Jobs was absolutely taken seriously by Silicon Valley at that time. There was a period, from when he left Apple, through the NeXT days, that Silicon Valley seem

Jobs was absolutely taken seriously by Silicon Valley at that time. There was a period, from when he left Apple, through the NeXT days, that Silicon Valley seemed to understand that he had begun to grow up / mature as a leader. When he first left Apple he was a creative pariah, and many of his peers thought he was a dangerous leader; by the time he joined Apple again, that view had faded almost completely. There were big questions over what could actually be done to turn Apple around, few saw the iPod coming, but most people seemed to understand that Jobs could bring a spark back to Apple that had been missing for a long long time. I don't think Wall Street believed in Apple much, or that Jobs could turn it around - Wall Street didn't see what he did of course. You can see that in the stock valuation that Apple received during the bubble days, it didn't pop even a fraction as much as other stocks like Sun or Oracle (Sun was worth $150+ billion or so, and Apple around $30 billion; granted Sun was riding a direct wave benefit with their hardware that had sent their revenue parabolic).