66 years ago today, (February 24) something eventful happened that would change the world forever.
It received no mention that particular day in 1955, but because of it, billions of lives would be altered.
Steve Jobs was born, and there’s a little known fact about the tech titan and founder of Apple that is simply unfathomable, because it’s so hard to believe it could possibly be real.
It’s natural to play the game of “what if” as it pertains to Jobs, and just how much money he would be worth in this day and age when it has become fashionable to obsessively track the net worth of the richest people.
Would Jobs be in the ballpark of a Musk or Bezos, jockeying for the top spot in the world?
How about the top 10, like Zuckerberg, Gates and Warren Buffett?
Now that Apple has crossed the $2 trillion threshold in market cap, what would that mean for Jobs as the co-founder of the company and face of it if he were still alive.
The answer might surprise you, because at the time of Jobs’ death in 2011, his Apple stock was a small portion of his net worth of $10.2 billion.
Back in 1985, Jobs sold all but one share of his Apple stock out of anger and frustration. This was when he famously quit his job as CEO at Apple, at the age of 30.
36-years ago when this all went down, Jobs owned 20% of all Apple stock, but when he was essentially forced out he was so ticked off he sold 99.99% of his shares. He kept one share as a souvenir, mainly so he would still qualify to receive the company’s annual financial report so he could keep tabs on what was going on.
Fast forward to 1997, when the board of Apple essentially begged Jobs to come back and run the company again, which he agreed to do under one condition; he wanted lots of equity in return, and the board ultimately agreed to give Jobs 5.5 million shares, which was worth roughly $300 million at that time.
Jobs ran the company for the next 14 years, and ultimately grew the market cap to $350 billion at it’s peak during his tenure.
Under Tim Cook’s leadership the stock price has exploded. There was a 7-1 stock split in 2014, which would have increased Jobs’ equity to 38.5 million shares. Another 4-1 stock split in 2020 would turn his take in to 154 million shares.
Apple’s stock price Wednesday closed at $124.99, which would mean just under $20 billion dollars of Apple stock value for Jobs.
Another little known fact about Jobs is he had built a side hustle fortune from his days running Pixar Studios and the subsequent sale to Disney. He owned 138 million Disney shares, which at the time of his death were worth another $8.2 billion.
Now, take the game of “what if” into overdrive, which is what Celebrity Net Worth did in 2020. Imagine if Jobs still had that 20% of Apple stock he owned before he sold it in a huff. And imagine he never left to start Pixar and just rode the wave with Apple and it grew to the $2.1 trillion market cap it is worth today.
Steve Jobs would be worth north of $400 billion, dwarfing the fortunes of anyone else on the list of world’s richest person.
“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.”
― Steve Jobs
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