Get A VC Who Missed Out On A Previous Winning Opportunity:
the initial 18 months of development needed to get NeXT going required $7 million dollars of Jobs’ own money. NeXT was valued at 30 million dollars, and there was little to show for it, and no revenue. Ross Perot was dazzled by Steve Jobs’ vision based on a now famous documentary about NeXT. Ross Perot had made his fortune competing against IBM and had become a VC for other aspiring entrepreneurs in tech. The fact was that Ross Perot missed out a deal with Bill Gates at Microsoft during the early days at Microsoft and Perot deeply regretted it. Ross Perot would get 16% of equity in the company for $20 million after Jobs put in another $5 million meaning the company was worth $126 million dollars. Ross Perot built a narrative around Steve Jobs about “a rags to richest genius who had to either start a company or get a job, a week later the Apple I was finished.” It was a fantasy that Ross Perot created.
This is an analysis based on Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson and other sources of research. Enjoy.