Woz gets a new job
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak seems to be a lot more visible lately. — First, he's been making bad web ads for SCOTTEVEST. Next, we received pictures of Woz whizzing from the deck of his Segway. He was fined US$700 for driving his Prius at 104 miles per hour (167 kilometers per hour) on I-5.
Context & Ripple Effects
Steve Wozniak has spent 2007-2008 deliberately building a second career as a public character rather than a behind-the-scenes engineer: he staged elaborate pranks, recruited players for Segway polo, and joked about joining a Prius racing team. This item caps that run with paid commercial work for SCOTTEVEST, a $700 speeding ticket at 104 mph in the same Prius, and now a new job announcement.
First-order effects
- Wozniak converts his folk-hero reputation into direct income — SCOTTEVEST pays him to appear in its web ads, and a new employer is betting on his name recognition rather than his engineering résumé.
- The unflattering episodes (the Segway photos, the I-5 fine) land while his profile is peaking, meaning Apple's co-founder is generating headlines independent of anything Apple itself does.
Second-order effects
- Small consumer brands like SCOTTEVEST get outsized attention by hiring a founder-celebrity instead of a traditional spokesperson, pressuring other gadget-adjacent companies to chase similar founder-figure endorsements.
- Every Woz stunt keeps him in the news cycle alongside Steve Jobs, giving Apple free ambient coverage — and raising the question of whether the 'Woznote' counter-programming around Macworld events becomes a recurring media fixture.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the 'co-founder as permanent public personality' becomes a durable template: founders monetizing their origin-story fame indefinitely after leaving day-to-day operations, decoupling personal brand equity from any single company.
The trend: Founder-celebrities are becoming standalone media brands whose visibility — and earning power — no longer depends on the companies they created.