Steve Jobs Net Worth

Steve Jobs Net worth - $10.2 Billion

Steve Jobs net worth: Steve Jobs was an American inventor and business magnate who had a net worth of $10.2 billion at the time of his death. Steve Jobs was known for being the co-founder and chief executive officer of Apple Computers. Jobs previously served as the chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios.

Early Life: Steven Paul Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California. His biological parents were Abdulfattah Jandali and Joanne Schieble. He was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs. His adoptive father, Paul Reinhold Jobs was a Coast Guard Mechanic who married Clara Hagopian in 1946 after he left the Coast Guard. Clara grew up in San Francisco as the daughter of Armenian immigrants. After the Coast Guard, Paul was a "repo man," who repaired cars. Clara had an ectopic pregnancy, which led the couple to consider adoption. Paul and Clara adopted Steve's sister Patricia in 1957. In 1959, the family moved to Mountain View, California. Paul built a workbench in the garage to pass his love of mechanics along to his son. By the time he was 10, Jobs was very into engineering and befriended many of the engineers who lived in his neighbourhood.

Jobs had problems functioning in a traditional classroom. He resisted authority figures, misbehaved frequently, and was suspended a number of times. He had difficulty making friends with children his own age. Jobs skipped the fifth grade and transferred to the sixth grade at Crittenden Middle School in Mountain View where he became a "socially awkward loner." Jobs "was often bullied" at Crittenden Middle, and in the middle of seventh grade, he gave his parents an ultimatum: they had to either take him out of Crittenden or he would drop out of school.

Though the Jobs family was not well off, they used all their savings in 1967 to buy a new home, allowing Jobs to change schools. The new house, a three-bedroom home on Crist Drive in Los Altos, California, was in the better Cupertino School District and was in an environment that was even more heavily populated with engineering families than the Mountain View area was.

When he was 13 in 1968, Jobs was given a summer job by Bill Hewlett of Hewlett-Packard after Jobs cold-called him to ask for parts for an electronics project.

Jobs attended Homestead High School. His first year was in 1968 where he met Bill Fernandez. Fernandez later introduced Jobs to Steve Wozniak. Neither Jobs nor Fernandez came from engineering households and thus decided to enroll in John McCollum's class "Electronics 1." McCollum and the rebellious Jobs (who had grown his hair long and become involved in the growing counterculture) would eventually clash and Jobs began to lose interest in the class. During his last two years at Homestead High, Jobs developed two different interests: electronics and literature. These dual interests were particularly reflected during Jobs's senior year as his best friends were Wozniak and his first girlfriend, the artistic Homestead junior Chrisann Brennan.

In 1971 after Wozniak began attending the University of California, Berkeley, Jobs would visit him there a few times a week. This experience led him to study in nearby Stanford University's student union. By his senior year in late 1971, he was taking freshman English class at Stanford. Around that time, Wozniak designed a low-cost digital "blue box" to generate the necessary tones to manipulate the telephone network, allowing free long-distance calls. Jobs decided then to sell them and split the profit with Wozniak. The sales of the illegal blue boxes went well and planted the seed in Jobs's mind that electronics could be both fun and profitable.

In September 1972, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. It was the only school he applied to, despite its high cost. Jobs dropped out of Reed after one semester, without telling his parents. He didn't want to spend his parents' money on an education that seemed meaningless to him. He continued to attend by auditing his classes, which included a course on calligraphy that was taught by Robert Palladino. In a 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University, Jobs stated that during this period, he slept on the floor in friends' dorm rooms, returned Coke bottles for food money, and got weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple. In that same speech, Jobs said: "If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts."

Career: Jobs returned to his parents' house in Los Altos in February 1974 and started looking for a job. He was hired by Atari, Inc. as a technician in their Los Gatos, California office. Atari's cofounder Nolan Bushnell later described him as "difficult but valuable", pointing out that "he was very often the smartest guy in the room, and he would let people know that."

By March 1976, Wozniak completed the basic design of the Apple I computer and showed it to Jobs, who suggested that they sell it. It was Jobs who suggested the name after returning from a fruit farm where he had subsisted on nothing but apples for more than 10 days straight. In his eyes, the name "Apple" was "fun, spirited and not intimidating," perfect for a piece of unfamiliar technology. It was also Jobs who suggested that Wozniak manufacture his Apple 1 as a commercial product that other computer enthusiasts could purchase–Wozniak was planning to just give everything away for free. On April 1, 1976, Jobs, Wozniak, and administrative overseer Ronald Wayne founded Apple Computer Company (now called Apple Inc.) in Jobs's parents' home on April 1, 1976. The operation originally started in Jobs's bedroom and later moved to the garage. Wayne stayed only a short time, leaving Jobs and Wozniak as the active primary cofounders of the company. Later that year, computer retailer Paul Terrell purchased 50 fully assembled units of the Apple I from them for $500 each. Eventually about 200 Apple I computers were produced in total. The Apple 1 was an instant smash hit that opened the door for the Apple II which was an even bigger success. In 1976, Apple's revenues were $175,000. In 1977 revenues grew to $2.7 million. Apple went public in 1980 after doing $117 million in sales. The public offering made over 300 employees at Apple instant millionaires.

On January 22, 1984, Apple aired a Super Bowl television commercial titled "1984," which ended with the words: "On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984." On January 24, 1984, an emotional Jobs introduced the Macintosh to a wildly enthusiastic audience at Apple's annual shareholders' meeting. The Macintosh was widely acclaimed by the media with strong initial sales supporting it. However, the computer's slow processing speed and limited range of available software led to a rapid sales decline in the second half of 1984.

In 1985, Jobs was forced out of Apple, when sales of his much-ballyhooed Macintosh computer failed to live up to the hype. Jobs spent the next several years developing the computer company, NeXT (which Apple would eventually need to buy for its operating system) and Pixar Animation Studio. NeXT was acquired by Apple in 1997 for $427 million, which brought Jobs back to Apple. We all know what happened next. Apple was on the brink of complete failure when Jobs introduced the iMac and began the resurgence that would make him a billionaire many times over and give the world the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad, AppleWatch, AppleTV, etc.

Jobs also made a pretty penny from Pixar, too. He bought the fledgling animation studio from George Lucas in 1986 and became its CEO and its biggest shareholder. The studio gained acclaim for its 1995 hit, Toy Story. Disney bought Pixar in an all-stock, $7.4 billion transaction in 2006.

Resignation from Apple and Death: On August 24th, 2011 Jobs resigned from Apple unexpectedly, with most people believing it was for health reasons. Unfortunately, Steve Jobs died of pancreatic cancer on October 5, 2011. He was replaced by long-time Apple employee and former Apple COO, Tim Cook.

Personal Life: Jobs married Laurene Powell in 1991. Powell is a businesswoman who founded the Emerson Collective, advocating for a number of causes. Jobs had four children including writer Lisa Brennan-Jobs whose mother was painter and author (and Jobs' high school girlfriend) Chrisann Brennan. Steve's sister Mona Simpson is an award-winning novelist. In 2015 Jobs was portrayed by Michael Fassbender in the biopic Steve Jobs. He was also played by Ashton Kutcher in the film Jobs in 2013.

Salary Highlights: Jobs was worth over $1 million in 1978 when he was just 23 years old. His net worth grew to over $250 million by the time he was 25, according to estimates. Jobs amassed his fortune through the creation of Apple Inc and Pixar. At the time of his death, he owned 5.5 million shares of Apple and 138 million shares of Disney stock.