Return to the Little Kingdom by Michael Moritz

Author:Michael Moritz [Moritz, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.
Published: 2011-08-30T08:32:56+00:00

Bolstered by his chat with Valentine, Markkula offered to give Jobs and Wozniak advice about how to organize Apple. They got together in the evenings and over weekends and Markkula gradually became more enchanted with the business. He talked matters over with his wife, promised that he would give Apple only four years of his life, and eventually told Jobs that to help pay for the development and introduction of the Apple II, he would underwrite a $250,000 bank loan: an amount less than one tenth of his net worth. Markkula called McKenna, said he was about to invest in Apple, and asked him to tolerate Jobs and Wozniak. Jobs, Wozniak, and Holt all trooped to Markkula’s house and in a cabana alongside the swimming pool spent several evenings mulling over Apple’s future shape and prospects. In return for investing in Apple, Markkula wanted to own a third of the business, though distributing the shares caused some ill-feeling when Wozniak questioned whether any company would be prepared to pay Jobs what he himself was earning at Hewlett-Packard. Markkula rose to Jobs’s defense and Wozniak was taken aback. “He had a lot of confidence in Steve. He saw him as a future executive, as a future Mike Markkula.” Holt listened to the conversations and, with the practical bent of a Revolutionary Socialist, decided he would fare well if he wound up with one tenth of the shares Jobs received. Holt also harbored some doubts about Markkula. “He had a certain arrogant bearing and the subtle self-confidence of those people who have a lot of money and believe that somehow or other they have a birthright to it. I was suspicious.” Holt was also suspicious that Markkula would help draw up a business plan and then leave the company. The suspicion was mutual. Markkula checked all of Holt’s references back to high school.

Wozniak considered Markkula’s confidence entirely misplaced and predicted to his parents with steadfast assurance that Apple’s bigtime investor would lose every penny. Wozniak did not share Markkula’s enthusiasm and was wondering whether to accept Hewlett-Packard’s invitation to transfer to Oregon. Nor was his wife, Alice, very enthusiastic about the business that consumed so much time and hadn’t produced much money. She said, “I liked security and the paycheck coming in.” When Markkula made it a condition of his investment that Wozniak join Apple full time, matters came to a head. Markkula, Jobs, and Holt discussed whether they could muddle through without Wozniak and issued all sorts of threats. Holt recalled, “We told him if he didn’t come to work full time for Apple Computer he was out. Even then he didn’t come waltzing through the door. He moaned and groaned and puttered around for a couple of weeks.” Jobs staged a fierce campaign to persuade Wozniak to join Apple. He called Wozniak’s friends, moaned that he was at his wits’ end and asked them to place persuasive telephone calls. He went around to Wozniak’s parents’ house, broke into tears, and begged for their help.

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