Jobs' Pixar Persistence
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A story about Steve Jobs' persistence during his "lost in the desert" period after being fired from Apple.
"When Steve Jobs was fired from Apple, he created two companies that were failing the whole time - Next Computing and Pixar. He bought Pixar for $5 million, invested $50 million, and operated at a loss for a decade. They weren't selling anything, and he kept investing more and more of his money until he was almost broke. But he kept going for 10 years.
Then Pixar became this hugely valuable company, going from zero revenue to making billions of dollars and going public over a couple of years. It ended up being a $7 billion exit.
What's interesting is Next Computing also ended up saving Apple. Apple was having problems with their operating system and needed to switch to Intel chips. They went to market trying to acquire companies but couldn't find a great operating system. Next Computing had developed a great operating system, which eventually became macOS. So both companies that were failing for a decade ended up being incredible successes."