Billionaires - Success Stories 3. Steve Jobs (CEO, Apple) HEADLINE: Illegal business CAN pay off. NOW: The Jobber only pulled in $14.6 mil last year, dropping him to number 11 on the list of high-earning tech CEOs. That may not sound bad right now, but when you consider that he made $646 million in 2006, it’s a bit of a decrease. Still, we suspect he’s doing all right. THEN: Jobs’ first job, believe it or not, was working for HP. As a high schooler, the presumably ladykilling teen took a summer gig at the tech giant’s Palo Alto electronics plant. He went on to meet partner-in-crime Stephen Wozniak in college and started a “blue box” business (unrelated to any blue ball business that might have been simultaneously occurring). The boxes let people make free long-distance calls — yes, illegally — and sold like hotcakes for $150 a pop. From that crime-tinged venture, Jobs went to work at Atari, where he helped create the game Breakout. Jobs then jaunted around the world, spending some time in India and at a farm commune in Oregon before meeting back up with Wozniak and deciding to start a computer company. Wozniak sold a fancy calculator and Jobs sold a van to get the capital, then the two opened their first Apple store in Jobs’ parents’ garage. Ah, how things have changed.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 23:55:14 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015