Steve Jobs – born February 24, 1955 – “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”

Steve Jobs (born February 24, 1955, Jobs was the charismatic mastermind behind Apple. With his leadership, the company went from a startup in his parents’ garage to the highest-valued company in the world.

Jobs’ career began when he dropped out of Reed College on Oregon after a year, choosing instead to drop in on other classes at the campus. One was calligraphy. “It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating,” Steve said in 2005.. “And since Windows just copied the Mac,” he later explained, “it’s likely that [without this] no personal computer would have them.”

Jobs’ intuition for balancing technology and art would become the cornerstone of Apple’s game plan, but his business savvy and sales ability would also pave his way to a rare fortune. An example was in 1975 – 20-year-old Jobs was working for Atari. Bosses offered Steve a huge bonus if he could improve their flagship arcade game,. Jobs turned to his geeky friend Steve ‘Woz’ Wozniak, offering half the $700 fee if he could complete it in four days.

Apple began one year later, when Jobs found Woz building his own computer. He saw potential in the relatively small prototype, and suggested they go into business — Woz as product. After one year they brought their flagship computer to market: the Apple II. It made them rich.

He turned to Pepsi boss John Sculley in 1983, famously asking, “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?” Sculley accepted, but the relationship soured. Jobs was fired. Jobs later admitted it was the best thing that ever happened to him. The weight of Apple’s vast success had begun to starve his creativity, and being fired let him appreciate being a beginner again.

During this time he founded Pixar, which made the first ever computer animated film, Toy Story — a genuine classic. When Disney bought the company for $7.4bn in 2006, Jobs became Disney’s largest single shareholder.

At the same time, Jobs also ventured back into computing with a new company, NeXT. But Apple had begun to flounder without its original visionary, and Jobs returned to lead it in 1997.

The first iMac was stylish- you didn’t need to be a geek to love computers any more. Then the iPod and iTunes brought about a revolution in the music industry. In fact, it was so much more than just music — it opened the door to digital products being a normal thing to buy.

The iPhone would be Apple’s greatest coup. It brought touchscreen phones to the mainstream and Apple became a leading player in the mobile phone industry, out of nowhere. Suddenly, Apple could do anything The iPad could be the culmination of Jobs’ genius. The product had been planned for decades.

Jobs’ greatest words could be from that Stanford University speech he made in 2005. “Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith… Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle….. “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

Source: C.Net, Brittanica Encyclopedia, Stanford University