Apple co-founder forming new company

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This article was published 26/01/2002 (8700 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

LOS GATOS, Calif. — Coming out of an early retirement more than a decade ago, Stephen Wozniak, one of Silicon Valley’s most legendary computer designers, has caught startup fever and is forming a new company to develop consumer products that are based on wireless and global positioning satellite technologies.

The company, which is backed by Mobius Venture Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, two of the Valley’s largest venture capital firms, and Palo Alto Investors, was funded last December with a $6-million initial investment and plans to have its first products finished sometime next year.

GPS receivers have until now been relatively costly devices used by sportsmen and in car navigation systems, but the declining cost of the technology has made it possible to think about integrating location data with almost anything wirelessly connected to the Internet. By driving the cost of GPS down, the company says, it expects to be able to help “everyday people track every day things.”

The new company has been named Wheels of Zeus, a takeoff on Woz, the nickname of its founder, who left his job as a Hewlett-Packard technician in 1976 to found Apple Computer with his high school friend Steve Jobs. It is the first startup venture for Wozniak since he closed his previous firm, Cloud 9, a maker of high-end consumer remote control devices, in 1988.

While Jobs went on to found Next Inc., bought Pixar, and then returned to Apple as its chief executive in 1997, Wozniak, who is 51 years old, has largely remained on the sidelines. That has made him unusual in a hothouse business and technology culture that is characterized by serial entrepreneurs where few walk away after either success or failure.

Instead he has occupied himself with private investments and has taught computer education for elementary through high school students in the Los Gatos school district where he lives.

— New York Times News Service