April 8, 1983
John Sculley takes over as chairman and CEO of Apple after its founder, Steve Jobs, persuaded him to step down as chairman of PepsiCo. He will go down in history as the man who fired Jobs from his own company and would later admit that the visionary iPhone maker never forgave him for it.
Scully was president of PepsiCo during the so-called “Cola Wars”. In fact, he was the inspirer of the legendary Pepsi Challenge advertising campaign, which convinced the buying public that Pepsi tastes better than Coca Cola, leading to an increase in its market shares.
Jobs hoped to bring some of Scully’s marketing intelligence to Apple as he tried to turn it into a consumer brand.
The two met shortly after Thanksgiving 1982. They met every weekend for five months as Jobs tried to persuade Scully to leave his job at PepsiCo and move to Apple.
“We got to know each other very, very well and at the end I said, ‘Steve, I thought about it and I’ll not come to Apple,'” Scully would recall decades later. It was the last Sunday in March 1983.
“Steve paused and thought for a moment. And then he came very close to me – and at that time, he was 20 years old and he had dark hair, very dark eyes and he was right in front of my face – and he said to me: ‘Do you want to sell water with sugar for the rest of your life or do you want to come with me and change the world? ‘”.
Obviously this phrase convinced him. And from 1983 to 1993 he was the CEO of Apple, with the company’s turnover growing in its day from 569 million dollars to 8.3 billion dollars.
But Scully and Jobs clashed in 1985 over Macintosh pricing. From now on, two different versions of the story are released. According to Steve Jobs, the ensuing civil strife led to his dismissal. John Scully himself said that he never fired Jobs, but instead, he decided to leave the company he had founded.
The result is the same. Jobs found himself outside Apple and never forgave Scully for it, as he would admit years after his death.
“No. (Our friendship) was never restored. And it’s a real shame because if I look back, I see how big a mistake I made. You see, I came from the business world. Things there were somewhat formal, there was no passion that entrepreneurs have. Now, decades later, I have so much respect for the founders, for the faith and the passion and the vision that they have. “So dismissing a founder, even if he was not fired, was a huge mistake,” he would say.
“I wish Steve and I had met again and found at least part of our friendship again, but it did not happen.”
The collapse of Apple’s profits in 1993 led to the resignation of John Scully that year.
Money Review
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