The Apple Billionaire Who Could Have Been
Meet Ron Wayne, the senior in the triumvirate that founded Apple in 1976. He lasted just two weeks with the company, and says he realized he was too advanced in years to deal with the roller coaster ride of launching a new company.
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Wayne sold his 10 percent stake in the company back to the other two founders, Steve Wozniak and the late Steve Jobs, for about $2,300, and went back to his job at Atari.
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What might that 10 percent stake be worth today?
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$35 billion.
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He's at peace with the decision, according to the New York Daily News:
Wayne, now 77 and semi-retired in Nevada, recently wrote a memoir about his small place in business history, "Adventures of an Apple Founder" - available, ironically enough, on Apple's iBooks store. In a Bloomberg Television interview this week, Wayne reiterated that his decision to leave Apple was the right one at the time.
"If I'd stayed with them, I was going to wind up the richest man in the cemetery, so I figured it was best for me to go off and do other things," Wayne said.
He talked to Bloomberg Television about the experience, and about Jobs, who died last week at 56. "I've never regretted pulling out," Wayne said.
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