Education
Mike Markkula studied electrical engineering at the University of Southern California. He had a singular dream to become the greatest engineer he could be.
Apple’s Steve Jobs receives venture capital from Mike Markkula in 1977.
Steve Jobbs and Mike Markkula.
investments venture capitalist enterpeneurship
Mike Markkula studied electrical engineering at the University of Southern California. He had a singular dream to become the greatest engineer he could be.
Mike Markkula studied electrical engineering at the University of Southern California and then worked for Hughes Aircraft Company in the Los Angeles area. In september 1967 he was hired at Fairchild Semiconductor and quickly became marketing director. He then joined Intel, again as marketing director. Markkula retired a rich man in 1975 thanks to the stocks of those two companies.
He was lured out of retirement by Steve Jobs, who convinced Markkula of the market for the Apple II and personal computers in general. In 1977, Markkula brought his business expertise along with US $ 250,000 ($80,000 as an equity investment in the company and $170,000 as a loan) and became a one-third owner of Apple and employee number 3. With the help of Mike Markkula, Apple had secured $600,000 in venture funding.
He helped the new company obtain credit and venture capital,brought in Michael Scott as the first president and CEO, then took the job himself from 1981 to 1983. Markkula served as chairman from 1985 until 1996, when a new board was formed after Jobs returned to the company. As chairman he approved Jef Raskin's 1979 plan to start designing what became the Macintosh, then prevented Jobs from killing the project in favor of his own Lisa. In 1985 Markkula took John Sculley's side in a dispute with Jobs, causing the latter to leave the company, and in 1993 he helped to force Sculley out.
After his stint at Apple Computer, he continued on to found Echelon Corporation, ACM Aviation, San Jose Jet Center and Rana Creek Habitat Restoration and to endow the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, where he now chairs the Board.
Markkula is an investor in Crowd Technologies, a startup developing a web application called Piqqem that applies the wisdom of crowds to stock market predictions. He is also an investor in Scotland based RunRev.
Apple, Inc.
Apple, Inc.
