As for Jobs, he started Apple for a few hundred bucks. It's a pretty low bar.
Plus free time. Plus motivation and energy which is probably in short supply when you've already done 8 hours in a supermarket / your second job / a full day of childcare / etc.
> a few hundred bucks. It's a pretty low bar.
For a lot of people in the US, a few hundred bucks is the difference between eating that month and going without. Or being able to pay the rent and not be evicted. Or being able to afford transport to/from their job.
Show me any group of founders and you can point to a few outliers but people who have had jobs like grocery store clerk by and large do not go on to make a business. The bar is lowered enough for upper middle class only, with few exceptions.
That doesn't mean they're poor. I've known many, many people with zero savings living paycheck to paycheck. They had new cars, nice houses, good furniture, expensive clothes, took vacations, and ate regularly at restaurants.
They simply spent it all.
I started my first business while working for Boeing 50 hours a week (they had mandatory overtime for years).
Similarly, "all you need is a computer" is still very much an indicator of privilege on a global level. Good luck if you live in a favella in Brazil or slums in South Africa or India. It is easier than it was in the 70s, but by no means universally available.
Last week, here in the US, I bought a decent laptop for $40 from the pawn shop. It was marked down to $40 because the battery didn't work (it worked fine on the charger) and there was cosmetic damage to the underside.
The US is a country where nearly everyone has a computer in their pocket that is thousands of times more powerful than ones in the 1970's.
If I recall correctly, Woz hand-assembled his early Apple software. That implies he did not have access to a computer running an assembler. Hand assembling code on notebook paper is tedious, but is certainly possible.
By the late 70's, there was a Byte shop within walking distance with many different PCs one could buy, and a heluva lot did and started businesses. Apple and other PC makers' success did not come from selling computers to the 1%.
