After the success of the Apple II, Jobs was convinced that he needed to develop a signature product at Apple. No matter how much he knew that he had helped with the Apple II, it would always be seen mostly as Wozniak’s baby. He played a larger role in developing the Apple III, which flopped.

He then moved to a new computer, which he called the Lisa, surprisingly named after the daughter he had essentially abandoned. Jobs looked to Xerox, which was innovating with new technologies, such as the Graphical User Interface (GUI), which allowed users to view text and graphics at the same time. Jobs applied the GUI to the Lisa, as well as the modern computer mouse. Yet, despite the passion and energy that Jobs brought to the Lisa project, Apple management stripped Jobs of managerial duties, leaving him with the largely nominal title of non-executive chairman of the board. This was the first of many instances that Jobs would experience as betrayal.

Apple went public less than four years after it had been founded. By the end of 1980, it was valued at $1.79 billion by the end of 1980, which meant that Jobs was worth $256 million by age 25.