Apple Was Built After 5 HP Rejections Says Wozniak

Offering crucial career advice during a commencement address at Grand Valley State University, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak revealed how five rejections from HP led him to start Apple (via Fortune).

The legendary engineer shared how his journey to launching one of the world’s most valuable technology companies only happened because his dream employer repeatedly turned down his ideas.

Long before Apple became a multi-trillion-dollar giant, Wozniak was a corporate engineer working at technology titan Hewlett-Packard. He considered HP his permanent professional home and fully intended to stay there for his entire career.

While working at HP in the 1970s, Wozniak designed what would eventually become the blueprint for the modern personal computer. Believing in his invention, he formally pitched the project to HP leadership five separate times. Five times, the company rejected it.

It was only after that fifth corporate rejection that Wozniak finally decided to listen to a persistent suggestion from his close friend, Steve Jobs, to leave the safety of their day jobs and build a company of their own. Together with Ronald Wayne, they officially founded Apple Computer in 1976. Yet, Wozniak insists that building an empire or amassing a giant fortune was never his goal.

“When you try things, they don’t have to be for obvious money,” Wozniak told the graduating class. “When we started Apple, did I want to make money? Start a company? Start an industry? No.”

Instead, Wozniak explained that he was purely driven by a deep love for engineering and a simple desire to earn the respect of his peers in the early computing community. He wanted other computer enthusiasts to look at his intricate circuit designs, recognize his brilliance, and wonder how he managed to come up with such unique solutions.

Wozniak used his history with corporate rejection to offer perspective to Gen Z graduates entering a technology industry currently obsessed with automation and AI.