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Steve Jobs: The tech visionary who created such a lasting legacy

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Success and struggle are just like two sides of the same coin. A man who used to return Coke bottles to earn 5¢  to buy food, and  walk  7 miles every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple created a legacy which is flourishing even after his death.

Steve Jobs the man behind MAC, iPad, iPOD and iPhone was abandoned by his biological parent, fired from his own company and suffered from cancer. Despite all these ups and downs he never lost focus and love for technology. Coming generations would hardly believe that it was one man who revolutionized music, smartphone and computer industry.

Steve always loved technology and even in college days he preferred practical knowledge over bookish knowledge. Jobs’ interest in electronics began to smoke up as he extended a helping hand to his father’s garage and began to befriend many engineers living in his neighborhood.

Love what you do

In his high school Steve Jobs approached Hewlett Packard and asked for some parts for his school project. The boy’s boldness impressed him and he not only agreed to provide the parts but also offered him an internship at his office. This was indeed a great opportunity for Jobs to formally step into the techno world. While interning for Hewlett Packard he met Steve Wozniak who worked as an engineer there. Wozniak was very passionate about technology like Jobs and they both became friends to change the face of technology in the coming future.

Jobs then got entangled with his higher studies and finally admitted himself in Reed College. But it seemed he could not find his place there and therefore dropped out from the college after first semester. His inclination towards spirituality tempted him to visit India, yet the love for electronics never faded away.

Beginning the journey with Applesteve jobs yourtechstory

After he returned from India, Steve Jobs contacted Wozniak who then was busy in building a small computer. The idea caught up Jobs’ far sighted eyes and he proposed to take this computer into the business world with him. After convincing Wozniak they arranged to set up a shop at his father’s garage and named their business ‘Apple’. We therefore see how this topmost company sprouted from a garage. But as is the way of life, nothing goes smooth and easy and the task to collect seed money to start the business stood like a gigantic monster in front of them. Jobs sold his micro bus and Wozniak his calculator to make an investment of $1350. And this is how they introduced Apple I in 1975.

Although the computer could only get attention of hobbyists yet the sales collected decent amount of cash which gave them a way to redesign the computer into a better model. After 2 years, Apple II was launched in the market with coloured graphics and keyboard. The computer hit the market making huge success and made $3 million in its first year while the sales went up to $200 million in the next year. The success of Apple II marked a benchmark in the career of Steve Jobs.

Facing a downfall

Undoubtedly Apple II was a great success for Jobs but he failed to retain it for long. However, he did not put a pause to his efforts in introducing new designs and techniques to his computers but his efforts failed every time. The sales started decreasing with Apple III and LISA as new companies like IBM began to take over the market. But he never backed out and in 1984 Jobs brought another design in the market and named it as Apple Macintosh which came with a new user-friendly hardware, a mouse. But even this enhancement could not save him.

Jobs’ troubles didn’t seem to end here as the clash with his company’s board of directors in 1983 resulted in his losing of control over Apple in 1985. And eventually he had no other option than to sell his shares and resign. The irony of life could be exemplified best with this situation as Jobs was kicked out of the very company he founded.

NeXT

Stagnation was never meant for Steve Jobs and thus after resigning from Apple he launched another computer company named NeXT. But his aim to bring a revolution in the technical field did not come out as expected since the computers were highly expensive. Meanwhile, he also bought Pixar Animation Studios in 1986 which became the most important stepping stone in his career. With Pixar he made an animation film ‘Toy Story’ which was a smash hit. The great success of ‘Toy Story’ raised Pixar’s 80% shares to $1 billion.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish

Just after Pixar was made public, Apple bought NeXT for $400 million and gave Jobs a position as an advisor to the company’s CEO. But the company faced a failure in keeping up its old position and dealt with a quarterly loss of $708 million. As a result of this, the then CEO of Apple resigned from his position and Steve Jobs got back hold of the company by seating himself as the new CEO of Apple. He raised the company value by signing deal with Microsoft and also brought in new technology fronts in the computers. In no time the company’s sales revived and reached to $5.9 billion. Jobs then expanded the company with new products like iPod, iPhone and iPad. However, struggling with ill health Jobs resigned from his position as CEO in 2011.

Steve Jobs’ journey could be summed up in his own words uttered at Stanford University in 2005. His success could be traced by “connecting the dots” of the events that took place. Every turn of his life proved to be of immense importance at some point later. From taking the risk to drop out from the college to resigning from his own company, his decisions led him to better prospects. And his mantra of life, “keep looking, don’t settle” unless you are truly satisfied with what you are doing is worth adopting. It was his relentless efforts and uncompromising attitude that made him the pioneer of techno world. The legacy still continues with latest iPhone 7 and AirPods.

Jobs historic Standford address about life, love and loss

“If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”

Infographic Credit: Funders and Founders
Info graphic Credit: Funders and Founders

The journey of this man from the dusty streets to a $100 million IPO

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It is a universally acknowledged fact that the combination of talent and persistent efforts always pay off well. Hurdles and hardships become easy to handle when you have firm determination and a positive attitude towards your goal and life. Most of the successful people talk about hopefulness and hard work as mantras to success. Even a small idea can change the face of your entire life if you are determined to take it further. Same is what the co-founder and CTO of HubSpot, Dharmesh Shah speaks of when he talks about his journey towards success.

No idea is big or small

Dharmesh Shah had a deep interest in technology and at the same time he wanted start his own business. He first established a company named Pyramid Digital Solutions at the age of 23 with his 17 year old brother. It is no less than a surprise to know that he bootstrapped the company in less than $10,000. As stated by Shah himself, he faced a number of hurdles while hiring employees for the first time and also being a beginner there had been issues in cash flow as well but all of this couldn’t pull him back even for a moment. This is how his first company could be seen as a smack on the faces of all those who do not believe in small or medium scale business. With such less amount invested in the company, Dharmesh Shah took it to various levels of growth and got the Inc. 500 award thrice for it. He devotedly worked for the company for about 11 years and in 2005 sold it to SunGuard Business Systems for millions.

HubSpot

The hunger for knowledge and desire to expand his business drove him to acquire an MS degree from MIT in the management of technology. His education itself states how he had been into both technology and management at the same time. Although after selling Pyramid Digital Systems, Dharmesh Shah promised his wife to be aloof from setting up a start-up and find his

Image Credit: Wikipedia
Image Credit: Wikipedia

contentment and settlement in investing in other companies yet his desire and thirst for more led him into the business market again. And in 2006, he founded the most successful company of his career, HubSpot along with his college friend Brian Halligan. Their intentions to take the company to its pedestal of success could be observed right from the beginning as the two founders started a blog for the company even before the product was launched. This inbound marketing technique boosted the popularity of the product when it actually came in the market. These strategies adopted and well pursued by Shah and Halligan marked the early growth of the company. Dharmesh Shah has set up a great example for all the potential entrepreneurs for how to use their knowledge and learn from the experiences in order to build a successful company.

Work Ethics and Transparency

The basic agenda for any business to be a success according to Dharmesh Shah is transparency. Unlike other businessmen who like to conceal company’s important information and strategies, Dharmesh Shah believes that to maintain a healthy and pleasant atmosphere, each and every employee must know everything about the company. Shah always promotes a friendly work culture within the company and treats his employees as no less important. This transparency builds up trust of the employees for the owner. Shah has given importance to company culture along with other business priorities. This is the reason why he had come across minimum number of controversies as compared to other successful businesses.

Coding is still his first love

Even after coming in the list of world’s top entrepreneurs, Dharmesh Shah has clung himself to his roots. His passion for coding is still the same as before and writing code every day is just like another habit for him. Coding rejuvenates his mind and keeps him “in touch with reality” as he states.

Dharmesh Shah has deep interest in blogging and social media and has also founded an online community for blogging, OnStartups.com. The journey of Dharmesh Shah based on his strict principles and morals make him an outstanding entrepreneur and an inspiring personality.

From spending nights on the stairs of Masjid to CEO of $60 million company

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Success does not always need to get along with grey hair; some people change the stereotypes. Among few such people, Ritesh Agarwal possesses a remarkable position. No doubt he has shown wonders in the world of entrepreneurship and made all the competitors to gape their mouth wide open. As it is said that everyone sees dreams but only few can turn them into reality; Ritesh Agarwal’s dedication and immense talent made his dream come true. The path chosen by him was not better than a jigsaw but his incessant efforts made it possible to overcome all odds and build a successful empire.

Imprints of talent right from childhood

Agarwal was drawn towards coding and computers since he was 8 years old. Pursuing his desire to become a self-made man, he undertook a project at the age of 13, when kids hardly are aware about career and jobs. The project gave him a life time experience and set a milestone in his career. During the project he traveled a lot and analyzed how the hotel system works. You can that see his relation with hotels had been established at that age only.

However, his love for computers enchanted him towards technical line and at the age of 16, he was selected in the Asian Science Camp at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai. His resolution to follow science led him to Kota for the preparation of one of the most reputed technical entrances in India. Meanwhile at Kota he authored the book ‘The Encyclopaedia of Indian Engineering Colleges’. But he could not locate his real aim there as well. Exploring the motive of his life he moved to Delhi in 2011 where sprouted his first business idea.

Image Credit- oyorooms.com

A journey full of risks and struggle

Passion to start off something on his own had always been there in him. Ritesh’s decision to drop out his formal education and step into the business world proved to be a life changing one. At the age of 17 he laid the foundation of a company named Worth Growth Partners and became India’s youngest CEO. However, the company couldn’t take him to a higher ladder of success and the very year he was hard struck by financial crisis. He had no money to pay the rent and henceforth spent several nights on the stairs of Masjid in Delhi.

But all these hurdles could not budge Ritesh from his aim and the next year he founded another company, Oravel. This business could be called as an Indian version of the site Airbnb, dealing with bed and breakfast hotels. The idea grew fast within a short span and he received a funding of Rs.30 Lakhs from VentureNursery. The efficiency of his efforts and skills made him the only Indian to get the Thiel Fellowship where he was granted an amount of $100,000.  Ritesh had a thing for learning from always and this led him to acquire more knowledge about the entrepreneurial world from all the possible sources.

Renaming the company to OYO

Ritesh’s itch of seeking better responses from a larger section of society took him to the idea of OYO stays. He could see that Oravel targeted limited number of customers who could spare a large amount from their pickets. Therefore, he himself visited and stayed at several budget hotels to have a closer understanding of the needs of customers. After this he used most of the grant from Thiel to build the OYO chain to provide the best stay in the branded budget hotels.

The journey wasn’t a smooth one there as well as he started the journey with a single hotel in Gurgaon where he handled the duties of CEO, housekeeping and sales single-handedly. However the company soon geared up and received a funding of  $650,000 from Lightspeed Venture Partners and DSG consumer Partners. OYO rooms and Ritesh Agarwal didn’t turn back then and progressed with more investors getting along with them. In just 10 months it received $6 million from Sequoia Capital and LSVP at a pre-money valuation of $60 million.

When Controversies surrounded Ritesh Agarwal

The success story of Ritesh attracted a number of haters and criticizers who could not swallow the fact that a man as young as 22 could build such a huge business. People questioned his skills of coding and called him a liar and fake. He was also accused of blurring the funding records of company. His former relations with NCrypted Technologies also came in the limelight when the latter accused Ritesh of stealing their idea. However there were no real evidences found against Ritesh.

People are always ready to grab the opportunity to pull you back but the story of Ritesh Agarwal, who fought against all odds and established himself as a successful person will always inspire youngsters.

Repeated failures couldn’t stop this entrepreneur from becoming a billionaire

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Robert Parsons popularly known as Bob Parsons’ life had been similar to that of a roller-coaster ride. He was born in a financially unstable family. The struggle of life began right there. Looking at his disinterest in studies he was sent to a traditional Catholic school in Baltimore where nuns treated students with hard hands. However, it proved not much beneficial for his academic career. Once failed in fifth standard, Parsons couldn’t develop love for books. His entire school life had been huddled with poor grades. Despite all this one thing which Bob always knew was how to make money. He always managed to have cash in pocket by doing odd jobs like delivering papers, mowing lawns or shoveling snow.

Beginning of a new journey

After completing his intermediate somehow, Parsons got himself admitted in the Marine Corps in Vietnam. It was not an easy go life there either. The war and bloodshed had a deep impact on his mind. Indeed like any other person he was nervous and thrilled but then he made a resolution to deal with whatever comes. This became a major turning point in his life. His determination developed in the days of war at Vietnam filled in him the spirit to face each and every challenge that might try to block his way.

After getting back to home, he enrolled himself at the University of Baltimore to complete his graduation in accounting, after which he secured a job as an accountant in a company in Redwood City. One day, while visiting to company’s office he threw a glance upon a book of BASIC programming language. He was so lured by the thought of programming that he went ahead and bought the book. And in no time his interest for computers became a full time hobby.

Image Credit: Wikimedia

Take chances in life

Now this was the time when he turned his hobby into a business idea. In the year 1984, Bob Parsons invested an amount of $15,000 he had saved from his previous jobs at Vietnam and Redwood City to lay the foundation of Parsons Technology. It basically dealt with software based on accounting. No success story is worth if the journey is not posed with challenges and hurdles, Parsons tasted a heavy failure in 1985 with a loss of about $25,000. This did give his company a punching blow but couldn’t stop him from making his way through it. He tried to track the place where his efforts lacked in. It was his marketing strategy that wasn’t paying him well and then his next move set a benchmark in his life.

Parsons’ motive was not just to make money; rather, he wanted his idea and services to be in knowledge of as many people as possible. And this led him to spend an amount of $5000 to fetch a front-page advertisement on a regional computer publication cover. This risk turned out to be one that of profit as the sales got a new boost. Now he knew where exactly to strike and he approached bigger publications to advertise his company. Finally the retail price of Parsons Technology grew by 90% making $100 million annual revenue. In 1994, Bob Parsons sold the company to Intuit for $64 million.

Becoming big daddy of  web world

After selling his company, Parsons was left with huge amount of money but had dearth of ideas. However, in 1997 he founded another company Jomax Technologies which provided services to build websites for other people. Parsons wanted to make the company name a bit catchy before registering it officially and therefore in 2000 he renamed it to GoDaddy. For a period of 4 years, incessant failures made Parsons go dejected as he lost all his money with just $6 million dollars left in hand. He had decided to take his steps back and was almost about to quit when he witnessed a hotel’s valet happy and satisfied unlike him. This motivated him to take an about-turn and make a firm resolution to stand and face all obstacles and keep trying until he tastes the success. His dedication and relentless efforts turned out to be successful and the firm started making profits.

In the year 2011, Parsons stepped down from the post of CEO to executive chairman and sold a major portion of the domain name registrar and Web-hosting firm GoDaddy to private firms KKR, Silver Lake Partners and TCV acquiring $2.3 billion. Holding about $930 million in cash, Parsons later diversified his business portfolio by making investments. He todays owns shopping malls, vehicle dealerships, a lending firm and Scottsdale National Golf Club.

Takeaway from Bob Parson’s story is to be passionate about something, be ready to fail, be ready to adapt, try, try and keep doing the good work.

Kevin Systrom: The man behind $1 billion idea

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Social media has expanded its domain at a very rapid pace in last 5 years. The craze of social networking sites and apps for instant messaging, photos and videos sharing has brought about a revolution in the social life of people. In the list of all such sites and apps, the inception of Instagram has set a milestone. Instagram has made a record breaking impression in the lives of millions of users in a very short span. Its unique features like filters, adding special effects before uploads and hashtags have made it one of the most popular apps on net.

Talking about the success of this app, the heavy toil and dedication of the person behind bringing out such a great idea cannot be overlooked. The journey of Kevin Systrom in building up this app worth $1 billion had been short but endowed with several twists and turns. The interest for computer programming in Systrom had developed right from the days when he attended Middlesex School in Concord and it intensified as he grew up. He graduated from Stanford University in 2006 acquiring a bachelor’s degree in management science and engineering, after which he joined Google as an associate product marketing manager. Dedicating his service to Google for two years, Systrom turned to join a travel recommendation startup named Nextstop.

Kevin Systrom
Image Source: Wikipedia

Dedication to learn
Kevin Systrom was not completely satisfied with his job at Nextstop, as he had a bigger plan in his mind. But he knew it was difficult to proceed further without a training and in-depth knowledge of computer science, thus he gave up his comfort to learn coding. He accomplished the assigned tasks of Nextstop in the office hours while learned to code at nights and on weekends. Indeed it was not easy to manage it altogether yet his inexorable efforts showed ardent result and he came out with an HTML5 prototype which he named as Burbn. The app dealt with the on-going trend of photo sharing and checking-in. Now the only thing dwelling in his mind was to take his idea further and it didn’t take much time as well. It was in March 2010 when Systrom met Baseline Ventures and Andreesen Horowitz at a party and approached them with his prototype. The party came out to be a remarkable event in his life as the two venture capitalists liked his idea and agreed to invest in it. He then quit his job to dedicate all his time and skills to Burbn and within just two weeks he raised $500,000 as seed funding from the two venture capital firms.

Steps towards success with Mike Krieger
The reassessing of Burbn began after Mike Krieger, an acquaintance from Stanford University joined in with Systrom. Now it was the time to give the app, a unique feature so as to make the experience of users different from the other popular apps. The main focus of Systrom right from the beginning was on mobile photos. The duo wanted to make the app very handy, free from the complications of too many features at a time and therefore they took few steps back and stuck to photo sharing. And then they decided to rename the app from Burbn to Instagram. Their incessant efforts and hard work were all directed to make it better by improving the photo-sharing experience of users, fixing the bugs and by passing it through several other tests.

And finally the big day came, eight weeks later Instagram was launched on 6th October, 2010. No wonder, the minds of two gems made this app with such intent care that there were hardly any complaints or issues after the launch. And by the end of the first week it had been downloaded over 100,000 times and reached to one million users by the mid of December.

Acquisition by Facebook
In not more than 4 months after its launch, Instagram with its remarkable features began attracting investors and as a result of which the company value reached around $25 million in February 2011. Seeing its increasing popularity, Jack Dorsey the executive chairman of Twitter approached Kevin Systrom offering an amount of $500 million to acquire the company. But till then Systrom had no intention of giving his dream in other hands and thus he declined the offer.

Insagram made constant progress adding up more polished features and in April 2012 it was released with a new version compatible to the android phones. With this step the app established new records as it was downloaded by more than a million of android users in less than 24 hours. Acknowledging the company’s progress even Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder could not resist himself and showed his desire to purchase Instagram. He was aware that Systrom would never agree to leave his hands completely off from the app so, he offered a tempting amount of $1 billion in cash and stock emphasizing on the provision that the company would be free to be independently managed and to this Systrom could not deny.

Hit by criticism
No successful story could be completed without the involvement of scandals and criticism. In December 2012, there were some changes made in its terms and services policy which included the clause of owner’s rights to sell users’ photos to third party without any notification and compensation. As a result of this Instagram was hard hit by criticism and there was a notable drop recorded in the number of users. But the mistake was soon rectified with an apology by Kevin Systrom himself.

Story of Vivek Wadhwa- a Silicon valley tech entrepreneur turned academician

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‘Hard work bears sweet fruits’; this old adage has successfully proved its veracity in every age. And sweetness to these fruits is enhanced when talent and skills are blended to it. While reaching to the pedestal of success, failures are generally encountered but one must not sway away from the aim. It is the firm determination and incessant efforts that can aid you in achieving what you wish for.

The story of Vivek Wadhwa, a Delhi born technology entrepreneur from America voices out the same dedication and hard work which helped him to grab his goal. Wadhwa completed his graduation from University of Canberra in 1974 with a B.A. degree in Computer Studies. After graduating, he upheld his career in programming computers, adding a mere number in the prodigious swarm of programmers to make his ends meet. But as time passed, it became cumbersome to carry on with the same pace. Expanding family demanded more income and at the same time he too realized the need to progress. Thus, his needs and talent invoked in him the passion to come out of his shell and break new ground.

Image Credit: Wikemedia

Matter of choice

The decision to move into a new life wasn’t a trivial one. He knew his one step forward would change his entire world for good and the uncertainty of the outcome was hanging like a sword over his neck. But a ordinary life was not what Wadhwa desired. It is said that stagnation leads to rotting and this is what kept him moving. At the time when he was newly married and his wife was expecting, he decided to enroll for a MBA degree from New York University. It was biggest bet of his life as he didn’t have enough savings which meant tough times ahead.

His thirst for knowledge knew no boundaries and he was aware that doing an MBA would enrich his brain with the understanding of business world which he did not know of in much depth. With the hope for a bright future he invested all his savings and time to earn the degree. Vivek had to make many compromises to pursue MBA as he had to scale down his living standards and also had to shift to a compact one-bedroom flat with his wife.

Education never deceives you

Though he considers doing MBA as best investments as it helped him grow professionally and become an entrepreneur, yet he is no more an advocate of hiring MBA’s in startups. Vivek sees a clear gap between the skills that a business school teaches and what a startup requires.

After MBA Vivek secured a decent job in the IT department of CS First Boston, where he rose from the position of a programmer to become a project leader and then to the post of vice president of the company. His skills and hard work were finally illuminating his way to success.

Although he was doing a praiseworthy job at CS First Boston he couldn’t achieve complete satisfaction from his work and then he decided to lay his first step in the entrepreneurial world by spinning of the startup, Seer Technologies. He used his skills to persuade IBM to invest $20 million in his company and this gave the initial bolt to his company. Under his leadership Seer Technology grew to $118 million publicly traded company.He later founded Relativity Technologies in North Carolina in 1997 which was considered as one of the best companies to work in the world.

Later, he left the company and shifted his focus to academic research. Vivek Wadhwa is now a fellow with the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, a professor at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University, and Vice President of Innovation and Research at Singularity University. He writes for different blogs like Techcrunch and Businessweek.com. Vivek Wadhwa has set an example for everyone that success could be achieved if you are ready to dedicate your time and energy to your aim without dwindling for a moment.