Everyone thinks Steve Jobs was an awesome entrepreneur. But his work at Next speaks otherwise

What if Steve Jobs’ greatest triumph was actually his most spectacular commercial flop? We tend to remember Jobs as the midas-touch genius who gave us the iPhone. However, in 1985, after being ousted from Apple, Jobs founded [NeXT Computer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT). By most traditional business metrics, NeXT was a disaster. The company sold only about 50,000 computers over its decade-long run, a tiny fraction compared to competitors. Yet, looking closely at this "failure" reveals that Jobs was actually playing a much longer game. ## The Art of failing forward At NeXT, Jobs wanted to build the ultimate workstation for education and research. He insisted on extreme perfectionism, which drove the price of the NeXT Computer up to a staggering $6,500. It was far too expensive for its target market of university students. But while NeXT failed as a hardware business, its software was revolutionary. Jobs pioneered **object-oriented programming**, a method of writing software using reusable "blocks" of code. This made software development incredibly fast. In fact, NeXT technology was so advanced that Tim Berners-Lee used a NeXT computer at CERN to create the very first web browser and web server. > "I did on NeXT step in a couple of months what would have taken more like a year on other platforms, because the NeXT step object-oriented framework was so good." > — Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, reflecting on his work in [Weaving the Web](https://archive.org/details/weavingwebpastpr00bern_0) Furthermore, the operating system built for NeXT, called NeXTSTEP, became the literal foundation for modern computing. When Apple was struggling in the late 1990s, they bought NeXT for $429 million just to acquire its software. This deal brought Jobs back to Apple, and NeXTSTEP was transformed into macOS and iOS. Without the "failure" of NeXT, we would not have the software architecture that powers the iPhone today. Jobs' time at NeXT proves that an entrepreneur's worth isn't just about immediate sales, but about building the foundation for the future. ## Follow-up questions 1. How did Steve Jobs' leadership style change during his years at NeXT compared to his first stint at Apple? 2. What role did billionaire investor Ross Perot play in keeping NeXT afloat when it was struggling to sell hardware? 3. How did the transition from a hardware company to a software-only company save NeXT from total bankruptcy?

What if the biggest obstacle to Steve Jobs’ early success was actually his own reflection? During his first stint at Apple, Jobs was famous for his "Reality Distortion Field," a mix of charisma, willpower, and fierce manipulation. But this style was highly toxic. He regularly reduced engineers to tears, created destructive internal wars (like pitching the Macintosh team against the Apple II team), and was ultimately fired because he was deemed unmanageable. When Jobs founded NeXT, he did not immediately change. In fact, he doubled down on his worst instincts, micromanaging everything from the color of the factory walls to the shape of the screws. However, the commercial failure of NeXT forced a profound psychological evolution. It was at NeXT where Jobs transitioned from an tyrannical manager into a strategic leader. ## From Micromanagement to Empowerment At Apple, Jobs tried to control every variable. At NeXT, the harsh reality of empty bank accounts forced him to learn a new skill: delegation. He began to trust his brilliant team, which included pioneers like Avie Tevanian (who designed the NeXTSTEP operating system kernel) and Bud Tribble. Instead of dictating every line of code, Jobs shifted his focus to curation. He became an editor rather than an author. He learned to guide the vision while letting his experts handle the execution. In his authorized biography, [Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs_(book)), Isaacson notes that NeXT was the crucible where Jobs learned to balance his relentless aesthetic demands with organizational maturity. > "His years at NeXT and Pixar... gave him a broader appreciation for how to build a company that could survive, not just products that could dazzle." > — Walter Isaacson, biographer ## The Pixar Parallel and the Art of Patience While running NeXT, Jobs also purchased the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm, renaming it [Pixar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixar). At Pixar, Jobs encountered a culture of collaborative storytelling led by creative geniuses like Ed Catmull and John Lasseter. Because Jobs did not understand computer animation the way he understood hardware, he was forced to stand back. He realized that giving creative professionals space to fail and iterate yielded masterpiece results, like *Toy Story*. This hands-off, supportive leadership style rub-off on his management of NeXT. He began to view his role not as a taskmaster, but as an enabler of talent. ## The Birth of the Collaborative Visionary When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he was not the same impulsive 30-year-old who had been kicked out. He kept the core team he built at NeXT intact for decades. His new leadership style combined his signature passion with a newfound collaborative patience. He partnered deeply with designer Jony Ive and operations expert Tim Cook, trusting them with massive sections of Apple's empire. The "failed" decade at NeXT was actually a masterclass in self-correction. Jobs learned that while a dictator can build a great product, only a true leader can build a company that changes the world.