Apple’s Steve Wozniak says he cofounded the tech giant after 5 rejections from HP—not to ‘make money.’ For years, his paycheck was just $50

Together with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne, Steve Wozniak set Apple on a path toward changing the world in 1976, when the trio officially founded the computer company. 

And while Apple is one of the world’s most valuable businesses today—with a market capitalization of roughly $4.8 trillion and globe-changing products like the iPhone, iPad, and iMac—Wozniak said building a tech empire was never part of the plan.

“When you try things, they don’t have to be for obvious money,” Wozniak said in a commencement address for Grand Valley State University in May. “When we started Apple, did I want to make money? Start a company? Start an industry? No.”

Instead, Wozniak said he was simply driven by a desire to bring his idea for a personal computer to life—and earn the admiration of fellow engineers.

“I wanted other engineers or other computer people to look at my designs and say, ‘Whoa’ and appreciate me and my brilliance, ‘How did he come up with these things?’”

In the 1970s, after taking a break from his degree program at University of California, Berkeley, Wozniak landed a job at Hewlett-Packard (HP), where he hoped to spend his career. But after pitching his personal computer idea to the company five separate times—and being turned down each time—he began warming to Jobs’ suggestion that they strike out on their own. 

That decision ultimately laid the groundwork for........

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