Apple Turned 50 Years Old. Here's What Its Earliest Investor Saw in the Company and What It Shows About Investing

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Fifty years ago, Apple was born.

At its inception, it was little more than two guys—Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak—and a personal computer prototype in a Bay Area garage. It would go on to become one of world's most recognizable brands and largest companies, valued at nearly $4 trillion today.

Early investors were instrumental in Apple’s growth from start-up to tech titan. One in particular supplied not just the capital, but also the credibility and business acumen to turn a novel idea—that everyone could own a computer—into a reality.

Mike Markkula is often described as the adult in the room—the business-minded supervisor who helped channel Jobs’ and Wozniak’s vision. According to Markkula, he backed a $250,000 loan from Bank of America, and told the lender: “I want you hold our feet to the fire.” He insisted the bank treat upstart Apple like a mature, established business. Markkula says that decision helped enforce discipline at a company whose founders cared little for the ins and outs of business.

“Woz just wanted his own computer. Simple as that,” said Markkula. But what the Steves may have lacked in business acumen at the time, they made up for in passion and skills. “They were young, motivated guys,” said Markkula, who took it on himself to write the company’s business plan and manage marketing.

Mike Markkula's success with Apple and his approach as an early backer could still hold several lessons for investors today, including the value of having conviction in the business, taking a disciplined approach, and focusing on long-term growth.

Markkula drafted the Apple Marketing Philosophy in 1977, laying out the principles that became central to the company’s identity. He promulgated three core principles: empathy, or listening to consumers; focus, or being great at a few things rather than mediocre at many; and “impute,” or the idea that the presentation of the product needed to be as excellent as the product itself. “People DO judge a book by its cover,” he wrote.

Those principles were on display when Apple introduced the Apple II at the West Coast Computer Faire in 1977. "I wanted people to see that you could do something useful with an Apple II," said Markkula, who says he wrote just three programs for the computer: Color Math, an arithmetic assistant for kids; Finance, a calculator for adults; and a checkbook-balancing program.

The combination of practicality, simplicity, and slick packaging made it a hit. "When you walked in that front door to the computer fair, all you could see was Apple," said Markkula, "and we had what everybody at that place wanted."

To scale beyond the hobbyists at computer fairs, Markkula helped bridge the divide between Silicon Valley and Wall Street, convincing many of Apple’s earliest backers to take a chance on the Steves. “They turned me off as people,” said pioneering venture capitalist Arthur Rock, who Markkula connected to the Steves in 1978. Rock, trusting Markkula, invested in Apple and served on its board until 1993.

“A lot of people wouldn't invest in Apple, wouldn't even talk to Apple, because Steve [Jobs] was so odd,” said Don Valentino, founder of Sequoia Capital and an early investor. “But you have to listen to everyone. One of the things I always advocated [at Sequoia] is learning to listen. Learning to ask questions,” he said.

Ultimately, the Apple success story may boil down to personnel. “Lots of people in Silicon Valley think they're visionaries,” said Valentino. But he’s only known two: Bob Noyce, the co-founder of Intel, and Steve Jobs.

Jobs had vision. Wozniak had engineering skills. Markkula had business acumen. And the rest is history.

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