Steve Jobs in Exile

**Geoffrey Cain** (0:00)
That is Steve Jobs at Rockbottom, and that is a Steve Jobs that we've almost never seen before. And he was very close to being completely forgotten and written out of history.

**Shane Parrish** (0:16)
Everybody knows about Steve Jobs' legend, the myth, the man who shows us the future, but very few people see this period where he walks through the wilderness and fails over and over again. And I want to talk about that with you today.

**Geoffrey Cain** (0:31)
Looking forward to it, Shane.

**Shane Parrish** (0:32)
I think the right place to start is leading up to the original, I wouldn't say firing, but the original leaving from Apple and the coup attempt with Scully. And can you walk me through sort of what happened in the year or two leading up to that, that led to that?

**Geoffrey Cain** (0:51)
Steve Jobs was a brilliant young man. He was a visionary. He co-founded Apple with Steve Wozniak in his garage, and in 1984, he released the Macintosh computer. This was game-changing because you have to remember in the 1980s using a computer was really difficult. A lot of them were the size of a room and the whole idea of a personal computer that sits on your desk was entirely new. Steve took the technology of the past and made it available to everybody. He called it the bicycle for the mind. The Macintosh, it was a cultural success. It was out there. People were talking about it. But the reality is that it was not a commercial success. It just wasn't selling.
Because sales were weak, Apple entered a crisis in 1985, a year after the Macintosh was released. Meanwhile, Steve had brought on John Scully, the CEO of Apple. He was going to provide adult supervision. He would be the guy who would turn Apple from a scrappy little startup into an actual corporation. But this did not go as planned for Steve. So because of all these failures with the Macintosh, the inventories were piling up. Apple was just not really doing that well anymore. There were debts piling up. They had to lay off workers for the first time in 1985 When all of this reached ahead, Steve just found himself being pushed out of the company.
He was impossible to manage. He was extremely difficult. He was so convinced of his own brilliance, and he was brilliant, but so convinced of his brilliance that he would storm into meetings. He would yell at people. He would tell them, you're not doing your job right. They would say, Steve, you're not even my boss. One of the things that we often forget about Steve Jobs is that he was not the CEO of Apple. He ran the Macintosh division. His job was simply to build the Macintosh, but he would go to every other office and say, hey, you guys are idiots. What are you doing? They would say, Steve, we don't report to you. Apple got a lot of complaints. They went up to John Sculley, the CEO. John was getting tired of him because he could not manage Steve.
In the end, they made the decision that Steve has to do something else for a while. Steve actually tried to launch a coup d'etat against the CEO, John Sculley. It was early 1985 and he said, here's what I'm going to do. It's a plot.
I'm going to get a speaking gig in China. Then John Sculley, once I tell him, he's going to want to join me too.
So what happened? Steve invited him out, and then Steve bailed, said, I have other plans. Then the plan was that Steve was going to walk into the boardroom when John Sculley was gone, and tell them that John had to be ousted, and he wanted the board to make him the CEO. Steve Jobs tried to become the CEO of Apple, but he failed. He wasn't ready.

**Shane Parrish** (3:46)
He led Sculley to believe that he was on the flight. Somebody told Sculley that he wasn't going, and then he showed up at the meeting the next day, and Sculley was there, and that forced the decision.

**Geoffrey Cain** (3:57)
Yes.
Steve Jobs had a rival named Jean-Louis Gasset, and Gasset was the head of Apple France, very successful in the company, and was being groomed to be the next Steve Jobs. Steve decided to tell Jean-Louis Gasset about his plot. He met him in the parking lot. He said, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to overthrow the CEO of Apple. So Jean-Louis Gasset, that night, is at the CEO's house and pulls him aside and says, I got to tell you about what Steve Jobs is going to do to you. If you go to China, you might not have a job anymore.