Replies to post #452076 on NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[Horseb4CarT]

John Sculley was the guy from Pepsi (you want to keep making sugar water, or come with me and change the world.)

I only met Jobs that one time and he was very personable then, however we were exploring a possible joint opportunity so we didn’t work for him.

His lieutenants appeared to have been with him a number of years and seemed at ease, however his computer/presentation guy who arrived well ahead of time to set up for his presentation displayed a healthy amount of care in set up and test to ensure problem free operation of the presentation, and it was!

The other thing that made Jobs a good guy as far as I’m concerned is that months after that meeting my software development team ran into some issues with the NeXT software we integrated into a real-time control system and I emailed Jobs about the importance of this application being successful, and without responding to my email I was reached out to by one of his software executives and they sent a VP and a troubleshooting team to NJ to work all the issues with us and obtain rapid resolutions, staying at least a week with my team!

[Umibe5690]

The Pepsi guy was John Sculley. He was featured in a front page article in Fortune magazine wrt why CEOs fail and was part of a pantheon of failed executives e,g., Bob Stempel, Chainsaw Duncan, Bob Palmer, Mike Spindler( to whom I once reported at Apple), Gil Amelio who Steve Jobs pushed out, etc. Sculley was President of PepsiCo. before he joined Apple and was once a son-in-law of Don Kendall, CEO of Pepsi.

John Sculley was forced to resign by the BoD and Mike Markula replaced him with Mike Spindler. Mike was replaced by Gil Amelio who was a former CEO of National Semiconductor. Amelio invited Steve Jobs to consult for Apple and that was the beginning of his end. Steve came on board and got Apple to purchase NeXT OS for $498 million. Steve’s salary was $1.00 per year but he was “gifted” with a $98 million Gulf Stream. One of his first actions was to fire the entire board including Mike Markula who was an original investor along with Don Valentine. Revenge was sweet as Markula and the board supported Sculley and forced Jobs out of his company. Jobs then founded NeXT with funding from Ross Perot and of course, Pixar.

Sculley was involved in a scandalous business venture with Spectrum Technologies and was sued and counter sued. Case was quietly settled. Sculley went on to found his own consulting/venture capital firm, Sculley and Bros. He incubated a number of companies and was rather successful. Steve Jobs refused to speak with Sculley and never spoke to him again.

Inside story from an “insider”.