-founding Apple and will always be remembered for the iconic shot of him unveiling the first iPhone in 2007, but even when it comes to his own company, it’s changed a lot over the years.
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Apple remains one of the biggest companies in the world, with its January 30 earnings confirming it made a hefty quarterly revenue of $124.3 billion (up 4% year-on-year).
The tech giant hasn’t always been in the money, and apparently, neither have Jobs’ other ventures. He once reportedly pulled off a sneaky trick to secure a lucrative $20 million investment.
As told to Forbes by software engineer Randy Adams, he and Jobs had to run around the NeXT facility in California to hide their sports cars so an investor believed they needed the money.
We all know it’s not a great look to turn up with your begging bowl while getting out of a Porsche 911.
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After being forcibly removed from Apple in 1985, Jobs founded NeXT the same year. Looking for investment, Jobs and Adams had to trick an investor into thinking they didn’t own such luxuries.
They loved their 911s so much, they parked them near each other to avoid others dinging them. It meant they took up three whole parking spaces between the two vehicles.
Recalling the time they had to hide their sports cars, Adams said Jobs ran over to his cubicle and demanded he move the cars: “I said, ‘Why?,’ and he said, ‘Randy, we have to hide the Porsches. Ross Perot is coming by and thinking of investing in the company, and we don’t want him to think we have a lot of money.’”
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After hiding the cars behind the NeXT offices, Perot agreed to invest the $20 million they wanted in 1987 and then took a seat on the board.
Adams had originally turned down an offer to work for Jobs at NeXT, but has many stories about his time there.
As well as Jobs leaving Bill Gates waiting for an hour downstairs, he also dressed as Santa one Christmas to hand out $100 bills to staff, and would reportedly tell employees to ‘fire yourself’ if they’d done something wrong.
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Adams and Jobs originally parted ways over a disagreement about the former’s fears that putting an optical drive in the NeXT workstation would make it too slow.
Although Adams eventually started a software business around NeXT, Jobs phoned him to inform him that it was stepping out of the workstation business: “He told me that the cost of hardware is coming down and we think it’s a commodity. I said, ‘Then why don’t you sell PCs?’ Jobs told me, ‘I’d rather sell dog sh*t than PCs.’”
Adams left NeXT to assist in leading the development of Adobe Acrobat and PDF, and in an unexpected turn, is a co-founder of FunnyorDie.com.
As for Jobs, NeXT was acquired by Apple for $400 million in December 1996 and he returned to his role as Apple CEO when Gil Amelio was ousted in July the following year.