In some history books, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak are known as the two college dropouts-turned-geniuses who founded the Apple Computer Company in 1976. However, for the first 12 days of the business’s existence, there was a lesser-known third cofounder who played a critical role in getting the company off the ground.
At the time, Ronald Wayne was in his forties working at the electronics company Atari. As a close friend of Jobs, he agreed to help convince Wozniak to formalize Apple’s launch. As the sense-maker of the group, who even typed up the contract, Wayne was given a 10% share in the tech company, while Jobs and Wozniak each got a 45% stake.
But less than two weeks after the ink had dried, Wayne had removed himself from the contract—a decision that might be one of the biggest missed financial opportunities in history.
While Wayne sold his stake for $800 at the time and later received $1,500 to forfeit any claim to the company, his 10% share could now be worth between $75 billion and $400 billion, thanks to the company’s now over $4 trillion market cap—45 years in the making.
As new investors came on board and the company went public in 1980, the ownership stakes of Jobs and Wozniak were diluted over time—an outcome Ronald Wayne likely would have faced, too.
Why Wayne cashed out
Wayne’s decision to cash out may look foolish in hindsight, but in the moment, the then41-year-old believed he was looking out for his own financial wellbeing.
In the company’s first days, Jobs borrowed $15,000 to complete a purchase order of “50 or 100 computers” from the Byte Shop, a retail outlet that had a history of not paying its bills, Wayne recalled to Business Insider in 2017.
“If we didn’t get paid, how are we going to pay back $15,000?” he said.
“Jobs and Woz didn’t have two nickels to rub together. I, on the other hand, had a house, and a car, and a bank account—which meant that I was on the hook if that thing blew up.”
An early retirement
Perhaps surprisingly, finances were not the only reason Wayne took his name off the contract. He also feared the experience would put the nails in the coffin of his career. After all, Jobs and Wozniak were bright young stars and nearly half his age at the time. Wayne thought that meant they’d be propelled forwards, while he’d have to watch from the sidelines.
“If I stayed at Apple I would have probably ended up the richest man in the cemetery,” the now 91-year-old recalled to CNN.
“I knew that I was standing in the shadow of giants and that I would never have a project of my own,” he echoed to Business Insider. “I would wind up in the documentation department, shuffling papers for the next 20 years of my life, and that was not the future that I saw for myself.”
And while Wayne recalled having no regrets at the time, he’s since admitted it would’ve been nice not to worry about money. To make ends meet, he’s relied on renting out part of his property, as well as cashing his monthly Social Security check.
“I’ve never been rich, but I’ve never been hungry either,” he said.
A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on June 24, 2025.
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