Billy Durant engineered the greatest comeback in U.S. business history… to this day. At least that’s what I claim. A skeptic or two have pointed out that honor belongs to Steve Jobs and his heroic return to Apple.

Hmm… let’s compare them.

What Jobs Did

We all know Jobs and Woz started Apple in their garage in the Bay area. They were successful and did the American Dream thing: took their company public and generated great wealth.

The IBM PC took over the market for personal computers and Apple’s Macintosh did not do what Jobs had hoped: wrest domination of that market back. One thing led to another, and Jobs had to leave Apple.

He then created NeXT, attempting to achieve greatness a second time. Didn’t work. However, the slick types who figured they could run Apple better than its creator fell flat on their faces, and they were forced to eat humble pie and next (no pun intended) thing you know, they had no choice but to welcome Apple’s genius back with open arms.

What a comeback.

The greatest, though?

Comparison

The only way one could make the case that the Jobs comeback was the greatest of all time would be if he at least matched what Billy did. In today’s terms that would be:

• Invent the portable typewriter.
• Use that invention to build the largest typewriter company in the world.
• Take a bit player computer company, let’s say Kaypro.
• Transform that into number one in the world.
• Then create General Computer, consisting of IBM, Apple, Microsoft and a few more big players in the market.
• After getting thrown out of his creation, then start something new like, say, Dell. Then use that to take over General Computer, containing all those other big names.

No disrespect to Mr. Jobs, because what he accomplished was indeed stellar. (I could wish to accomplish a fraction of that.) But compared to Billy Durant? Sorry, no cigar. (Selling cigars, incidentally, was where Billy started.)

When Billy Durant started at age 24, everyone rode a horse to get from A to B. He saw an opportunity and offered America a cheap ($22) two-wheeled cart–far more convenient (especially for women) and comfortable. It was an immediate success and, from nothing, Billy built the world’s largest horse-drawn vehicle company and changed the way people got around.

The rest of the story, well, you will just have to get the book, won’t you? 🙂