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Updated Aug 23, 2024

Steve Jobs Biography

Learn how Apple co-founder Steve Jobs revolutionized the computer industry.

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Written By: Sean PeekBusiness Ownership Insider and Senior Analyst
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Steve Jobs was a computer designer, executive and innovator, as well as an all-around role model for many people in their professional and personal lives. As the co-founder of Apple Computers and the former chairman of Pixar Animation Studios, he revolutionized the computer and animation industries, amassing a fortune worth $10.2 billion at the time of his death. Jobs died at age 56 on Oct. 5, 2011, in Palo Alto, California, after battling pancreatic cancer for eight years.

Steve Jobs’ early life

Born in San Francisco, Steve Jobs was adopted by an encouraging and loving family. He developed an interest in computers and engineering at a young age, inspired by his father’s machinist job and love for electronics. 

Growing up south of Palo Alto, Jobs was bright beyond comparison – his teachers wanted him to skip several grades and enter high school early, although his parents declined. When he did go to high school, Jobs met his future business partner, Steve Wozniak, with whom he bonded over a shared love for electronics and computer chips.

The start of Apple

After dropping out of college in his first semester, Jobs explored his spiritual side while traveling in India. It was through this spiritual enlightenment that Jobs’ work ethic and simplistic view toward life were developed. 

“That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity,” he once said. “Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

Jobs began to move mountains at age 21 when he and Wozniak started Apple Computers in the Jobs family garage. To fund their venture, Jobs sold his Volkswagen bus and Wozniak sold his scientific calculator. This ended up being a good investment. Prior to Apple’s rise, computers were physically massive, expensive and not accessible by the everyday person. 

With Jobs heading up marketing and Wozniak in charge of technical development, Apple sold consumer-friendly machines that were smaller and cheaper, at only $666.66 each. The Apple II was more successful than the first model, and sales increased by 700 percent. On its first day of being a publicly traded company in 1980, Apple Computers had an estimated market value of $1.2 billion.

Did You Know?Did you know
The original Apple-1 computers were sold at the $666.66 price point for two reasons: because Jobs and Wozniak wanted to sell the computer at a markup of one-third over the $500 wholesale price and because Wozniak liked repeating digits.

Apple resignation and Pixar beginnings

But this success was short-lived, even with the praise for Jobs’ latest design, the Macintosh. IBM was Apple’s stiffest competition, and it began to surpass Apple’s sales. After a falling out with Apple’s CEO, John Sculley, Jobs resigned in 1985 to follow his own interests. He started a new software and hardware company, NeXT Inc., and he invested in a small animation company, Pixar Animation Studios.

Pixar became successful thanks to Jobs’ tenacity and evolving management style. Toy Story, Pixar’s first major success, took four years to make, as the then-unknown animation company struggled. Jobs pushed its progress along by encouraging and prodding his team in critical and often abrasive ways. While some found his management style caustic, he also earned loyalty from many team members. 

“You need a lot more than vision – you need a stubbornness, tenacity, belief and patience to stay the course,” Edwin Catmull, the co-founder of Pixar, told the New York Times. “In Steve’s case, he pushes right to the edge, to try to make the next big step forward.”

Return to Apple

While Pixar succeeded, NeXT, trying to sell its own operating system to American consumers, floundered. Apple bought the company in 1997, and Jobs returned to Apple as CEO. Working for an annual salary of $1 a year (in addition to the millions of Apple shares he owned), Jobs revitalized Apple. Under his leadership, the company developed numerous innovative products – namely, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad and iTunes. 

Apple revolutionized mobile communications, music and even how numerous industries, including retail and healthcare, carried out their everyday business operations. He showed a unique intuition when developing these products. When asked what consumer and market research went into the iPad, Jobs reportedly replied, “None. It’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want,” according to his obituary in The New York Times.

Jobs used his personal experiences, such as growing up in the San Francisco area in the ’60s and his world travel, to shape the way he designed the products that made Apple synonymous with success. He criticized the sheltered lives that characterized many in the computer industry. 

“[They] haven’t had very diverse experiences,” he told Wired. “So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.”

Did You Know?Did you know
Jobs considered every aspect of the consumer's product experience, right down to the packaging. He created a small team of package designers dedicated to fine-tuning the unboxing experience.

Death and legacy

In 2004, Apple announced Jobs had a rare but curable form of pancreatic cancer. This brush with death helped Jobs focus his energy on developing the Apple products that rose to such popularity in the 2000s.

“Almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important,” he said in his 2005 commencement address at Stanford.

Though he was ill, it was during this time that Apple launched some of its biggest (and most successful) creations. Under Jobs, iTunes became the second-biggest music retailer in America, the MacBook Air revolutionized laptop computing, and the iPod and iPhone broke sales records. These innovations changed the way users consumed content and communicated with one another.

Jobs once said, “I want to put a ding in the universe.” After starting the personal computer revolution, launching the smartphone craze, changing the age of computer animation, and making technology popular and accessible, he made more than a ding.

TipTip
Apple offers many more products and services today, including credit card financing, Apple Pay for secure and fast payments, and even an array of watchbands to keep you plugged in and stylish. Investigate what offerings may be best for your small-business operations.

Steve Jobs’ innovative leadership style

Jobs emphasized the importance of teamwork to his employees. Though he made the final decision on product designs, he knew the right people are a company’s greatest asset. “That’s how I see business,” he said in a 2003 60 Minutes interview, “… great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.” [Read our tips on improving the hiring process.]

At the same time, Jobs knew he had to be the best leader possible to his teams. According to Jobs’ work mantra and ethic, innovation is what distinguishes a leader from a follower. Thanks to Jobs’ expectation of high quality, almost every product he turned out was a huge success among consumers and businesses.

Key TakeawayKey takeaway
Knowing your leadership type and strengths can have a profound impact on the success of your company.

Steve Jobs’ impact

Steve Jobs is still recognized today for making positive impacts in a number of areas.

Helping the environment

Jobs’ innovation led to the creation of products that save trees and help the environment. In situations where someone would typically use paper, such as in a presentation or a script reading, technology on devices like the iPad replaced it. The iPhone and iPad – groundbreaking products that ushered in a new generation of smart mobile technologies – ensure “paperless” is more and more the status quo. [Learn how to create a paperless office for your business.]

Revolutionizing technology

While the iPhone wasn’t the first smartphone, it catapulted the mobile revolution forward and gave more freedom to individuals in their professional and personal lives. With an iPhone, professionals could answer calls, respond to emails, join webinars and more from their cellular device – in addition to having immediate access to music, movies and messages that fulfill their personal likes, needs and passions. [These are the tech trends we’re seeing in 2024.]

Creating a faster world

Today’s world is more instantaneous than ever before, thanks to advancements by Jobs. His innovations ensure productivity thrives, like being able to make an appointment or reservation from your mobile phone and use your iPad as a point of sale (POS) system. With Jobs’ technology, businesses and customers have much smoother and quicker interactions. [Don’t miss our picks for the best POS systems.]

What businesses can learn from Steve Jobs

There are many lessons any entrepreneur can take away from Steve Jobs’ journey from humble beginnings to the big time. Here are a few takeaways we found in his story:

Stay in the present moment

Planning is important, but you can get lost in forecasts of the future. Steve Jobs preached focus and simplicity following his spiritual journey, and that involves staying in the present moment. When you can focus on the task at hand and put your all into it, the outcomes will likely be better. That doesn’t mean you should eschew planning and forecasting, because anticipating the future is important for business leaders. But if you find yourself ruminating or worrying about what might come down the line, you’re not focusing on what’s right in front of you in the here and now. 

Find resources wherever you can

Jobs and Wozniak sold what few assets they had to invest in Apple during its earliest days. This might have seemed like a big gamble at the time, but the duo believed in what they were building, and the sale of these assets provided the means to create it. Rather than jumping at the chance to sell equity or taking out an expensive loan, ask yourself if you have any resources you can draw from first. Bootstrapping your business may leave you with more control over your company and less debt to pay back later. 

Have a grander vision

Steve Jobs wanted to build a successful company, but he also had a bigger mission. Focusing on helping the environment and achieving a sort of personal fulfillment and spiritual environment drove him – it wasn’t all about business and profitability. While pursuing success in business is an important motivation, it’s these grander visions that sustain you on days where things get most difficult. Find a broader purpose and build it into the ethos of your business in order to stay motivated and keep driving yourself – and your business – forward. 

Steve Jobs quotes

Jobs’ approach to innovation and business offers entrepreneurs industry-agnostic inspiration more than a decade after his death. Many of his quotes remain inspiring today:

  • “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful – that’s what matters to me.”
  • “Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.”
  • “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”
  • “Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.”
  • “I’m convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the nonsuccessful ones is pure perseverance.”
  • “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
  • “I’m as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying no to a thousand things.”
  • “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”

Learning from a legendary leader

Although entrepreneurs tend to be independent and intrinsically motivated people, there’s plenty that can be learned by turning to the business leaders that came before them. Steve Jobs remains an icon for growing Apple into an international success. As such, he’s an important figure for any entrepreneur looking to launch and grow a small business, possibly into the next big brand to rocket onto the scene.

Tejas Vemparala contributed to this article.

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Written By: Sean PeekBusiness Ownership Insider and Senior Analyst
Sean Peek is the co-founder of a self-funded small business that employs more than a dozen team members. His years of hands-on entrepreneurial experience in bootstrapping, operations management, process automation and leadership have strengthened his knowledge of the B2B world and the most pressing issues facing business owners today. Peek uses his expertise to guide fellow small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs in the areas of marketing, finance and software technology. At Business News Daily, Peek primarily covers a range of business tech, such as email marketing platforms, document management programs, payroll services and project management software. Peek also excels at developing customer bases and fostering long-term client relationships, using lean principles to drive efficiency and cost-saving, and identifying growth areas. He has demonstrated his business savvy through collaborations with Forbes, Inc., Entrepreneur and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
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