steve jobs

Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco, California on February 24, 1955. He was adopted at birth by Paul Reinhold Jobs and Clara Jobs and moved from San Francisco to Mountain View, California when he was five years old. Jobs became interested in and developed a hobby of technical tinkering. Not surprisingly, school officials recommended that he skip two grades on account of his test scores. Following his high school graduation in 1972, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Board and annoyed by the structure of college he dropped out after six months and spent the next 18 months dropping in on creative classes that he found interesting. Jobs would later in his career reveal the immense value gained from his time of freely attending the classes he found interesting.

In 1972 Steve Jobs was hired as a technician at Atari, Inc. Atari's co-founder Nolan Bushnell later described him as "difficult but valuable", pointing out, "he was very often the smartest guy in the room, and he would let people know that.” Come mid 1974 Jobs traveled to India in search of enlightenment, returning after seven months having experimented with psychedelics. He later called his LSD experiences "one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life.” Over the next few years Jobs had small success with a couple one-off ventures. These ventures planted the seed in Jobs' mind that electronics could be fun and profitable. Running with that notion, in 1976 Jobs and his best friend Steve Wozniak formed "Apple Computer Company.” It was a true startup, operated out of their parents’ garage. By 1983 Apple was growing quickly and its investors wanted an experienced executive to run the company. In response Jobs lured John Sculley away from...

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...d completely monopolize the news cycle for a full week, more evidence of Jobs’ ingenious mind for public relations. He stated "My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other's negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are never done by one person, they are done by a team of people.”

Steve Jobs died at his Palo Alto, California, home around 3 p.m. on October 5, 2011, due to complications from a relapse of his previously treated pancreatic cancer. He died with nearly 350 patents to his name and a net worth of $10.2 billion. And has since been posthumously inducted into multiple halls of fame. Stories of Steve Jobs are the stuff of legend, of a man who can claim responsibility for part of human evolution. It doesn’t get more impressive than that.