Every Apple CEO before John Ternus: A story of survival, failure, and one remarkable comeback

Before Apple became the most valuable company on earth, it nearly ceased to exist. The leadership history of Apple reads less like a smooth corporate succession and more like a series of near-death experiences, a few disasters, and one person who kept pulling it back from the edge.

The early days

Apple's first tech CEO, Michael Scott, was recruited in 1977 by investor Mike Markkula to provide adult supervision for the young founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who were both considered too inexperienced to run the company themselves. Scott is mostly remembered for something else entirely, "Black Wednesday," where he personally fired 40 employees, held a party at the end of the day.

Markkula himself then stepped in, having originally provided crucial early funding of $250,000. He stayed only briefly before handing things off to someone Jobs had personally convinced to join.

John Sculley

John Sculley came from PepsiCo. Sculley's product strategy drove up engineering, manufacturing, and marketing costs, flooding the market with too many products and creating real confusion. And in 1985, he did the thing that still defines his legacy, he sided with Apple's board to strip Jobs of his operational responsibilities, effectively forcing the co-founder out.

Michael Spindler and Gil Amelio

After Sculley came two CEOs. Michael Spindler replaced Sculley in 1993.

Then came Gil Amelio in 1996, who oversaw the shortest CEO stint in Apple history. But Amelio did one thing that mattered enormously, he bought Steve Jobs' company NeXT for $429 million, which brought Jobs back inside the building. Within a year, Jobs had convinced the board that Amelio needed to go.

Steve Jobs

Jobs came back as interim CEO in 1997. He cut projects, consolidated the product line, and introduced the iMac. The rest is the part everyone knows. The iPod. iTunes. The iPhone. The iPad. A company that was weeks from bankruptcy became the defining technology story of the 21st century, all because the person they'd once pushed out came back and refused to let it die.

By the time Jobs handed the keys to Tim Cook in 2011, Apple wasn't a struggling startup or a company searching for direction. It was already a phenomenon.

Tim Cook

Tim Cook was named the CEO of Apple in August 2011. Prior to joining Apple, Tim was vice president of Corporate Materials for Compaq and was responsible for procuring and managing all of Compaq’s product inventory. He has received an MBA from Duke University and a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from Auburn University.