Tim Cook's path to becoming Apple's CEO started with an unglamorous job: waking up at 3 a.m. to deliver newspapers.

Cook, now 63, started working at a young age, just 12 years old, to begin saving money, he told The Wall Street Journal on Sunday. "Throwing papers helped start my college education," said Cook, who became the first member of his family to attend college.

The Apple CEO grew up in the small, rural town of Robertsdale, Alabama, where his father was a shipyard worker and his mother worked in a local pharmacy. Cook doesn't often speak at length about his upbringing, but his childhood was reportedly one of modest means — the family couldn't afford a typewriter, according to The Washington Post.

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As a pre-teen, Cook found a job delivering the Mobile Press Register newspaper to start putting away money. 

"Everybody was expected to work in my family," said Cook, who described his daily routine at the time: "I'd get up at about 3 in the morning, pick up the stack of papers and start throwing. And, [I'd] usually come back and take a nap before school."

'A privilege that I needed not to waste'

Cook didn't share exactly how much money he saved from his newspaper route, or how much of his college tuition it paid for. He also worked part-time at a local pharmacy, according to a 2019 biography, before attending Auburn University.

Auburn's tuition cost $660 per year — roughly $2,675 in today's dollars, when adjusted for inflation — for in-state students when Cook matriculated, according to the school's online factbook. Today, that number is $12,890 per year.

Shortly after graduating in 1982, Cook landed a job with tech giant IBM, where he spent 12 years and eventually become director of North American Fulfillment. Later, during a stint as a Compaq vice president, Cook received a captivating sales pitch from his eventual mentor Steve Jobs and joined Apple in 1998.

Cook had "zero" idea as a young man that he'd one day be CEO of the world's largest company by market value, with Apple currently valued at nearly $3.5 trillion, he said. He did have a strong sense, even as a kid delivering newspapers, that a college education could be an important early step for his career, he noted. 

"I knew that being able to [attend college] was a privilege that I needed not to waste," said Cook. "Everybody saw college in those days, and hopefully today, as opening many doors."

Warren Buffett and others also started with paper routes

The Apple CEO is far from the first person to achieve success after starting his career with a humble newspaper route. Future presidents like Dwight D. Eisenhower and titans of industry like Walt Disney also started earning money by tossing periodicals as kids.

One of the most famous examples is billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who's said he made up to $2,000 by age 15 delivering The Washington Post while his father served as a U.S. congressman in the nation's capital.

Delivering newspapers provided Buffett an early lesson in the value of hard work, he told journalist Barry Wood in 2015: "I learned, frankly, that if you did a good job, you were going to move up. The very fact that I did a good job in Spring Valley got me the Westchester routes later on."

Buffett reportedly invested his earnings by buying a share of a 40-acre Nebraska farm and had a number of other childhood money hustles, including selling gum and starting a pinball machine business.

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