Apple News
The Man Who Sold Apple Stake Now Worth $200 Billion
Apple founder Ronald Wayne was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1934 and went on to train as a technical draftsman at New York's School of Industrial Arts.
He then headed west to California, arriving in 1956, and founded a slot-machine company.
This was a limited liability company, but he felt so guilty about losing investors' money when it didn't work out that he eventually repaid them out of his latest earnings. He went on to take a job at Atari, where he met a young computer programmer called Steve Jobs.
What was the investment?
Jobs, having been dissuaded by Wayne from setting up a slot-machine company, included him as a partner in his new venture, a Company called Apple Computers, set up with Steve Wozniak in 1976.
Despite drawing up the papers for the company and producing the original logo and some early designs, 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.
This meant in 1976 he sold a 10 percent stake for just $800 (plus an additional $1,500 later on).
That stake would be worth around $200 billion now.
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