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When Steve Jobs Sold His Shares

Name: When Steve Jobs Sold His Shares
Uploaded: 2025-01-08T02:50:00+00:00
Duration: 37 s
Channel: Shanli Liu, CPA, CTP
Description: In this brief YouTube commentary, the speaker explains that Steve Jobs owned 15% of Apple at its initial public offering. After leaving Apple, founding…

8 Jan 2025 · 1 min

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In this brief YouTube commentary, the speaker explains that Steve Jobs owned 15% of Apple at its initial public offering. After leaving Apple, founding Pixar, and later returning, Jobs was granted a much smaller stake. The speaker highlights a hypothetical scenario: if Jobs had retained his original 15% share, it would be worth roughly $465 billion today, making him the richest person alive. The core message is that by selling his shares, Jobs exchanged potential upside for reduced risk, illustrating the trade‑off between holding equity for future gains versus cashing out.

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When Steve Jobs had the company, when it originally went public, he owned 15% of the business. He ended up leaving for a period of time, starting Pixar, and then he came back like 10 years later. When he came back, he was gifted a much smaller percentage of the company. Now here's where it's crazy. When he originally IPO'd Apple, he had 15%. If he had not sold those shares, that 15% today would be worth $465 billion, making him by far the richest man in the world had he lived to this point and kept his shares. The reason that he was never the richest man in the world is because when he sold his shares, he gave up a lot of his risk. He gave up a lot of his upside.