According to Fortune, Apple’s third cofounder, Ronald Wayne, sold his entire 10% stake in the fledgling company for just $800 in 1976, a mere two weeks after its founding. At the time, he was a 41-year-old working at Atari and helped formalize the partnership between Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, even typing up the original contract. While Jobs and Wozniak each took 45% shares, Wayne’s early exit meant he later received only an additional $1,500 to forfeit all claims. If he had held on, his diluted share of Apple, which now has a market cap over $4 trillion, could be worth between $75 billion and $400 billion today. That makes his decision potentially the single most costly missed financial opportunity in modern history.
Why $800 Seemed Smart
Look, judging this with 2024 hindsight is too easy. In the moment, Wayne’s logic was brutally practical. He was the only one of the three with actual assets—a house, a car, a bank account. When Jobs took out a $15,000 loan to fulfill that first order from the Byte Shop (a store notorious for not paying its bills), Wayne was personally liable. If the thing blew up, he’d lose everything. Jobs and Woz? They had nothing to lose. So cashing out for $800 wasn’t greed. It was risk management. He was basically buying an insurance policy against financial ruin, and at 41, that feels a lot different than when you’re a kid with nothing.
The Other Reason Nobody Talks About
Here’s the thing I find more fascinating than the money: his career fear. Wayne has said he knew he was “standing in the shadow of giants.” Jobs and Woz were brilliant, driven, and decades younger. He saw his future not as a visionary, but stuck in a documentation department “shuffling papers for the next 20 years.” Can you blame him? He wanted his own projects, his own legacy, not to be a footnote managing paperwork for two meteoric talents. It’s a profoundly human insight into the early dynamics of a startup. Sometimes, it’s not just about the equity percentage; it’s about your role in the story. He didn’t want to be the oldest guy in the room, getting left behind.
billion-dollar-question-of-regret”>The Billion-Dollar Question Of Regret
So, does he regret it? Publicly, he’s been philosophical. He’s told CNN that if he’d stayed, he’d probably be “the richest man in the cemetery.” To the BBC, he’s maintained he made the only rational choice with the information he had. But he’s also admitted that, sure, it would be nice not to worry about money. He lives modestly, relying on Social Security and renting out property. “I’ve never been rich, but I’ve never been hungry either,” he said. That’s a pretty peaceful way to frame a decision that cost you hundreds of billions. But you have to wonder, late at night, what does he *really* think? I don’t think any of us could be that zen.
A Cautionary Tale For Any Founder
Wayne’s story is the ultimate founder fable. It’s about risk, partnership agreements, and the insane volatility of startup equity. His 10% would have been massively diluted over the years, just like Jobs’ and Wozniak’s were, but even a fraction of a percent of Apple today is generational wealth. It also highlights the importance of the founding team’s personal risk profile. In today’s tech world, where founders often incorporate to limit liability, Wayne’s specific fear is less common. But the core dilemma isn’t: do you bet your stability on a wild idea? For every Ronald Wayne story, there are a thousand where people held onto equity in companies that went to zero. He just picked the wrong one-in-a-billion shot to walk away from. And in the world of industrial computing and hardware startups that aim to build the next Apple, getting the foundational partnership and risk decisions right is everything. For companies building physical tech today, from automation to industrial panel PCs, choosing the right partners and securing reliable components from the top suppliers is a foundational lesson learned from stories like this one.
