Steve Jobs’ struggle of selling Volkswagen bus and finding spirituality in India

“We started out to get a computer in the hands of everyday people, and we succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.”-Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs is the name which will be remembered on this earth for years. He started with a vision a “computer for the rest of us” and during the journey, embarked the PC revolution and made Apple an iconic American company. There is no easy way to success and so it wasn’t for the Jobs. Along the way, Jobs’ vision got blurred, some say that ego of the man came in between and so he was ousted from his own company. The company also felt losing its direction without Steve. And after 10 years of a constant drop in sales, Apple went to its visionary founder for help, and a little older and wiser Mr. Jobs made one of the most outstanding unexpected changes of the 20th century.

Jobs has started making his mark from the high school

Steve was interested in electronics and gadgetry from his high school years. In high school, he had taken the initiative to call Hewlett-Packard co-founder and President William Hewlett to ask for electronic parts for one of the project. HP’s pioneers were impressed by the confidence and along with the parts they offered him a summer internship at HP.

The Volkswagen story

Jobs renewed his friendship with Wozniak, who also shared the similar interest in computers. But for Wozniak, it was just a hobby. But Jobs had the vision of marketing potential of this kind of device and convinced his friend to join the business with him.

In the year 1975, Steve Jobs and Wozniak started working in Jobs’ parents’ garage and gave a name of Apple to their new venture. They started working on the preliminary version of the Apple I. They were in need of cash. They were in need of $1,350 in capital to start this new business and for that Jobs sacrificed his Volkswagen microbus, and Steve Wozniak sold his Hewlett-Packard calculator.

In India:

Steve Jobs came to India in his adolescents’ years in search of spiritual pleasure. He was highly disappointed when he returned but the trip to India mark a turning point in his life. During his trip, he also retained a lifelong admiration for Mahatma Gandhi. Jobs said that during his journey to India he realized that ” Thomas Edison did a lot more to improve the world than Karl Marx and Neem Karoli Baba (the guru he was seeking, who died before they could meet) put together.”

‘The Little Kingdom — The Private Story of Apple Computer’, a biography of Steve Jobs written by the author Michael Moritz, quoted, “The hot, uncomfortable summer made Jobs question many illusions he had nursed about India. He found India far poorer than he had imagined and was struck by the incongruity between the country’s condition and its airs of holiness.”

However, Jobs kept his interest in spirituality. In fact, he proposed the name Apple to Steve Wozniak after paying a visit to a commune in Oregon which Jobs cited as an “apple orchard”. More than 25 years later, Jobs had an idea of setting up a facility in India. But it didn’t plan out as he discovered the costs higher than he had thought.