Steve Jobs was the legendary co-founder and CEO of the multinational tech company known as Apple. He was a visionary and pioneer of the personal computer revolution, who also founded NeXT Computer Inc., and was the chairman and majority shareholder of Disney’s animation studio, Pixar. Considered a tech-titan by many, he’s been instrumental in inspiring many of today’s leaders, trend-setters, and CEOs across the globe.
So, considering Steve Jobs’ list of impressive achievements, we will be diving into how this legend came to be in this Steve Jobs Success Story special.
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Here at The Strive we believe success leaves clues, which is why we research and publish stories about high achievers and visionaries like Steve Jobs. Every story is different, but each contain bits of inspiration and success insights that you can leverage to your advantage.
So, with that being said, if you’re ready to learn about Steve Jobs and a few of his secrets to success, then let’s dive in:
The Steve Jobs Success Story
In The Beginning
Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco, California to two graduate students; one of Syrian descent, and the other of Swiss-German descent. However, he was put up for adoption soon after birth.
His biological mother went through great efforts to ensure he was to be adopted by a well-educated and wealthy family. Yet, as fate would have it, Steve Jobs would ultimately get adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs — a loving couple with little to no college education.[1]
Jobs would be raised in Mountain View, California by his adoptive father who was essentially a repo man who fixed cars, and his modest mother. Jobs would learn much from his father’s love of mechanics and craftsmanship.
His father encouraged Jobs’ interest in tinkering, by setting up a special section for him on his work bench, and introducing him to electronics.
One could say that Steve Job’s legacy was partially created by a lesson his father ingrained in him whenever they would build and tinker their garage. The big lesson was this; his father’s insistence on paying attention to detail.
Curiosity and Initiative
But jobs wasn’t just some genius kid whom everything would automatically fall into place for. No, he was just a boy with an insatiable curiosity and a knack for showing initiative.
In fact, he was such an action taker, that when he was in his early years of high school, he boldly reached out to the president of Hewlett-Packard. He connected with Bill Hewlett at his personal residence to request a few spare parts for his school project. Jobs’ initiative inspired the president of Hewlett-Packard so much, that he was offered an internship to work at the company; which Jobs accepted.
Jobs learned much about the business of electronics from his internship. His curiosity and initiative didn’t stop there though. He had a curiosity for more than just electronics, and by his senior year, he was experimenting with various kinds of music, subjects, literature, and yes, even drugs.
Dynamic Duo
Steve Jobs would eventually be introduced to Steve Wozniak by a mutual classmate. Steve was still just a teenager in high school, and Wozniak a college student, but the two had similar interests in electronics, technology, and tinkering.
After Steve graduated from high school, he attended college in Oregon, but quickly grew bored and dropped out. Jobs found college education to be meaningless, a waste of his parents’ money, and not aligned with his dreams.
As such, he moved back in with his parents and found a job with videogame maker Atari. It would be a short stint however, as Jobs would soon travel to India in search of enlightenment.
After seven months abroad, Jobs would make his way back to the United States. Once back, he would eventually regain employment with Atari, and soon after, he and Wozniak would begin their adventures in technology out of his parents’ garage.
At first, they got started with the idea to create and sell circuit boards to to tech companies and computer tinkerers like he and Wozniak. But, then they came up with the idea to create the personal computer. So, they sold a few of their possessions to fund their project and launched their company which they named Apple, and with it their first product the Apple I.
With Steve Jobs being the primary visionary and founder of the company, he began to shoot for the stars, and leaned heavily on his personally created vision to “change the world through technology”.
Taking Off
Their first product did have some initial success as they managed to sell roughly 88% of the 200 units that were produced. But, after finding a few more investors, and launching a new an improved computer, which they called the Apple II, they retired their first product (which was pretty much just a circuit board).
The result of a making a few small changes like including a monitor and keyboard with the circuit board as a unit, helped them launch this new product into stratospheric levels of success. The Apple II would become one of the most successful, as well as first mass produced personal computers in the world.
From this point on, Steve Jobs and Wozniak’s business would begin taking off. They created multiple products after the Apple II, and would strive to compete with the likes of IBM for dominance of the personal computer market.
Tough Times
Apple would grow to staggering levels, as well as Steve Jobs’ fortune. By 1978 Jobs was worth over $1 million, and just two years later his net worth would balloon to $250 million. The company also had a massive market valuation of over $1 billion dollars.
Unfortunately, the the party didn’t last forever for Steve Jobs. His company switched from an innovative role, to a defense of market share role when IBM launched their PC. And by 1985, Steve Jobs began to clash with the then appointed CEO on the future direction of the company and how to stay relevant.
The disagreements between the two were at such odds, that Jobs was eventually pushed out of his own company.
Related: Quotes on Getting Through Tough Times
NeXT Chapter
Jobs resigned from Apple; however, he didn’t let his being pushed out of his own company get him down. Instead, he dusted himself off, and got back to work on doing what he does best, creating. Jobs would go on to find another computer company which he aptly named NeXT Inc.
This next chapter in Jobs life was serious business to him. He aggressively sought out investors for this next phase of his life, and succeeded in bringing together a company, and a handful of products that would become well sought after, and do well in the marketplace.
He would also invest heavily in the animation studio that would later come to be known as Disney’s Pixar. Indeed, Jobs stuck to his main vision which was to “change the world through technology”
And after just a few short years, NeXT would become so successful, that Apple would eventually seek to buy them up. And buy them they did. After this acquisition in 1997, Steve Jobs would come back to Apple as an advisor. But soon after coming back, he would find his way back into the top leadership position, retaking the helm as CEO.[2]
Reinvention
Once Jobs was back in the driver’s seat of Apple, he helped turn the company around. The company under the previous CEO’s had been losing money for years. In fact, Apple had been losing billions in market share year over year for multiple years.
But, when Jobs returned to his old job, he did the unthinkable, he reversed the course of the company almost single handedly.
Steve Jobs’ strategy was immensely different from his counterparts who replaced him and whom he ultimately replaced. Jobs implemented many innovative products, beginning with the imac, a product that was dramatically different in that it was now compatible with windows.
He then completely restructured Apple, by significantly increasing the investments in R&D, by changing Apples branding into something hip and modern. Jobs’ strategy seemed to be one of doing things differently from the crowd intentionally — a breaking the mold of sorts for the technology industry.
After the iMac, Jobs moved Apple in a direction towards becoming more of a digital convergence company, coming out with the iPod, iTunes, Apple TV, and the iPhone.
Sticking to the Vision
At the end of 2007 Steve Jobs helped Apple obtain a Net Income of $3.49 billion, and a market value of $173 billion. But by the time of his death in October of 2011, he managed to increase Apple’s market capitalization to around $300 billion.
The primary aspects of Jobs’ Strategy had changed very little since his early Apple II days. His initial goal when he created Apple was to “change the world through technology”, and by staying hungry to innovate and created products that focused on even the most minute details, he did just that.
Steve Jobs stuck to his original vision, regardless of the company he was with. As such, he managed to create for consumers, something that other company’s are still struggling to replicate: easy-to-use personal technology devices that are unparalleled in their quality of design and craftsmanship.
Success Ethos | Success In His Own Words
Steve Jobs’ story of success clearly demonstrates the incremental steps he took to achieve the fame, fortune, and legacy that we’ve all come to know him for to this day. That said, we wanted to provide you with a few of Steve Jobs’ own success insights, by highlighting a few things he had to say on the subject of success and achievement while he was with us:
So, in a nutshell, success according to Steve Jobs has much to do with putting in the time and effort, doing the right thing, persevering in the face of failure, and persisting to learn from mistakes.
Related: Steve Jobs Quotes on Success
Conclusion
There you have it, the Steve Jobs success story that describes his inspiring journey — going from a curious young middle-class kid who loved tinkering with electronics, to dropping out of college, to then go on to become a modern-day titan who created from scratch, not one, but two successful computer technology companies, and revolutionized the personal technology industry forever.
We also briefly touched on the qualities that helped Jobs create the massive success he’s become known for. Here they are again as a quick recap to answer the question about how Steve Jobs became the legendary titan of technology he’ll always be remembered for :
Curiosity | Action-Oriented | Detail-Oriented | Persistent Vision
Now go forth and apply the Steve Jobs success insights you’ve just gained. Hopefully they’ll assist you in creating a life as remarkable as the late Steve Jobs.
Till next time,
STRIVE
PS – If you enjoyed our Steve Jobs success story, then you’ll definitely love this collection of short but insightful success stories.
