Steve Jobs helped grow Apple to $2 billion. Then he was out.
Eleven years later, Apple agreed to pay $400 million for his company.
Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple in his parents' garage. By 1985, in Jobs's words, it had become "a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees." The Macintosh had come out a year earlier, and its sales disappointed. Jobs clashed with John Sculley, the chief executive Apple had hired. The board sided with Sculley and removed Jobs as head of the Macintosh division. On 16 September 1985 he resigned as chairman.
At Stanford in 2005 he described it like this: "So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out." He started a new computer company, NeXT. On 20 December 1996, Apple announced it would acquire NeXT for $400 million, and Jobs returned under the deal, reporting to Apple's chief executive at the time, Gil Amelio. By September 1997 he was Apple's interim chief executive.
Jobs later called getting fired "the best thing that could have ever happened" to him.
For anyone running an acquisition: buying NeXT and bringing Jobs back were one deal. Putting him in charge of Apple came about nine months later.
One-minute true story. AI-generated illustration with narration by an AI voice.
What the captions say
- This is the story of how Steve Jobs was pushed out of Apple at 30, and what $400 million had to do with it.
- In 1985, the company he co-founded was a $2 billion business.
- Jobs later asked: "How can you get fired from a company you started?"
- After Macintosh sales disappointed, Jobs clashed with Apple's chief executive, John Sculley.
- The board sided with Sculley and took the Macintosh from Jobs.
- That September, he resigned. "At 30 I was out," he later said.
- He even thought about leaving Silicon Valley. Then he started a new computer company, NeXT.
- Eleven years later, Apple agreed to buy NeXT for $400 million, and Jobs came back.
- Within a year, he was running Apple again.
- He later called getting fired "the best thing that could have ever happened" to him.
