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  • 2016-08-14 (xsd:date)
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  • Third Apple Co-Founder Sold Share Now Worth Billions for $800 (en)
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  • People all over the world recognize the name and face of the late Steve Jobs, the visionary who co-founded Apple Computer in 1976 and led the company through the development of such revolutionary products as the Apple II computer, the Macintosh, and the iPod portable music player. Not quite as well known but still fondly remembered by computer aficionados is Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who developed the company's first two products (the Apple I and Apple II) but afterwards held a much less visible role in the company's operations than Jobs did. What many people don't know is that Apple actually had a third co-founder, Ronald Wayne. Wayne's name (and potential fortune) have been lost in the mists of time because he left Apple and sold off his interest the company early on, thereby letting go of shares that would later be worth billions of dollars. Back in the early days of Apple, when the company was little more than an idea and a name, Steve Jobs brought in Ronald Wayne, a chief draftsman at Atari (where Jobs also worked). According to Wayne himself, he was brought into the fledgling company as a more mature voice (he was 42, while Jobs and Wozniak were in their 20's) to mediate disagreements between the other two partners: As Steve Wozniak outlined in his 2005 autobiography iWoz, Wayne quickly made himself valuable by drawing up the company's initial partnership agreement, rendering the first Apple logo, and writing the operating manual for the news company's first product, the Apple I: However, Wayne quickly developed cold feet over Jobs' taking out too much debt too soon, and just ten days after Apple's first partnership papers were filed, Wayne bailed on the nascent computer company: For $800, plus an additional $1,500 he received several months later when Apple incorporated, Wayne gave up his entire ownership interest in the business, thereby trading a 10% share of a company whose market capitalization in 2021 was about $2.5 trillion for roughly $11,000 in 2021 dollars. Despite what many people might view as a life-crushing reversal, Wayne has consistently maintained that he has never regretted his decision to leave Apple: The one thing that Wayne does regret? In the 1990s, when Apple was foundering and the company was the target of takeover rumors, he sold the original 1976 Apple partnership agreement signed by him, Jobs, and Wozniak for $500. In 2011, that document was resold at auction and fetched a whopping $1.6 million. (en)
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