Geoffrey Cain reveals the untold story of Steve Jobs in Exile: fired from Apple in 1985, sued by his own company, three years from bankruptcy at NeXT — and how those failures forged the leader who saved Apple. Part 1 of 2.
Cain built his account from a treasure trove of new material: dozens of hours of unbroadcast footage of Jobs at NeXT meetings and retreats, new interviews, unpublished oral histories and countless internal documents. As a result, this conversation tells a very different story to the familiar Isaacson biography.
Steve Jobs in Exile: the untold NeXT years
By the early 1990s, Jobs was down to his last $150 million while burning $50 million a year. His investors had abandoned him, and his products were failing one after another. Because so much of Apple’s later technology came out of NeXT, Cain argues that if those failures had continued, there would be no Apple as we know it today.
This is also a story about survivorship bias. We study heroes through their successes, however the better question — the one Cain asks throughout the book — is: what failures allowed you to find success, and what did you learn from them?
Fired from Apple and fuelled by revenge
In 1985, John Sculley and the Apple board stripped Jobs of all real authority. After a summer adrift in Europe, Jobs founded NeXT Computer — not, Cain argues, to change the world, but to take revenge on Sculley and prove he was the real genius at Apple.
Jobs told Sculley he was taking five “low-level employees” with him. In reality, they were stars: Rich Page, Dan’l Lewin, Bud Tribble, Susan Barnes and George Crow. Apple responded by suing its own co-founder, blowing through its annual legal budget in the process. Ironically, the settlement forced Jobs into premium high-performance computers — exactly where he wanted to be.
The hero–shithead rollercoaster and the deep shit list
Every NeXT and Apple executive Cain interviewed insisted on the same thing: you cannot understand Steve Jobs without the “hero–shithead rollercoaster”. One day you were building the product that would change the world; the next, Jobs was tearing your work apart in front of the company.
Jobs also ran NeXT on a “deep shit list” — a whiteboard of everything that could kill the business, used to manage through fear. Over time, however, he learned that fear is no way to run a company, and he replaced the list with practical priorities. That shift from reactive to proactive leadership, Cain argues, is where the later Steve Jobs began.
Pixar, Ross Perot and the bets that saved him
Meanwhile, George Lucas’s ruinous divorce forced him to sell Pixar, and Jobs bought it at a fire-sale price — a throwaway $7 million bet that Hollywood ridiculed and that later saved him. Ross Perot, the war hero and original populist, invested $20 million for 16% of a company with no product, against all his advisors’ advice.
Jobs spent like the visionary he believed himself to be: $100,000 for a Paul Rand logo, $10,000 luxury chairs, an I.M. Pei floating staircase and robot assembly arms painted the exact same shade of grey. Yet when the Businessland partnership faltered, only “Steve on a Stick” — Jobs personally charming clients on stage — could actually sell a NeXT machine.
Listen to Steve Jobs in Exile with Geoffrey Cain
Geoffrey Cain is the author of Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of a Technology Visionary and Samsung Rising.
[Internal link: related Business Biography episode on the BlackBerry story]
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Steve Jobs in Exile — FAQ
What is Steve Jobs in Exile about?
Steve Jobs in Exile by Geoffrey Cain tells the untold story of the dozen years after Apple fired Steve Jobs in 1985, when he built NeXT Computer and bought Pixar. Cain draws on unbroadcast NeXT footage, new interviews and internal documents to show how failure, revenge and near-bankruptcy forged the leader who later saved Apple.
Why was Steve Jobs fired from Apple in 1985?
Jobs had recruited John Sculley from PepsiCo, but Sculley found him impossible to work with — mercurial, immature and acting as if Apple were his company when he only led the Macintosh unit. With Apple struggling and early Macintosh sales disappointing, the board sided with Sculley and stripped Jobs of all real authority.
Why did Apple sue Steve Jobs?
Jobs told Sculley he was leaving with five “low-level employees”. In reality they were stars: Rich Page, Dan’l Lewin, Bud Tribble, Susan Barnes and George Crow. Apple sued Jobs and Page personally — before NeXT even had a product. The lawsuit backfired: the settlement confined NeXT to premium high-performance computers, exactly the market Jobs wanted.
What was the hero–shithead rollercoaster at NeXT?
It was the phrase NeXT and Apple executives used for Jobs’s leadership style: one day you were a hero building the product that would change the world, the next you were torn apart in front of the company. Cain says every executive he interviewed insisted you cannot understand Steve Jobs without it.
How did Steve Jobs end up owning Pixar?
George Lucas was forced to sell Pixar after a ruinous divorce, and Jobs bought it at a fire-sale price while founding NeXT. Hollywood thought computer graphics were a fad, but the throwaway bet later produced Toy Story and helped save Jobs financially.
Is this episode of The Innovation Show part of a series?
Yes. This is part 1 of 2 of Aidan McCullen’s conversation with Geoffrey Cain about Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT, and the Remaking of an American Visionary, part of The Innovation Show’s Business Biography series, brought to you by Kyndryl.
About the Host
Aidan McCullen is the 2025 Thinkers50 Innovation Award recipient, keynote speaker on AI, disruption, innovation, and change, host of The Innovation Show, and author of Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention (Wiley). Learn more or contact admin@theinnovationshow.io.