Steve Jobs – Entrepreneurial Biography
Introduction
Steve Jobs was one of the best entrepreneurs, but unfortunately, his is no more. However, his legacy as a great entrepreneur of the 20th century. Steve Jobs was a charismatic entrepreneur, a pioneer of the personal computer era. He was one of the first entrepreneurs to realize that personal computers would be ideal and appeal to a larger audience. In collaboration with Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs founded Apple Inc. in 1976, seeing it grow from a small business into a world leader in the telecommunications industry. As a result of this, Steve Jobs is considered a visionary and a genius. He oversaw the launch of Apple’s revolutionary products in the field of telecommunications such as the iPhone and the iPod. In regard to motivations, Steve Jobs was influenced by the employees who developed a strong desire for hard work, clear vision, and shared vision. Based on this, Jobs can be said to have been driven by his desire to develop great products as opposed to what the customers thought they needed. He was motivated by the desire for success.
Background
Steve Jobs indicated an interest in electronics and gadgetry at an early age. In his high school days, he would often call for assistance from William Hewlett, the co-founder of Hewlett Packard, to ask for parts for a school project. To Steve, this was the beginning of his journey in the electronics industry. With Hewlett impressed by Steve’s dedication, he not only provided him with parts but also offered an internship at Hewlett-Packard. During his internship, he met with Steve Wozniak, a lifelong friend who made tremendous innovation in the telecommunications industry. Steve Jobs took advantage of the internship to befriend Steve Wozniak, who was an engineering student in the attachment. His internship experience at Hewlett-Packard was essential in cultivating his career in the electronic field. It gave him an opportunity to learn more about electronics and gave him a chance to meet with a like-minded friend who, together, made bigger plans to develop personal computers.
In addition, Steve Jobs joined Reed College in Portland but later dropped as he did not want to spend his parents’ money on an education that was meaningless to him. He became fascinated by the Eastern spiritualism and worked in a part-time job designing video games for Atari so that he could finance a trip to India to learn more about Eastern culture and religion. His part-time job also involved dealing with electronics, and this means that he became more involved with gadgets, which made him more familiar with technological devices. Upon returning to the United States, he renewed his friendship with Steve Wozniak, who was trying to build a small computer by this time. In Wozniak’s lens, building a small computer was just a hobby, but to Jobs, he recognized an opportunity, a marketing potential that was capable of making more profits, and this compelled him to convince Wozniak to work together.
At the age of 20, Job and Wozniak set up a shop in the job’s parent’s garage where they began the idea of Apple, getting down to work on the prototype Apple I. The initial capital to set up Apple was a challenge, and this resulted in making a sacrifice, Jobs sold his Volkswagen microbus, and Steve Wozniak disposed of Hewlett-Packard calculator. All these experiences played a crucial role in seeing the development and cultivation of an idea that would later transform their lives and also those of the consumers in the future. Suboptimal opportunity spotting resulted from the idea of developing a personal computer, in that previous computers were not portable and lacked some basic applications. Steve Jobs had worked in developing video games; he also developed the NeXT software, which helped add more qualities to personal computers. He identified a gap, and he had an opportunity to solve the problem as he had the answers.
The first product was Apple I, which can be considered the minimum viable product. It was a groundbreaking project with enough features of a personal computer to satisfy initial customers. Apple I would provide relevant feedback regarding the satisfaction of the customers, and thus, helped in future developments of the Apple computer series. Apple I was invented in 1976, at a time when other computers were large and included mostly desktops. Based on this, the computers available were not convenient, and thus with the development of Apple I, the company had a competitive advantage as they made more sales compared to their competitors in the sale of computers. Personal computers became of great sensation to the people, and this made the product gain a wide market range due to increased demand.
Like any other product, Apple has passed through ups and downs since its formation. The brand has been repeatedly loved, lost, left for dead, rediscovered, and loved again. Based on this, it has formed a perfectly natural cycle of low demand at inception, high demand, and consequently low demand, and this has made the S-curve growth model relevant. The first S-curve for the company’s original product, Apple I and Apple II personal computers, was witnessed in the 1970s and 1980s, which indicate the early days of mainstream demand for personal computers. Each feedback from the product provided a window for innovation, and this was in line with Steve Jobs’s application of the 10X rule, which involved the setting of targets 10X greater than he believed he could achieve. The set targets were motivated by his desire to achieve greater things, a basis for the iPhone, iMac, and MacBook, all devices that were dreamt of years before the actual products surfaced.
Steve Jobs is a perfect example of a modern entrepreneur, a person who has been envied by many due to his strong personality in innovation. He was a great whose strength lay in his ability to bring together ideas and intellect of greatly talented individuals. Since at a young age, he knew what he wanted, and this can be explained by his journey with the love of electronics and gadgets, his relationship with Hewlett, and Steve Wozniak, who he convinced to work together to form the Apple brand. Another entrepreneurial trait is that he was ready to make a sacrifice and invest in a project that he never knew of its outcome, and this makes him a risk-taker. He sold his only car to invest in Apple I, but eventually, the efforts paid off. Based on the strategies implemented by Steve Jobs, most of them can be termed to be effective as most of his ideas have been successful and helped build Apple’s brand from zero to a multinational company leading across the globe in the field of telecommunications.