Steve Jobs was fired from Apple, the company he co-founded. His second act turned out to be bigger and better than the first.

When Jobs was in his 30s, the very company he created fired him.

"I was out — and very publicly out," Jobs said in a 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University. "What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating."

Jobs spent the summer of 1985 in a "midlife crisis" trying to decide what he wanted to do from entering politics to becoming an astronaut, said Alan Deutschman, author of "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs."

During his time away from Apple, Jobs co-founded computer company NeXT, which was later acquired by Apple, and launched Pixar Animation Studios. When he returned to Apple nearly a decade later, he brought the innovation of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad.