Michal Ždanský It has been 38 years since the most valuable company in the world today, Apple Inc., formerly Apple Computer, was founded. Its founding is most often associated only with the couple Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and much less is said about the third founding member, Ronald Wayne. Wayne's tenure at the company was very short, lasting only 12 days.
When he left, he paid $800 for his ten percent stake, which would be worth $48 billion today. However, Wayne has contributed his bit to the mill in his short time at Apple. He is the author of the company's first logo and also wrote the charter. It should also be mentioned that Wayne was chosen by Jobs himself, whom he knew from Atari, also for his ability to resolve disagreements.
In an interview for NextShark, which he gave last September, Ronald Wayne revealed how some things turned out and how he views them today. According to him, his quick departure from Apple was pragmatic and reasonable for him at the time. He previously had his own company, which went bankrupt, from which he gained relevant experience. When he realized that a possible failure would turn against him financially, since Jobs and Wozniak were not particularly rich at the time, he preferred to back away from everything.
When the contract was done, Jobs went and did exactly what he was supposed to do. He got a contract with a company called Byte Shop to sell them a certain number of computers. And then he went and did what he was supposed to do again - he borrowed $15 for the materials needed to build the computers he ordered. Quite appropriate. The problem was, I heard that the Byte Shop had a terrible reputation for paying their bills. If the whole thing didn't work out, how was the $000 going to be repaid? Did they have money? No. Would it be up to me? Yes.
In the 500s, when Apple was teetering on the brink, Wayne made another bad decision regarding Apple. He sold the original charter for the relatively low price of $19. Almost 1,8 years later, the deed appeared at auction and was auctioned for $3600 million, XNUMX times the price at which Wayne got rid of it.
This is one thing I really regret in my whole Apple story. I sold that deed for $500. That was 20 years ago. It was the same deed that sold at auction about two years ago for 1,8 million. I regret that.
However, Wayne met Apple professionally, specifically Steve Jobs, many years later. It was just when the company was developing the iPhone. Wayne worked at a company called LTD, whose owner developed a chip that allowed objects to be manipulated via a touch screen so that the object moved exactly according to the movement of the finger, such as when manipulating images or the slider on the lock screen. Steve Jobs wanted Wayne to get this man to sell his company and his coveted patent. It was one of the rare moments when someone said "no" to Steve.
I said I wouldn't do that, but that I would talk to him about exclusive licensing of this technology to Apple—no other computer company would have access to that—but I wouldn't encourage him to sell his company because he had nothing else. And that was the end of it. I have to admit today that my decision was probably wrong. Not that my philosophical concept was wrong, but I should have given the person the opportunity to make up their own mind.
After all, he had also experienced several episodes with Jobs before. For example, he remembers how Jobs invited him to the presentation of the iMac G3. The company paid for his plane ticket and hotel, and Jobs seemed to have some special reason for wanting Wayne there. After the performance, they spent some time at the prepared banquet, then got into the car and drove to the Apple headquarters, where Steve Wozniak joined him for lunch and after a social conversation, he wished him a pleasant trip home. That was it, and Wayne still doesn't understand what the whole event was supposed to mean. According to him, the whole episode did not suit Steve at all. After all, he remembers the personality of Jobs as follows:
Jobs was not a diplomat. He was the type of person who played with people like chess pieces. Everything he did he did with great seriousness and he had every reason to believe that he was absolutely right. Which means that if your opinion differed from his, you should have had a damn good argument for it.
