The NeXT Step
With Steve Jobs at the helm of the Apple Corporation, the company experienced a period of unprecedented growth during the 70s and early 80s. They were able to manufacture and sell the groundbreaking Apple I with little capital expense and it was a huge success. The Apple II followed soon after and achieved even more widespread popularity making the Apple Corporation one of the major players in the then fledgling personal computer industry. When Apple went public in December 1980 after a successful IPO, Jobs was a multi-millionaire.
Of course this rapid growth meant that it was increasingly necessary to hire an experienced executive to manage the company’s expansion efforts. Jobs found the man person he was looking for in John Sculley who was then working for the Pepsi-Cola Company. Jobs reportedly wooed Sculley away from Pepsi-Cola by asking him if he would rather sell sugared water than change the world. Needless to say, Sculley saw the potential that Apple presented and he soon accepted the position as CEO of the computer company. The two worked together at Apple and spearheaded the continuing growth of the company until the end of 1984 when a slump in the sale of computers across the industry forced Apple to terminate large numbers of employees. The professional relationship between Jobs and Sculley became strained and Jobs found himself with increasingly little clout in the company that he himself founded. These events culminated in a bitter power struggle between the Board of Directors at Apple and Jobs and he soon lost his position as head of the Macintosh division. Steve Jobs officially resigned from Apple on September 13, 1985.
Along with former Apple employees, Bud Tribble, George Crow, Rich Page, Susan Barnes, Susan Kare, and Dan’l Lewin, Jobs formed a new computer company calling it Next Computer, Inc. The relationship between this new company and Apple proceeded in a civil manner however with Jobs giving his former company an assurance that Next Computer, inc would not compete with Apple. He further offered the possibility of licensing some of NeXT’s technology to Apple for their use under the Macintosh brand name. The benevolent relationship between the two company’s began to sour however when Apple sued Next for taking advantage of insider information which they were in possession of being former Apple employees. Steve Jobs was disdainful of the lawsuit, expressing disbelief that a multi-billion dollar computer giant such as Apple with a team of over 4000 employees were threatened by as he put it “six people in blue jeans”. The lawsuit was eventually thrown out before it even went to trial and the ensuing publicity helped make Next gain added visibility in the computer industry.
The first big investor in Next (now rebranded NeXT) was Ross Perot who in 1987 invested $20 million into the company, which amounted to 16% of the company’s entire stock. This made the net worth of NeXT an estimated $125 million and Perot eventually joined the board of directors in 1988.
The companies growth continued at a healthy pace until Apple decided to acquire the company in December of 1996, which brought Steve Jobs back full circle to the company that he originally founded.