Wayne had 10 percent of Apple’s shares, which means he would have been the owner of $250 billion had he not sold them.
In exchange for a 10% ownership in the company, Wayne joined Apple co-founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, who were very young at the time, to provide the business with “adult supervision”.
Technology giant Apple, as of March 23, has become the biggest company globally in terms of market capitalization. It would sound like a Utopian dream to own even merely 10 per cent of the company’s share. However, if there is one man who would know how it feels to watch that dream slip away right from their hands, it would be Ronald Wayne.
Ronald Wayne is the lesser-known co-founder of Apple, whose name is mostly shadowed by the other co-founder Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Imagine selling off shares of a company for merely Rs 10,000 because you were sceptical of the future of the company and the company grows to become the biggest in the world with shares worth several lakh crore. This is exactly what happened with Ronald Wayne.
In exchange for a 10% ownership part in the company, Wayne joined Apple co-founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, who were very young at the time, to provide the business with “adult supervision” and to manage mechanical engineering and paperwork.
Wayne started to worry that any debts the company accrued would be his personal responsibility. 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.
Wayne, therefore, had his name removed from the contract after only 12 days with Wozniak and Jobs and sold his shares back to his co-founders for Rs 10,000. Little did he know that he was giving up not just his shares but the opportunity to be among the richest persons in the world.
If someone has even one percent share of Apple today, they would be the owner of about 25 billion dollars. Wayne had 10 percent of Apple’s shares, which means he would have been the owner of $250 billion had he not sold them. Tesla owner Elon Musk is currently the richest person in the world and his net worth is around $187 billion. This means Wayne would have been the richest man in the world today.
Wayne once again got a chance to earn because of Apple. But once again, luck did not favour him. Wayne had possession of the company’s first contract, typed by himself on a typewriter back in the 70s. Wondering what to do with it, he sold it for a mere $500 in 1990. The same contract paper was sold at an auction in 2011 for $1.59 million.
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