Failogue: Steve Jobs Was Fired From Apple

‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Steve Jobs says

Steve Jobs is a household name, known to everyone as the co-founder and CEO of Apple, Inc. until his death in 2011.

But in 1985, Steve Jobs was fired from Apple and regarded as a public failure. He considered running away from Silicon Valley, ashamed by the fact that he had been outed from his own company. Instead, he moved forward, starting two companies, NeXT and Pixar.

Pixar grew into the greatest animation studio in the world and eventually sold to Disney for $7.6B. NeXT was purchased by Apple for $427 and bringing Steve Jobs back to the company he co-founded.

“I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down — that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.”

“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”

” It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.”

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