Ron Wayne, who was one of the three original founders of Apple in 1976, along with Steves Wozniak and Steve Jobs walked away from the company just 12 days after co-founding it.
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Apple is one the most significant companies in the world, with market capitalism of $3 trillion. And if someone has even one percent share of Apple today, they would be the owner of about 25 billion dollars. Ron Wayne, who was one of the three original founders of Apple in 1976, along with Steves Wozniak and Steve Jobs walked away from the company just 12 days after co-founding it. Forty-two at the time, Wayne provided much-needed adult supervision in a company of young creatives. Wayne drew the first Apple logo, wrote the three men’s original partnership agreement, and wrote the Apple I manual.
If, in 1976, Ronald Wayne had held on to his 10-percent stake of Apple, he’d be one of the world’s wealthiest people. As Wayne has told interviewers over the years, he had his reasons. But he also missed out on a massive fortune. Despite drawing up the papers for the company and producing the original logo, Wayne got cold feet about being a partner. He worried about having to be liable for any debts the company would incur and felt that if things went wrong, he was too old to start over.
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“There were many reasons why I took myself out of it 12 days later,” Wayne told NextShark in 2013, reflecting on his decision to leave Apple. One of the reasons was a “straightforward business decision” based on his earlier experience starting a slot machine company. “That was when I learned that I was a hell of a lot better engineer than I was a business man,” he said.
To complete Apple’s first contract with The Byte Shop, a Bay Area computer shop that had placed an order for about 100 computers, Jobs took out a loan for $15,000. Yet because The Byte Shop has a history of not paying its debts, Wayne was concerned that Apple wouldn’t be able to get their money back. While Jobs and Wozniak were both broke with not much to lose, Wayne owned a house and other assets and worried that if the deal failed, the financial burden would fall on him.
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He took his name off the contract and sold his stakes for just 800 dollars. Had he held the shares, he would have 290 billion dollars. He would have been the world’s richest man. Tesla owner Elon Musk is currently the richest person in the world and his net worth is around $187 billion. “Nobody could have anticipated how big Apple would become,” Wayne told the site at the time. Nevertheless, Wayne claimed he didn’t regret the decision. “If I had stayed with Apple I probably would have wound up the richest man in the cemetery,” he said.
