A handful of highly influential and globally powerful companies got their start in a humble garage. Apple (Tii:AAPL) is one of them. In April 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak launched the first Apple computer in Jobs’ garage, creating a company that would go on to revolutionize home computing, mobile communications and the music industry.
Like many entrepreneurs, the two saw an opportunity in the world for new thinking. Jobs and Wozniak had a vision for people and computers focused on a personalized experience that would make computers smaller and more affordable and simplify the user interface. Jobs admired design with practicality and sensibility and said in an interview with his biographer Walter Isaacson, “I love it when you can bring really great design and simple capability to something that doesn’t cost much. It was the original vision for Apple. That’s what we tried to do with the first Mac. That’s what we did with the iPod.”
The success of the Apple I attracted venture capital entity Sequoia Capital and led to the incorporation of the Apple company in 1976. Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity that typically comes from investors, investment banks and financial institutions. It is a type of financing given to startup companies and small businesses with long-term growth potential. Sequoia Capital invested $150,000 in Apple in 1977, which provided funding to develop the Apple II.
The Apple II revolutionized the computer industry with the introduction of color graphics. Customers took to the fresh and exciting tools, and sales grew from $7.8 million in 1978 to $117 million in 1980. The computer also allowed its users the ability to create and sell their own programs. One of these user-generated programs was VisiCalc, a spreadsheet app that was the first kind of cell-based program prior to Excel and the beginning of software that had real business applications. The app transformed the way that computers were seen, from novel sources of entertainment to tools that could be used for business.
Apple's growth slowed after its peak in 1990, and by 1996, people were concerned about the company's future. Jobs, who had left in 1985, returned and changed the company's trajectory with some groundbreaking ideas for new products. He grew an alliance with long-time rival Microsoft to create a Mac version of Microsoft’s popular office software. Jobs reworked Apple computers, and the iBook was introduced as Apple’s answer to laptops. This was followed by the release of the iPod, which became a global success and put nearly all the music in the world in the palm of your hand.
Nothing could compare to the impact of Apple’s iPhone in 2007. Individual investors were smitten with the touch-screen cellular phone, which utilized Apple's characteristic user-focused, user-friendly operating system. The iPhone has simplified and made universal the ways in which people connect, interact and share information. When Apple eliminated “computer” from its name shortly after the iPhone’s launch, it represented its reach. It went from being a computer company to a lifestyle brand and way of living and interacting with the world.
Jobs envisioned a family of products that utilized a common language and shared simple, sleek, minimalist design. By the time of his death in 2011, he had achieved his goal. On Aug. 2, 2018, Apple made history by becoming the world's first publicly traded company to achieve a market capitalization (the total dollar market value of a company's outstanding shares of stock) of $1 trillion.
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