Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955 in San Francisco. He was originally the son of Abdulfattah Jandali and Joanne Simpson but Paul and Clara jobs adopted Steve shortly after her was born. Steve was never really interested into school until he hit 4th grade, when Steve got to high school he took an electronic class where he first discovered his love towards electronics. Steve developed entrepreneurial skills very early in life, in the summer of 1968 he called Bill Hewlett who is one of the founders of HP and asked him for a job, and at just 13 years old Steve was working in the HP factory. In 1969 Steve met Steve Wozniak (Woz) through his friend Bill Fernandez and become great friends through their common interests of their love for electronics, Bob Dylan, and pranks. In 1972 Steve and Woz had their first entrepreneurial break through where they figured out how to build blue boxes which are devices that fooled cell phone companies and allowed you to make phone calls for free. This was an illeagle act but Steve did not care and he wanted to sell them anyways to students in Woz’s dorm but the two boys quickly stopped after they were busted by the police. A year later Steve attended Reed college which was a very high end school that his parents spent their whole life savings just to afford it and that was barely enough, but a few months later Steve realized he was no longer interested in and decided to drop out and stopped taking the required classes and only took the ones that interested him which he technically wasn’t allowed to do. Steve later on became a laggard hippie with his friend who he met in Reed named Dan Kottke. The following year Steve got a job at Atari which was a video game company, the founder of the company was Nolan Bushnell who is the inventor of the pinball machine and Steve looked up to him as a role model and inspired Steve to start Apple.
Steve and Woz first started the company by selling his Volkswagen van just so he could have enough money to get started off. They thought they still needed some help though so Steve asked one of his friends from Atari to join the company, his name was Ron Wayne and he wrote the paperwork to get the corporation started and he also created the company’s first logo. At first Apple was first HP’s property because of Woz’s contract but when he showed Apple to his bosses they were not interested. Steve and Woz still continued to follow their dream and started selling computes of their own, at first they went to the Homebrew folks but they did not seem interested in the idea so the two friends went from store to store showing their ideas to the world and sold a large amount this way and finally the Apple computed had been born. Steve and Woz did not want Ron Wayne in the company anymore so they bought him out for $800. Over the next months they spent all their time assembling apple computers and Woz spent all his time developing a much more high tech computer called the Apple 2 which was a much more powerful system and was also the first ever colored computer. Steve knew this was going to be extremely successful so he convinced former Intel executive Mike Markkula to invest $250,000 in Apple. Steve and Woz were right, Apple became extremely successful and Apple’s investors decided it was time to go public, in 1980 the IPO took place and just four years after that the company was finally officially started and Steve’s net worth increased to over $200 million by age 25.
Steve and Woz experienced a lot of ups and downs in the company and for about 11 years the company wasn’t experiencing many sales because the computers were so over priced. But in 2001 when the first iPod was created this changed the whole business around and got back on the success track. When the iTunes store came out it changed the whole music industry and brought in millions to the Apple corporation. From that point on the company was nothing but success from the iPod touch, to the iPhone, to the Mac Book Pro and so much more! The reason Apple got so successful was because Steve followed the “HUNT” system, he had a vision and did not quit until it became reality, he underestimated the roadblocks by never giving up on his dream even though he was turned down countless amounts of times, he found his networking partner, Woz, who helped his dream become reality, and he wasn’t scared to take his first big step into the company by selling his Volkswagon van in order to have enough money to get it all started.
We would not be where we are today in the 21st century without Steve Jobs, when you look around usually 8 people out of 10 have an iPhone in their hands and we have Steve to thank for that one. Many people couldn’t even survive a day without their iPhone, and I am one of these people that falls into this category. Without smart phones, iPads, and Mac books we wouldn’t have a way to communicate with people as easily as we do today, couldn’t check our email on a daily basis, or even listen to your music on a long run. Now a days we take everything for granted and don’t realize how easy we actually really have it, but America certainly would not be as advanced as we are today if it wasn’t for Steve Jobs.
WORKS CITED
Romain, Moisescot. March 7,2012. http://allaboutstevejobs.com/bio/bio.php.
