Steve Jobs: Billion Dollar Hippy Page #2

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computer companies near his home in

Silicon Valley.

And he made a friend

who would shape his destiny.

We talked about electronics.

I said, "I design computers.

"I can, you know, do any of them."

He had worked at Hewlett Packard

and built himself what's called

a frequency counter.

So we hit it off.

Despite his hippy outlook,

Jobs had a ruthless streak.

He was asked by the fledgling

computer company Atari

to design a new Breakout game.

Jobs asked Wozniak

to do it in just four days,

telling his friend

they would share the fee.

He presented it like we were

splitting the money 50/50,

but actually, it was, you know,

probably a different story.

Wozniak worked round the clock

to deliver the goods

but later discovered Jobs

had paid him considerably less

than half the sum

he had received from Atari.

You didn't think,

"I can't trust this guy"?

or "He's a bit too sharp for me"?

Steve could have just said,

"I need money to buy into

this commune up in Oregon."

Have you never harboured any

bitterness that he might have?

I don't harbour bitterness.

Even if somebody just did

that right to my face,

I would not harbour bitterness.

But I would acknowledge

the truth. Um, I did cry.

I cried, you know, quite a bit,

actually, when I read it in a book.

The seeds of Apple were sown

when Wozniak introduced Jobs

to a subterranean world

of DIY technology enthusiasts.

The Homebrew Computer Club had ideas

of how small, little people

who knew things about computers

could change the world,

could become masters.

The Homebrew Computer Club

took computing

out of the hands of big business.

What happened was you wanted

a computer or a piece of software

or some product that didn't exist.

You looked around, it didn't exist.

So you built it.

Then you showed it to your friends,

cos everyone wants to show off,

and your friends would say,

"This is great, can I have one?"

The values were sharing. If you have

parts that can help people.

If you have knowledge,

you'll share.

Wozniak brought Jobs to

the Homebrew Computer Club

where he was showing

a new computer he had made.

It would become the Apple I.

He saw a business opportunity that

all these people wanted to build

my computer design, but

they didn't have building skills.

And he thought,

"We'll put out some money,

"design a PC board, we'll make

it for $20, we'll sell it for $40."

And I didn't know if we'd sell

enough to get our money back.

We'd have to sell about 50.

And I didn't know if there were

50 people who would buy my computer.

And Steve said, "Yeah, maybe we

won't get our money back,

"but then for once in our lives,

"finally, the two of us

will have our own company."

Wow, man. He was...

OK, he was the leader on that.

In 1976, Wozniak and Jobs

began selling the Apple I computer

from the Jobs family garage.

Buyers had to add their own case.

The birth of Apple as a company

had been masterminded by Jobs,

a hippy with a business brain.

A surprising number of people

who came along as hippies

and counter-culture

folks in the '60s and '70s

wound up going into business.

Business was a way to have

some freedom in the world.

Steve Jobs later said he'd set up

the business almost by chance.

We started Apple simply because we

wanted this computer for ourselves

and our immediate friends wanted one

once they saw us build a prototype.

So gradually,

we were pulled into business.

We didn't set out to build

a large company.

We started out to build computers

for us and our friends.

To Apple's co-founder, the reality

is a little less idealistic.

Steve was always sort of focussed

on if you can build things

and sell them, you can have a

company. And the way you make money

and importance in the world

is with companies.

And he always spoke that he wanted

to be one of those important people.

So he'd got the business side

pretty clearly.

He got the business side but he did

tie it in philosophically with,

"This is how you get

good things to people."

It wasn't, "I only want money."

It was Wozniak's next computer,

which propelled Apple

into the stratosphere.

Released in 1977,

the Apple II was the first home

computer with colour graphics.

Over the next three years,

sales grew rapidly

to more than $150 million,

taking Apple from a suburban garage

to the pinnacle of a new industry...

personal computing.

There are some great partnerships,

aren't there, in the world?

One thinks of Lennon and McCartney

and you and Steve Jobs.

Who was Lennon, who was McCartney?

I am so honoured to be considered

in that kind of category,

and yet it's true, it's true.

You know, Steve and I,

we were like a...

Lennon McCartney partnership,

exactly. I couldn't say who was who.

I always thought people always

attributed me with Lennon

because I had really built

and designed the machines.

And then Steve knew how to take

it to the public.

Um, but he had, you know,

his own type of brilliance too.

When Apple went public in 1980,

it was the most over-subscribed

offering of shares

since that of Ford motors in 1956.

Success on this scale changed Apple.

Any company when it becomes public

and becomes bigger becomes

different. Politics seep in.

The company goal from that point on

wasn't to change the world,

but to increase

the value to shareholders.

It certainly did that.

It was worth nearly $2 billion

by the end of 1980.

And Jobs had a quarter of a billion.

But now money men and women

flooded in to Apple,

and Jobs, just 25, wasn't really

taken seriously by them.

Steve was the chairman, but

he wasn't seen as the person

who had the stature

and the maturity to run the company.

Especially as the world around Apple

was changing fast.

Competition in the personal computer

market was intensifying.

In 1981, IBM launched its response

to the Apple II -

The IBM PC.

'A computer expert will show you

the system that's right for you.'

It was the opening shot of a battle

that would rage for 15 years.

Apple went from the leading

personal computer company

to the second-place company

and actually, was in a very

precarious position in that

because the IBM system could be used

in companies other than IBM

and you could see where Apple would

fall further and further back.

Apple needed a seasoned

Chief Executive to pilot the company

through increasingly tough times.

Steve Jobs' search took him

to New York

and to John Sculley, President

of the soft drinks company, Pepsi.

The two men began poles apart.

The world I came from

was hierarchical.

It was big business.

It was very competitive

and the idea of building a company

that was going to change the world

was completely foreign from anything

that I'd ever been exposed to.

How Jobs persuaded Sculley

to take the job

is the stuff of business legend.

Steve had these deep penetrating,

brown eyes

and he just stared right at me,

probably, you know, 15 inches away.

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