Tim Cook didn’t just have a tough act to follow, some might consider the daunting task of taking over as CEO after the death of Steve Jobs to be impossible. 

Yet here we are 10 years later, and Cook has more than proved himself worthy for the job.  He’s actually taken Apple to incredible new levels and has positioned the tech giant as the most valuable company in the entire world. 

One thing Cook said that Jobs encouraged him to do was be his own leader, and not fall back on doing something predictable like asking himself “what would Steve do?”

Cook has spent the last decade putting his own personal touch on how he wanted to grow the company, and there are over 2 trillion reasons investors are happy with what he’s accomplished. 

One priority for Cook was improving the iPhone business, and in the past ten years, the company has added mega popular products Apple Watch and AirPods to their product list. 

There’s no question that Cook has grown the company since 2011, and the revenues reflect that. When Cook took over Apple employed 60,400 full time workers.  Now there are 147,000. 

In the third fiscal quarter of 2011, when Cook took over, Apple had $28.57 billion in revenue.  Impressive, yes, but a drop in the bucket compared to the $81.4 billion they reported for the most recent third quarter. 

Where did it come from? Almost $40 billion was from iPhone alone. 

And the people that are most happy with Cook’s performance are the investors that bet on him when he replaced Jobs.  How happy?  Well, if someone invested $10,000 on Apple stock the day Cook took over on August 24, 2011 and let it ride, it would be word almost $170,000 now. 

Finally, the market cap for Apple when Cook got the job was $337 billion. It is now worth over $2.4 trillion. 

Talk about a job well done. 

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