Cupertino, California. Olivetti manager Carlo De Benedetti, after opening a Cupertino, California office a few years earlier, when Steve Jobs was still working at Atari, turned down an offer from Steve Jobs, who wanted to combine a keyboard, monitor, hard drive, microprocessor, and a simple operating system to create a home computer and aim to put it in every home. De Benedetti would admit in 2024 that turning down that offer was a huge mistake: “In ’78, I turned down an offer from a long-haired American in ripped jeans: it was Steve Jobs, today I’d be a trillionaire.” They were asking $200,000 in exchange for a 20% stake in Apple. That 20%, in 2024, would be worth approximately $100 billion.
