Successful Entrepreneur

Steve Jobs is one of the most successful entrepreneurs and was listed as Fortune Magazine’s Number One most powerful businessman of 2007 out of twenty-five other top businessmen. He is the co-founder, chairman and CEO of Apple Inc. and was the CEO of Pixar Animation Studios until it was acquired by the Walt Disney Company in 2006. Steve Jobs is currently the Walt Disney Company’s largest shareholder and a member of its Board of Directors. He is considered a leading figure in both the computer and entertainment industries. He is also widely credited as the inventor of the Macintosh, the iPod, the iTunes Store, and the iPhone, among other things. His history in business has contributed greatly to the myths of the quirky, individualistic Silicon Valley entrepreneur, emphasizing the importance of design while understanding the crucial role aesthetics play in public appeal. His work driving forward the development of products that are both functional and elegant has earned him a devoted and popular following. Steve Jobs passion was always technology from a young age, so he took his first job at Atari Inc. hich was a leading manufacturer of video games. He struck up a friendship with fellow designer Steve Wozniak. Steve and Steve developed a system with a toy whistle which made it possible to make free long distance telephone calls. Together with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs helped popularize the personal computer in the late ‘70s, and in the early ‘80s. After losing a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985, Steve Jobs resigned from Apple and founded NEXT, a computer platform development company specializing in the higher education and business markets. NeXT’s subsequent 1997 buyout by Apple brought Steve back to the company he co-founded, and he has served as its chief executive officer since his return. A true example of a successful entrepreneur who strived with his passion to be the best. Life story of Steve Paul Jobs :- Steve Paul Jobs, was an orphan adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs of Mountain View, California in 24th February 1955. Jobs was not happy at school in Mountain View so the family moved to Los Altos, California, where Steven attended Homestead High School. His electronics teacher at Homestead High, Hohn McCollum. After school, Jobs attended lectures at the Hewlett-Packard electronics firm in Palo Alto, California. There he was hired as a summer employee. Another employee at Hewlett-Packard was Stephen Wozniak a recent dropout from the University of California at Berkeley. An engineering whiz with a passion for inventing electronic gadgets, Wozniak at that time was perfecting his â€Å"blue box,† an illegal pocket-size telephone attachment that would allow the user to make free long-distance calls. Jobs helped Wozniak sell a number of the devices to customers. In 1972 Jobs graduated from high school and register at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. After dropping out of Reed after one semester, he hung around campus for a year, taking classes in philosophy and immersing himself in the counterculture. Early in 1974 Jobs took a job as a video game designer at Atari, Inc. , a pioneer in electronic arcade recreation. After several months working, he saved enough money to adventure on a trip to India where he traveled in search of spiritual enlightenment in the company of Dan Kottke, a friend from Reed College. In autumn of 1974, Jobs returned to California and began attending meetings of Wozniak's â€Å"Homebrew Computer Club. † Wozniak, like most of the club's members, was content with the joy of electronics creation. Jobs was not interested in creating electronics and was nowhere near as good an engineer as Woz. He had his eye on marketability of electronic products and persuaded Wozniak to work with him toward building a personal computer. Wozniak and Jobs designed the Apple I computer in Jobs's bedroom and they built the prototype in the Jobs' garage. Jobs showed the machine to a local electronics equipment retailer, who ordered twenty-five. Jobs received marketing advice from a friend, who was a retired CEO from Intel, and he helped them with marketing strategies for selling their new product. Jobs and Wozniak had great inspiration in starting a computer company that would produce and sell computers. To start this company they sold their most valuable possessions. Jobs sold his Volkswagen micro-bus and Wozniak sold his Hewlett-Packard scientific calculator, which raised $1,300 to start their new company. With that capital base and credit begged from local electronics suppliers, they set up their first production line. Jobs encouraged Wozniak quit his job at Hewlett-Packard to become the vice president in charge of research and development of the new enterprise. And he did quit his job to become vice president. Jobs came up with the name of their new company Apple in memory of a happy summer he had spent as an orchard worker in Oregon. Apple Company and Steve Jobs : Jobs and Wozniak put together their first computer, called the Apple I. They marketed it in 1976 at a price of $666. The Apple I was the first single-board computer with built-in video interface, and on-board ROM, which told the machine how to load other programs from an external source. Jobs was marketing the Apple I at hobbyists like members of the Homebrew Computer Club who could now perform their own operations on their personal computers. Jobs and Wozniak managed to earn $774,000 from the sales of the Apple I. The following year, Jobs and Wozniak developed the general purpose Apple II. The design of the Apple II did not depart from Apple I's simplistic and compactness design. The Apple II was the Volkswagon of computers. The Apple II had built-in circuitry allowing it to interface directly to a color video monitor. Jobs encouraged independent programmers to invent applications for Apple II. The result was a library of some 16,000 software programs. For the Apple II computer to compete against IBM, Jobs needed better marketing skills. To increase his marketing edge he brought Regis McKenna and Nolan Bushnell into the company. McKenna was the foremost public relations man in the Silicon Valley. Nolan Bushnell was Jobs's former supervisor at Atari. Bushnell put Jobs in touch with Don Valentine, a venture capitalist, who told Markkula, the former marketing manager at Intel, that Apple was worth looking into. Buying into Apple with an investment variously estimated between $91,000 and $250,000, Markkula became chairman of the company in May 1977. The following month Michael Scott, who was director of manufacturing at Semi-Conductor Inc. , became president of Apple. Through Markkula, Apple accumulated a line of credit with the Bank of America and $600,000 in venture capital from the Rockefellers and Arthur Roch. Quickly setting the standard in personal computers, the Apple II had earnings of $139,000,000 within three years, a growth of 700 percent. Impressed with that growth, and a trend indicating an additional worth of 35 to 40 percent, the cautious underwriting firm of Hambrecht & Quist in cooperation with Wall Street's prestigious Morgan Stanley, Inc. , took Apple public in 1980. The underwriters price of $22 per share went up to $29 the first day of trading, bringing the market value of Apple to $1. 2 billion. In 1982 Apple had sales of $583,000,000 up 74 percent from 1981. Its net earnings were $1. 6 a share, up 55 percent, and as of December 1982, the company's stock was selling for approximately $30 a share. Over the past seven years of Apple's creation, Jobs had created a strong productive company with a growth curve like a straight line North with no serious competitors. From 1978 to 1983, its compound growth rate was over 150% a year. Then IBM muscled into the personal computer business. Two years after introducing its PC, IBM passed Apple in dollar sales of the machines. IBM's dominance had made its operating system an industry standard which was not compatible with Apple's products. Jobs knew in order to compete with IBM, he would have to make the Apple compatible with IBM computers and needed to introduce new computers that could be marketed in the business world which IBM controlled. To help him market these new computers Jobs recruited John Sculley from Pesi Cola for a position as president at Apple. Jobs enticed Scully to Apple with a challenge: â€Å"If you stay at Pepsi, five years from now all you'll have accomplished is selling a lot more sugar water to kids. If you come to Apple you can change the world. Jobs in 1981 introduced the Apple III, which had never fully recovered from its traumatic introduction, because Apple had to recall the first 14,000 units to remedy design flaws, and then had trouble selling the re-engineered version. Another Apple failure was the mouse-controlled Lisa, announced to stockholders in 1983. It should have been a world beater, because Lisa was the first personal computer controlled by a mouse which made it have a user-friendly interface, but had an un-friendly price of $10,000. The worst thing about Apple's development of computers was they lacked coherence. Each of Apple's three computers used a separate operating system. Jobs designed the Macintosh to compete with the PC and, in turn, make Apple's new products a success. In an effort to revitalize the company and prevent it from falling victim to corporate bureaucracy, Jobs launched a campaign to bring back the values and entrepreneurial spirit that characterized Apple in its garage shop days. In developing the Macintosh, he tried to re-create an atmosphere in which the computer industry's highly individualistic, talented, and often eccentric software and hardware designers could flourish. The Macintosh had 128K of memory, twice that of the PC, and the memory could be expandable up to192K. The Mac's 32-bit microprocessor did more things and out performed the PC's 16-bit microprocessor. The larger concern of management concerning the Macintosh was not IBM compatible. This caused an uphill fight for Apple in trying to sell Macintosh to big corporations that where IBM territory. â€Å"We have thought about this very hard and it old be easy for us to come out with an IBM look-alike product, and put the Apple logo on it, and sell a lot of Apples. Our earning per share would go up and our stock holders would be happy, but we think that would be the wrong thing to do,† says Jobs. The strengths of Macintosh design was not memory, power, or manipulative ability, but friendliness, flexibility, and adaptability to perform creative work. The Macintosh held the moments possibility that computer technology would evolve beyond the mindless crunching of numbers for legions of corporate bean-counters. As the print campaign claimed, the Macintosh was the computer â€Å"for the rest of us. † The strategy Jobs used to introduce the Macintosh in 1984 was radical. The Macintosh, with all its apparent vulnerability, was a revolutionary act infused with altruism, a technological bomb-throwing. When the machine was introduced to the public on Super Bowl Sunday it was, as Apple Chairman Steve Jobs described it, â€Å"kind of like watching the gladiator going into the arena and saying, ‘Here it is. † The commercial had a young woman athlete being chased by faceless storm-troopers who raced past hundreds of vacant eyed workers and hurled a sledgehammer into the image of a menacing voice. A transcendent blast. Then a calm, cultivated speaker assured the astonished multitudes that 1984 would not be like 1984. Macintosh had entered the arena. That week, countless newspapers and magazines ran stories with titles like â€Å"What were you doing when the ‘1984' commercial ran? † Jobs' invocation of the gladiator image is not incidental here. Throughout the development of the Macintosh, he had fanned the fervor of the design team by characterizing them as brilliant, committed marhinals. He repeatedly clothed both public and private statements about the machine in revolutionary, sometimes violent imagery, first encouraging his compatriots to see themselves as outlaws, and then target the audience to imagine themselves as revolutionaries. Jobs, like all those who worked on the project, saw the Macintosh as something that would change the world. Jobs described his Macintosh developing team as souls who were â€Å"well grounded in the philosophical traditions of the last 100 years and the sociological traditions of the 60's. The Macintosh team pursued their project through grueling hours and against formidable odds. A reporter who interviewed the team wrote: â€Å"The machine's development was, in turn, traumatic, joyful, grueling, lunatic, rewarding and ultimately the major event in the lives of almost everyone involved†. The image Jobs wanted the public to have of the Macintosh was young, wears blue jeans, and lives in an 80's version of the 60's counterculture. Macintosh was impatient, uncomfortable, and contemptuous of everything that was conventional or hierarchical. He/she was both creative and committed, believing strongly that his/her work ultimately matters. Even if we counted beans for a living, we secretly saw ourselves as Romantic poets. Jobs approach in developing the Macintosh was like the history of telephones. When the telegraph became popular for communication a century ago, some people suggested putting a telegraph machine on everyone's desk, but everyone would have had to learn Morse code. Just a few years later Alexander Graham Bell filed his first patents for the telephone, and that easy-to-use technology became the standard means of communication. â€Å"We're at same juncture; people just are not going to be willing to spend the time learning Morse code, or reading a 400-page manual on word processing. The current generation of personal computers just will not any longer. We want to make a product like the first telephone. We want to make mass market appliances. What we are trying to develop is a computer that can do all those things that you might expect, but we also offer a much higher performance which takes the form of a very easy-to-use product. † As the Macintosh took off in sales and became a big hit, John Sculley felt Jobs was hurting the company, and persuaded the board to strip him of power. John Sculley tried to change the discipline of the company by controlling costs, reducing overhead, rationalizing product lines to an organization that some in the industry called Camp Runamok. Sculley came to the conclusion that â€Å"we could run a lot better with Steve out of operations,† he says. Jobs tended to value technological â€Å"elegance† over customer needs which is a costly luxury at a time of slowing sales. And Jobs's intense involvement with the Macintosh project had a demoralizing effect on Apple's other divisions. Jobs was exiled to an office in an auxiliary building that he nicknamed â€Å"Siberia. † Jobs says he did not get any assignments and gradually found that important company documents no longer landed on his desk. He told every member of the executive staff that he wanted to be helpful in any way he could, and he made sure each had his home phone number. Few ever called back. â€Å"It was very clear there was nothing for me to do,† he says, â€Å"I need a purpose to make me go. † He soon came to believe that he would find no purpose within Apple. In July, Sculley had told security analysts in a meeting that Jobs would have no role in the operations of the company â€Å"now or in the future. † When Jobs heard of the message he said, â€Å"You've probably had somebody punch you in the stomach and it knocks the wind out you and you cannot breathe. The harder you try to breathe, the more you cannot breathe. And you know that the only thing you can do is just relax so you can start breathing again. † The Next Step Steve’s Come back to Apple : Jobs sold over $20 million of his Apple stock, spent days bicycling along the beach, feeling sad and lost, toured Paris, also goes on a spiritual trip to India with his friend. The Mr. Nobody, Steve, started again once he was out of his super rich, super successful period. After three years, he founded a new company, ‘Next’. He launched Next Cube. It was an extremely powerful and much expensive machine at that time and probably, an offering to an immature market. It failed miserably. Then Steve and his company, Next, moved to the making of softwares and operating systems. His money and property were not with him, but his creative mind was. He showed an interest in George Lucas’ company, the Pixar Animations. George Lucas is considered the father of modern special effects in the films. Lucas was not interested in Pixar, so Steve took charge of the company in 1986. He entered into a contract with Disney in 1990. Pixar made the animations and Disney did the marketing and distribution of the animation films. Steve could read the future five years ahead. In 1995, the ‘Toy Story’ proved to be the huge success in Hollywood and Pixar never looked back. But now this Steve was not the Steve of 1080s. He gradually became Zen Buddhist. Meanwhile, he saw Bill Gates climbing the success ladder with sheer business techniques and not with orthodox ideologies. By the way, the flagship product of Microsoft, the Windows operation system, is nothing but an adaptation of the ideas of Steve’s Macintosh computer. Bill Gates proves to be an extremely practically businessman who along with working for Apple also copied the technologies of Apple Macintosh! Oh! You would ask what happened to Apple after Steve’s exit! Imagine a body without its soul! This is no exaggeration. After leaving its soul, the company instead of running, started crawling. Without Steve, the entire computer business in the world changed in the decade of 90s. Nobody could match the steps with the changing times. Apple Corporation was about to announce bankruptcy and it was about to become insolvent. At that time, the then Apple’ boss, Mr. Gil Emilio took an unprecedented decision. He decided to buy a new operating system for the Mac computers. And the best and advanced operating systems were made by only one company in the vicinity, and that was Steve Jobs’ company, ‘Next’†¦! As per the contract between the Apple and the Next, Steve re-entered his own company after 12 years†¦.! And that too, just for a salary of $ 1 a year†¦! But this time the new Steve was different from what he used to be back in 1980s. This Steve came with a lot of learning from life. Now it was his turn to stage the boardroom drama. In 1997, in the board meeting Steve once again was elected the CEO of the Apple Corporation. The new all-powered Steve created ‘Ometra’, the contract; wherein all the employees were made to agree to the term that the boss’ decision is final in any matter! Steve had already tasted the fruits of being the ‘ideologist’. Now he was a shrewd businessman, with a lot of practical mind setup. He knew that Apple did not have enough funds to carry out its research projects. So he played one big master stroke. He invited none other than, Mr. Bill Gates to invest in Apple†¦! Bill Gates was more than ready to invest in Apple, because the person, who copied the technologies of Steve, had to have the greatest trust in his capabilities! Apple was now on track again. Steve was still purist and idealistic as far as the technological innovations and the aesthetic looks are concerned. He made the new ‘OSX’ operating system, which was a huge success in the market (In OSX, we already have different versions like, Chitah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, and Tiger. Recently we have seen the successful launch of its Leopard & Snow Leopard version in 2007). Steve also launched the transparent computers in the market for the first time in the name of iMac. Then, we got the super finely designed, iBook laptop from Apple. In 2001, Steve made portable digital music player called, the iPod. Steve always considered the Windows operating System an inferior product as compared to the Macintosh products (which to a large extent is even true). He always called Windows as ‘Working in Hell’. But this Steve was ready to compromise with his beliefs for the success of his company. He, eventually, started making the Windows enabled Macintosh computers. The unimaginable success of iPode literally scrambled the pillars of world music industry! Just two years ago, he sold out his animation studio Pixar to Disney and in return, got the life-time directorship on the Disney’s board. Steve re-entered Apple by playing the gimmick of taking a salary of $ 1 per year. But he, after getting into his company again, proved very influential and last year he was the highest-paid CEO of America! But amidst such an entire scenario, the time and life struggles had taken their toll on Steve’s health. He was diagnosed with Pancreas cancer. He fought with his cancer also and came back victoriously. He sensed that the mobiles with music player were giving tough competition to his iPod. So, he decided to enter an entirely new market segment for Apple, the mobile market. And the result is in front of us ! The iPhone ! Apple’s creativity has got a support in the face of a ruthless, hardcore, practical businessman. The Apple Corporation, today, is valued at more than $120 billion. Bill Gates has failed to proceed further from Windows. And Steve, with his mind power, has gifted us with some of the greatest innovations of our time. When the ever struggling and always winning Steve recently, in a function, told Bill Gates that ‘we have more past moments to cherish than deciding on the future road map’, everybody around could easily see tears in the eyes of both long time friends! He gave a very emotional, touching and quite inspiring speech to management students on their Commencement in the Stanford University in 2005. This story of successful entrepreneur is much more exciting than watching a fantasy film, isn’t it? The story is of a young man getting all the glitz and glories in his heydays, losing everything because of dirty corporate games, and again through his own intelligence, coming back to the top! Achievements of Steve Jobs: Year after year and event after event, Steven Paul Jobs, popularly known as Steve Jobs has won countless accolades and laurels for his work and dedication to the revolutionize the IT industry. Whether it was the formal ntroduction of Mac computers to the world in the 70s or the inception of the universal revolution called iPhone in 2007 or the most recent revelation of iPad, Steve Jobs has been iconic in the contributions he has made to computer and internet technology – every reason why he has been ruling the roost as one of the most admired CEOs of the industry. The primary reason being the impeccable success of the Apple iPad tablet that launched early this year which has sold millions of units world-wide till date. The Apple iPad still continues to make waves and is no doubt, treated as a culture medium of comparison for other competing tablet PCs