steve jobs was worth an estimated 10.2 billion at the time of his tragic death in late 2011
making him one of the wealthiest people in the world at the time this will not come as a huge
surprise to most of you because after all he was the founder and ceo of apple computers which went
on to be the most valuable company in history with a market capitalization today of over 2.2
trillion dollars the thing is though is that apple had very little to do with the fortune
amassed by this legendary businessman apple was famously founded by steve jobs steve wozniak and
ronald wayne in a california garage in 1976. the business found its initial seed capital from job
selling his volkswagen bus in wozniak selling his high-end pocket calculator these funds were then
used to develop the apple one and subsequent apple ii desktop computers which introduced the world to
a new way of interacting with these previously cumbersome machines during this period ronald
wayne the often forgotten third founder of apple computers would sell his share to the company for
eight hundred dollars those same shares today even after dilution would be worth more than a half
a trillion dollars but c'est la vie welcome to how money works if you enjoyed this video please
consider liking and subscribing fast forward to the 1980s and the company had found tremendous
success selling personal computers that truly gave individuals the power to work with information
in a way that had been previously reserved exclusively for government and mega corporations
but all was not well within the halls of the now multi-billion dollar apple empire an ongoing
power struggle between steve jobs and the board of directors saw the founder ousted from his creative
position in the company by the very same man that jobs made ceo john scully you see by the mid-1980s
apple's initial success was waning and job saw the solution to be the introduction of a massively
capable personal computer that was simply too expensive for the average consumers almost
as if apple's only product today was the forty thousand dollar mac pro the more business minded
skully along with the majority of the board saw the future in the company differently and wanted
to move in a more commercially viable direction selling computers that were less remarkable but
did pay the bills this meant cutting off funding for jobs passion projects and removing him
from the day-to-day operations of the company entirely something that jobs did not take well
given that he was the founder he obviously still had a huge shareholding in the company at the time
but in protest to his removal he sold all but one of his shares in apple computers
we will get to why he kept that last share shortly but now jobs was out on his own and looking for a
new project to make his essential impression on fortunately he found this with a little
offshoot of lucasfilm the computer graphics team under lucasfilm had separated out into their own
independent company with the ambition of one day being able to make a movie entirely on a
computer which was a radical concept at the time but something that intrigued the kashup jobs
who was fired partially for dedicating too much time to overly ambitious projects like this one
the problem with this idea is that it simply wasn't feasible with the technology at the time
this meant that significant investment was required to keep the company afloat until such a
time where computer technology caught up enough to make full digital animation possible this waiting
game led to jobs slowly investing over 50 million dollars into the company while they developed
hardware to make this dream a reality their most commercially viable product was the pixar image
computer which was a cutting edge and hugely expensive machine that was actually used more
for medical image processing rather than making anything creative or entertaining unfortunately
given that these machines cost the equivalent of half a million dollars at the time only about
300 were ever sold which was enough to keep the business functioning but additional money was
needed to keep up intense research and development this money was happily supplied by jobs partially
because he saw it as a good investment and partially as a personal vendetta against apple
that lacked the same type of visionary long-term outlook on technology how much of this investment
is out of spite is really up to you to decide but remember how jobs kept one single apple
share well that was so he could attend the annual shareholder meetings and cause a fuss so it's
fair to say that this wasn't all savvy investing despite any personal motives though it still did
prove to be a great decision by the mid-90s jobs controlled a majority of pixar right as computers
caught up enough to produce the company's very first film the massively successful toy story the
company went on to produce a series of massively successful movies while working closely alongside
walt disney pictures which would eventually offer to buy up the company for 7.4 billion in 2006.
this purchase was not paid in cash however but rather disney stock and this transaction made jobs
the largest shareholder in disney at the time but also bestowed upon him the title of billionaire
now anybody who has been paying any kind of attention to the movie industry in the
past few decades will know that disney has been wildly successful buying up a host of franchises
including star wars which was technically the original birthplace of pixar i would say it's
the circle of life but they own that too now jobs of course was famously rehired by apple as ceo
when the company was mere weeks away from going completely bankrupt only to guide the company once
again to amazing new heights with the introduction of products ipod ipad and of course the iphone he
was rewarded for his success with share bonuses that were worth billions in their own right
but upon his death in 2011 his disney shares still massively out valued his apple shares either way
it could have been worse he could have sold a 33 stake in apple for 800 bucks but maybe that money
wouldn't have made him happier anyway after all money doesn't buy happiness right or maybe it does
go watch our video on the relationship between income and happiness for the definitive answer
to this age-old question and while you're at it be sure to subscribe to keep learning how money works