Steve Jobs was fired from the company he co-founded with Steve Wozniak i.e. Apple in 1985. This was a huge setback for a person who had been termed as a genius for making Macintosh which was the first computer that reached to the masses and was made for home use. The share market also seemed to be happy with Steve Jobs departure as the stocks of Apple Inc. soared 7% after Jobs left.
Jobs felt completely shattered and it took some time to recollect himself. He decided to sell all his 11% of stake in Apple and founded another startup called NeXT that manufactured a high-end workstation having cubical shape only to colleges and universities. Jobs built a fancy futuristic factory, complete with white walls, $20,000 black leather chairs and an impossibly grand staircase which seemed to float in space. NeXT was expected to sell 10,000 computers per month which was their factory capacity as well. But it was able to sell only 400 units per month which made it a huge flop.
Jobs did not get any financial success through NeXT, but it did made him to retain the image of a player and he also gained some confidence and self-respect. After leaving Apple, because of his love with computer animations, he had also become the majority investor in Pixar. Jobs also provided ideas and board supervision to Pixar as well. Till 1991, both NeXT and Pixar turned out to be financial disasters for Jobs.
Then, the things started turning positive as "Tin Toy", a movie made by the founder of Pixar, John Lasseter, became the first computer-generated film to win Oscar. This generated interest of many big sharks into Pixar among which Disney was also one. In May 1991, a deal was done between Pixar and Disney to create their first 3D Animation Movie called "Toy Story" which was a huge success. Jobs stake in Pixar became 1.2 billion USD. In 1996, Steve Jobs was able to sell NeXT to Apple and till 1997 Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy when the company literally had the beg Steve Jobs to come back.
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