“Ronald Wayne lives in a little house in the town of Pahrump, Nevada,” Madeline Moitozo Reports for Motherboard. “The 83-year-old designer and engineer was Apple’s original third co-founder, though nowadays he is perhaps best known as the unlucky guy who sold his 10 percent stake of the company for $800 just 12 days after it was incorporated in 1976. Today, it’s estimated that his shares would have been worth $67 billion.”
“But Wayne says he doesn’t regret the decision for a minute,” Tousignant reports. “Motherboard caught up with Wayne in a phone call recently to talk about his early days with Apple, his views on technology now, and why he doesn’t regret leaving what would become one of the world’s wealthiest and most influential tech companies.”
Motherboard: After Apple became big, did Steve Jobs or Steve Wozniak come back and offer you more money?
Ronald Wayne: Jobs came back on three separate occasions. We had lunch together and he offered me a job at Apple. And each of those times I said no. But no, they never came back and just offered me more money. I am sure that Woz likely wanted to, Jobs for some strange reason, had a very different view of money than Wozniak did.
Motherboard: What Apple products do you use now?
Ronald Wayne: I have never owned an Apple product in my life, and I didn’t even have a computer until the mid 90s. What would I do with it? If you say “anything you want,” I’d come across the table at you. I had to have a reason. It popped up in the mid 90s when a friend asked to write him a short story and I delivered to him on a typewriter. So I had someone cobble a computer together for me and it just had basic internet and (Corel’s) WordPerfect on it. And over the years I have never had anything but the simplest computers.
Read more, and see a recent photo of Wayne, in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: No regrets. Hard to believe, but we can see it, too. Wayne claims the stress would have killed him early on, so good for him!
Now, as a designer and engineer, Apple should give Wayne a Mac, an iPhone, an iPad, an Apple Watch, and a pair of AirPods – gratis – just so he can have them to see some of miracles he helped, in his own small way, to inspire.
Bonus video: Apple co-founders Steve Wozniak and Ron Wayne talk about Apple’s early years (2011):
SEE ALSO:
Rare Apple 1 with original first manual written by Apple co-founder Ronald Wayne up for auction – October 19, 2015
Apple ’76 founding contract, signed by Steve Jobs, could fetch $150,000 at Sotheby’s auction – November 28, 2011
Co-founders Woz, Ron Wayne discuss founding Apple, Steve Jobs (with video) – August 26, 2011
‘Third founder’ Ron Wayne pulled out of Apple after 2 weeks; stake would be worth $23 billion today – April 24, 2010
I don’t believe Wayne. I’ve read other articles about him, where it was said that he was very bitter. But, I don’t think it was proper for Apple, to offer a person who made it clear, by getting his very small stake back, to offer him money after they became successful. If he was a close friend, which he wasn’t, and I had met these people back then, then he declared, by wanting his portion annulled, that he had no confidence in the success of the company.
In addition, my belief is that his disinterest in Apple products, and computers in general, was a result of him being angry, at both himself, and Apple, for their subsequent success. I see him acting as though he doesn’t care, but the likelihood of that is very small. He hasn’t been successful over the years, and I see him thinking about his one great chance, and how he blew it.
Admit to that publicly, nope!
I agree he is more likely a sore loser. Living in Pahrump, Nevada (I’ve passed through there – a nothing whore town where you can also buy other legal fireworks) and proudly not technology smart shows the many ways this guy was/is a disingenuous loser, not worthy and deserved his fate. $800 was worth more in the 70’s but it was still a very modest investment. And frankly if many of us had dropped this kind of dough in the 70’s on a technology company would be millionaires today too.
Hindsight is a wonderful tool.
Good luck to him, he’s still alive and kicking. Not everything in life has a monetary value.
Well, that’s true – Steve Jobs can’t spend any of his billions today, can he?
The thing is that it did have a monetary value to him. According to past interviews with him, he feared that the company would fail, and that he would lose his stake. He also didn’t like the fact that his small share was really only there to be a tiebreaker between Jobs and Wozniak. In addition, he would be the back office guy, and he didn’t like that either.
Oh, noes! He threw away $67B dollars. Wayne’s only revenge is that he outlived Steve Jobs.
Heck, I spent many thousands of dollars on Apple computers in the 80’s and 90’s when I should have been using that money to buy Apple stock. If I had spent that money on the stock instead of computers, I’d be a millionaire many times over. Fortunately, in 2004, I started buying Apple stock and I’m glad I did as it turned out quite well for me. If I could only get my hands on a time machine… Seeing the future isn’t as easy as some people claim it is. The death of Apple seems a sure thing in many people’s eyes. Who knows? Future outcomes can’t be written in stone.
Yes. Wayne is alive, Jobs is not. Whether or not Jobs let his work take his eye off his health ball can be speculated about forever.
But Wayne can say this … 67 billion is zero billion when you are dead, and 67 billion cannot buy you your life back for one minute.
I’m on Wayne’s side. All you whiners need to get yourself a diaper change.
Wayne, Woz and Jobs were/are all odd birds- outliers if you will. That is not uncommon among the creative class and those that disrupt the standing order. If you read bios of Franklin, Edison, Ford, on through today’s new stars like Elon Musk they are not from the fat part of the Bell Curve.
This being America, Mr Wayne made a decision and has to now live with it. Most of us have a true story of the one that got away, it just usually does not tally in the tens of Billions of Dollars.
Out of interest if he was so anti computer technology as that comes across what was it that he was expected to contribute in those early days, indeed what was it that he did contribute. Must read more about him now to answer those questions, on the surface it simply doesn’t not make much sense.
Read my second post.