Hewlett Packard Could Have Been Apple If Not For 5 Bad Decisions

Back in the 1970's Steve Wozniak worked for Hewlett Packard designing its hit product, engineering calculators. At night and on the weekends, often in his HP cubicle, he tinkered on a little project that would one day become the Apple I computer.

Woz designed the hardware, circuit boards and operating system for the Apple I.

Woz took his pet project to HP and "begged" them to manufacture the PC, he told Georgia State University students on Wednesday.

"Five times they turned me down," the Atlanta Business Chronicle quotes Wozniak from his lecture.

When Steve Jobs saw the Apple I, he recognized its potential.

Jobs didn't say, "Oh my gosh, let's start a computer company," Wozniak recalls. "He said, "Let's start a company to build one little part — a printed circuit board, so people can assemble a computer. Let's build it for $20 and sell it for $40."

Woz believes that even if he and Jobs didn't form Apple, his products still would have influenced the world.

But he says that he might not have started a company because he's not the risk-taking type of entrepreneur.

Poor choice by HP in hindsight.

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