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 $4.5 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 earlier this month at a commencement address for Grand Valley State University. “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 Apple—and informed one of Wozniak’s core messages to graduates: don’t be afraid to take an unconventional path.
“Don’t follow the same steps as a million other people,” he said. “Think: ‘Is there something I can do a little different?”
Wozniak’s original Apple stake could have made him a trillionaire today—instead, he opted for a $50 paycheck
When Apple was founded, Jobs and Wozniak each received a 45% stake in the company—while Wayne received 10%—a share he famously sold back just days later.
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 held onto his original ownership stake, his fortune could theoretically have made him the world’s first trillionaire.
However, his approach reflects a long-standing skepticism toward wealth accumulation.
Earlier in life, he said he spent nights typing college term papers for strangers for just pennies and tutoring students—not because it paid well, but because he enjoyed it.
“When you had to type them on a real typewriter from midnight to 6:00 in the morning for a stranger I would never see again, I would charge 5 cents,” he continued in his speech. “If you do something you love—and I love typing—you don’t need to prove it by charging a huge amount of money.”
He carried those feelings with him later in life, too.
“I do not invest. I don’t do that stuff,” he previously told Fortune. “I didn’t want to be near money, because it could corrupt your values.”
Wozniak stepped back from full-time involvement in Apple in 1985, though in preceding years, stayed on the payroll.
“I’m still an Apple employee—the only person who’s received a paycheck every week since we started the company,” Wozniak said in a separate 2020 podcast interview, adding that after savings and taxes, he received “$50 a week or something” into his bank account.
Wozniak finished his degree later in life—his message to Gen Z: you don’t need your career figured out on day one
Wozniak grew up in California with two dream careers in mind: becoming an electrical engineer like his father and teaching fifth grade.
Though Apple helped fulfill one ambition, education remained central to his life.
“I’d been taught your education gives you the skills to possibly have a life, have a home, have a family, have children, all that stuff. Education was a very high value to me,” he said.
Twelve years after cofounding the tech giant, Wozniak reenrolled to complete the degree he had left unfinished at the University of California Berkeley.
He eventually graduated, at age 35, under an alias to avoid attention: “My Berkeley diploma says Rocky Raccoon Clark.”
In the years following, Wozniak also unlocked his dream of being at the front of the classroom—spending a decade teaching elementary and middle school students about computing.
Considering his roundabout career, he offered advice for graduates worried about finding the perfect career path immediately:
“[It] doesn’t even have to be working in the job you want to do for the rest of your life,” he said. “Take some job to get enough money for an apartment. That’s the most important thing.”
Wozniak acknowledged that uncertainty is an inevitable part of life—but said he has always tried to meet it with humor and fun. His final message to graduates was simple: “Do your best.”
