“In 1976, Ronald Wayne decided to pull out of his friends’ computer company after two weeks, fearing he could be saddled with debts if it failed,” Nick Allen reports for The Telegraph.
“After drawing up the original contract for the firm and designing its logo [‘It was a terrible logo for the modern world and I knew that at the time’], he withdrew his 10 per cent stake and walked away with $1,500 (£975),” Allen reports. “Speaking from his home in a remote desert town near Death Valley, Nevada, the little known ‘third founder’ of electronics giant Apple said he has no regrets.”
“Mr Wayne, 75, relinquished a stake that would now be worth around £15 billion [US$23.07 billion] and lives on a state pension and deals in old stamps and coins to supplement his income,” Allen reports. “Meanwhile, his two former friends Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, joined the ranks of the super-rich. Jobs is still chairman and CEO with a personal fortune estimated at more than £3 billion [US$4.61 billion].”
“He met Jobs while working at Atari in California before drawing up an agreement which gave Jobs and Wozniak each a 45 per cent each of their new Apple computer venture,” Allen reports. “Mr Wayne said Jobs asked him to take 10 per cent so he could be a ‘tiebreaker’ between the other two if necessary. He was chosen because they believed he would be ‘balanced and reasonable.’ But within two weeks Mr Wayne wanted out and decided to give up his share.”
Allen reports, “He has remained in intermittent touch with his two former partners and last saw Jobs five years ago. Mr Wayne said: ‘He had a computer show and invited me. He paid the plane fare and I was VIP, front row. We met Woz and the three of us had lunch. I’m pleased for them. Whatever Steve Jobs has achieved he deserves it. He worked hard for it.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Ouch. Ron’s financial advisor’s intitials must have been L.G.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “MCCFR” for the heads up.]
Ouch, I wish Steve and Woz would make sure his twilight years are comfortable for him! And they probaly have
Sucks to be him.
Hey, that’s life! Sounds like he got over it a long time ago. I told a someone to buy AAPL when it was 180 and he was not but after my call did so. Well we now know how happy he is now. Lol
Sounds like a nice guy. I do hope the Steves make is last years comfortable. They don’t have to, but it would be nice of them.
Yes it sucks, but it’s easy to have 20/20 vision. Look at the economic troubles of the 70’s and Apples near death in the 90’s…easy to say ouch but at the time it made sense.
You never know though how having this third guy on board would have diverted Apple from its historical course.
Whatever happened, happened.
ouch ouch ouch
Reading the article It makes sense why he backed out, at time he was the only one with any assets and he would of been the one on the line if things did not work out.
May of been one of the resins the Steves asked him in, probaly would have been very difficult for them to aquire a loan wihout him
Wayne & Goldman have no courage and probably spend most of their lives sitting on the sidelines.
@ Hotinplaya;
I’m not sure what organic chemistry has to do with this article- Perhaps Mr Wayne was a sap?
Hey, he was the one who abandoned the Steves. What exactly do they owe him?
If he had remained with the company, who knows? He may have prevented the firing of Steve Jobs or the hiring of the Sugar Water Salesman. Hell, if he had remained he may have been instrumental in the early death of Microsoft.
He screwed up the time, the bastard.
Ouch costly decision.
It was a selfish bailout it was corbis money to keep mac office having clients. Brilliant huh? Not like the ballmer guy.
This guy is also the elusive fifth Beetle.
L.G.!
Nice shout out to Laura…
Loves it!
Haha, nice to see that somebody else made a mistake too. I had to decide 9 years ago if I wanna loose 40000 dollars or be a millionaire and guess what…At least I have 3 friends that always remember to thank me for making them millionaires.
You’ve should see me when I brought Apple stock when it was $53.00 a share a few years ago! I brought it in September and was going sell it around Christmas! It kept going up and I finally sold it when it reached $209.00!
You know, when you say, “no regrets’. You have regrets. That sentiment is right up there with “I’m not saying…” and then you say it or “this is going to hurt me more than you” and it doesn’t…
Just glad that logo didn’t survive long.
You know, when you say, “no regrets’. You have regrets. That sentiment is right up there with “I’m not saying…” and then you say it or “this is going to hurt me more than you” and it doesn’t…
Just glad that logo didn’t survive long.
You know, when you say, “no regrets’. You have regrets. That sentiment is right up there with “I’m not saying…” and then you say it or “this is going to hurt me more than you” and it doesn’t…
Just glad that logo didn’t survive long.
You know, when you say, “no regrets’. You have regrets. That sentiment is right up there with “I’m not saying…” and then you say it or “this is going to hurt me more than you” and it doesn’t…
Just glad that logo didn’t survive long.
You know, when you say, “no regrets’. You have regrets. That sentiment is right up there with “I’m not saying…” and then you say it or “this is going to hurt me more than you” and it doesn’t…
Just glad that logo didn’t survive long.
You know, when you say, “no regrets’. You have regrets. That sentiment is right up there with “I’m not saying…” and then you say it or “this is going to hurt me more than you” and it doesn’t…
Just glad that logo didn’t survive long.
Well, I bought into Webvan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webvan
Bad decision. I feel sorry for him, but not that sorry. He was worried that he would owe more money cause they needed to borrow. He decided to pull out and force the Steves to borrow even MORE!
He could have bought shares at any time in the last 25 years and made out like a bandit.
“I wish Steve and Woz would make sure his twilight years are comfortable for him! And they probaly have.” -hotinplaya.
They do not appear to have done that if he supplements his pension by selling stamps and coins.
He once owned 10% of Apple. Back when 10% was worth $1500. Once Apple went public, his share would have been much less than 10% of the company.
Woz once owned 45% of Apple. He stayed with the company. Ron Wayne, if he stayed with Apple back then could be worth just over 22.2% of what Woz is worth now. I don’t know what Woz is worth, but I do know that 22.2% of what Woz is worth now is nowhere near 23 billion dollars. It’s probably just enough to be a little more comfortable in his old age.
Even Steve Jobs, with all the money he’s made elsewhere, is only worth about 4.5 billion dollars. 22.2% of that is only 1 billion dollars.
The Telegraph sure knows how to embellish a story.
That’s a guy that knows how Pete Best feels.
Ouch man, ouch.
I hate this speculation crap. Time lines play out because of the actions of the participants. If he had stayed on everything we see today would be different – better? worse? Whose to say? But thinking he’d be worth 23 billion is a rapid walk down fantasy lane.
From the read it sounds like this guy’s life is quite simple and stress-less. You can’t put a price on that reality – just ask SJ
Risk is a hard thing to live with. At the time the whole of Apple was worth $15,000. Wayne was the only one with any real skin in the game. He was early forties, had some assets. The Steves had knowledge and enthusiasm, which they would not lose if the enterprise failed. Wayne would have been on the hook for the money. He sold his contribution way too cheap. OTOH, there are lots of folks with $50,000 (more like todays dollars) to invest. The Steves are very few and far between. Finding the opportunity to run with them is the dream of a lifetime for us drones.
“He could have bought shares at any time in the last 25 years and made out like a bandit”
and most likely he could have gotten in on the first public offering
The math is wrong.
Sure, Wayne started with 10% of the company, but as Apple grew, took on investors, and eventually went public and had stock splits, that 10% share became less and less. He never would have been able to hold on to 10% of the company, just as Jobs and Wozniak each never held on to 45% of the company.
Faulty math.
And bad timing.
And why is this being brought up? Does someone hate this guy and want to make him feel bad. Leave the old man alone and come pick on someone your own size, muthafucka
Love the take, MDN! Very insider.
I saw a documentary film on Apple in which Mr.Wayne was interviewed. His comments on film were consistent with the article above. He strikes me as a complete gentleman, one at peace with his decision. That might be cold comfort, but Mr. Wayne has only wished his old friends and former company well. Considering that he did not profit from his involvement, that is pretty classy. A lot of lesser men would only be bitter. Mr. Wayne clearly stands above all that.
There’s a lesson in that for the rest of us.
This is a very sad story when you think about how this man feels about his mistake it probably poisens his mind and had caused undue pain and suffering in his life knowing that he lost billions of dollars my only hope is that he has found the love of jesus christ and that pain has been swept away with the power of his love for us
Something to think about the next time I’m afraid to take a risk.
With all the Beatles haters on this site, there probably aren’t that many of us that get the reference.
“Ouch, I wish Steve and Woz would make sure his twilight years are comfortable for him! And they probaly have”
Meh, for two weeks of work?
Also, the stock price was in the doldrums for many years, its hard to imagine this guy holding on for all that…
Mr. Wayne is a classy guy. No regrets. And Powers, that’s messed up drunk talk. Is Laura Goldman serving time or is she Orly Taitz’s secret lover?
Hey, I love the logo!
Not for the going concern, but as something hopefully displayed at One Infinite to commemorate the company’s history and evolution.
IBM’s famous motto at the time was “Think” – Newton was one of history’s greatest thinkers – who had a breakthrough when an apple landed in his lap – and the inference here is “just imagine what he could have done if it had been an Apple.” (although getting conked on the nog with an Apple II might’ve been dicey, LOL)
And of course, in later days when Apple was being overwhelmed by IBM (who brought MS along for the ride in the beginning) – their slogan was (join me unison old-Apple-timers), “Think Different.”
So for me “it just works.”
<i>Parallel name story: Way back in the day, John Watson’s company was up against National Cash Register (later NCR), and the name chosen was to show his co. would be bigger, better and broader in every respect. Not national, but international, and not just cash registers, but all kinds of “business machines.”
Ergo, the birth of IBM. A name which has, and still serves Big Blue well – except that it became both a prediction and a millstone back in the formative days of the PC wars – when it turned out that while IBM was formidable at serving the business market, they never really gained any footing in the hearts and minds of individual consumers.
(IBM is still a massive and successful world powerhouse, after a rough patch, when the upstart they’d nurtured while inexplicably failing to acquire it, or at least ownership of the OS which became Windows, turned on their once benefactor. Intellectual property rights DO matter.)
Apple Computer, meanwhile, had become a niche maker of PC’s with a boutique OS to niche vertical markets and the faithful, and hence, given their current sales mix, their renaming to the much more general Apple, Inc., meaning (back to the Newton logo) they now sell anything that enhances the inspiration that digital tech can bring to living life, solving problems, getting things done, etc. is working out brilliantly.
Finally, there was a follow-up to the IBM tops NCR story many decades after IBM won that war. When AT&T;was broken up into ATT and the seven “Baby Bells,” this freed them (the owners of the then most influential UNIX OS) to do something they’d long wanted: go into the computing business. Their initial efforts represented their greeness in the field and the fact that as a previously regulated monopoly they had no experience in competing with ANYONE in any field (including service- an enduring legacy many iPhone owners have experienced first hand).
So they decided to buy into the biz, and the company they bought was NCR (renamed to reflect its own moves beyond cash registers and into digital tech), and in a nod to the decades-earlier one upmanship, they re-rechristened their new unit, GBS, to take aim at IBM. Not “international,” but Global. And not just business machines, but entire “Business Systems.”
Clever. However, the gambit to leapfrog IBM failed and ATT divested themselves of NCR which took back its old name and then …????… while IBM has reinvented itself as primarily a provider of “global business solutions” with more services than equipment – and ATT is now – with coalescing among the baby Bells – largely a cellular provider who owing its current success to…. ….Apple, Inc.
Whoa, in history, things all DO just work together.<>
nohing like monday morning quarterbacking with 20/20 hindsight…
Life is strange and turns are sudden and unexpected. None of them knew what would become of their venture. Sad that he left though, but so did Woz, before Apple became really big.