Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Says He Started the Tech Giant After Five Rejections From HP—Driven by Passion, Not Profit; Earned Just $50 a Week for Years

(SeaPRwire) –   Alongside Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne, Steve Wozniak launched Apple on a journey to transform the world in 1976, the year the three co-founders formally established the computer firm.

Even though Apple is now among the world’s most valuable companies—boasting a market cap of around $4.5 trillion and game-changing products such as the iPhone, iPad, and iMac—Wozniak noted that creating a tech empire was never his intention.

“When you experiment with things, they don’t have to be about making obvious money,” Wozniak stated earlier this month during a commencement speech at Grand Valley State University. “When we launched Apple, did I want to earn money? Start a business? Kick off an industry? No.”

Instead, Wozniak explained he was motivated purely by a wish to turn his personal computer concept into reality and gain the respect of his fellow engineers.

“I wanted other engineers or computer enthusiasts to look at my designs and go, ‘Whoa,’ and recognize my talent—wondering, ‘How did he think of these things?’”

In the 1970s, after pausing his studies at the University of California, Berkeley, Wozniak got a job at Hewlett-Packard (HP), where he aimed to build his career. However, after presenting his personal computer idea to the company five times and getting rejected each time, he started to consider Jobs’ proposal that they go into business together.

That choice eventually paved the way for Apple and shaped one of Wozniak’s key pieces of advice to graduates: don’t fear taking a non-traditional route.

“Don’t take the same path as a million others,” he advised. “Ask yourself: ‘Is there something I can do slightly differently?’”

Wozniak’s initial Apple share could have made him a trillionaire now—but he chose a $50 weekly paycheck instead

At Apple’s founding, Jobs and Wozniak each got a 45% stake in the company, while Wayne held 10%—a share he infamously sold back within days.

Wozniak, however, didn’t hold onto his stake either. In the 1980s, he gradually sold much of his stock, giving some shares away to early employees who had missed out on equity and sums of money to charity. Had Wozniak kept his original ownership stake, it could theoretically have made him the world’s first trillionaire.

But his approach shows a long-held wariness of accumulating wealth.

Earlier in his life, he shared that he spent nights typing college term papers for strangers for mere pennies and tutoring students—not because the pay was good, but because he liked doing it.

“When I had to type papers on a real typewriter from midnight to 6 a.m. for a stranger I’d never meet again, I’d charge 5 cents,” he went on in his speech. “If you do something you love—and I love typing—you don’t need to prove its value by charging a lot of money.”

He kept those beliefs with him as he got older, too.

“I don’t invest. I don’t do that kind of thing,” he once said. “I didn’t want to be around money because it could compromise your values.”

Wozniak stepped away from full-time work at Apple in 1985, but he remained on the company’s payroll in the years before that.

“I’m still an Apple employee—the only one who’s gotten a weekly paycheck since we founded the company,” Wozniak said in a 2020 podcast interview, noting that after deductions for savings and taxes, he got around $50 a week deposited into his bank account.

Wozniak completed his college degree later in life—his advice to Gen Z: you don’t have to have your career sorted out right away

Wozniak was raised in California with two career aspirations: to be an electrical engineer like his dad and to teach fifth grade.

While Apple helped him achieve one of those goals, education stayed a key part of his life.

“I was taught that education gives you the skills to build a life—get a home, start a family, have kids, all those things. Education was extremely important to me,” he stated.

Twelve years after co-founding Apple, Wozniak re-enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, to finish the degree he’d left incomplete.

He finally graduated at age 35 using a pseudonym to stay out of the spotlight: “My Berkeley diploma is in the name Rocky Raccoon Clark.”

In the years after that, Wozniak also realized his dream of teaching—spending 10 years instructing elementary and middle school students about computers.

Given his winding career journey, he gave advice to graduates who are anxious about finding the ideal career right away:

“It doesn’t even have to be the job you want to do forever,” he said. “Take any job that gives you enough money for an apartment. That’s the top priority.”

Wozniak admitted that uncertainty is an unavoidable part of life, but he said he’s always tried to face it with humor and joy. His final message to graduates was straightforward: “Do your best.”