In every story there are winners and losers. Today we want to talk about someone who was part of the second group, although He maintained throughout his life that he had made the right decision. We are talking about Ronald Wayne, one of the co-founders of Apple. He decided to sell his 10% stake in the company for only fifteen hundred dollars. Wayne suffered a similar fate to Daniel Kottke but for a very different reason: backing down at the worst possible time.
Just twelve days after founding the company, Wayne got cold feet. The main reason for his decision was the fear of possible debts that the company could generate, which could ruin you financially. Wayne, who was older than Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, felt he couldn’t keep up with these “whirlwinds.” He thought he was getting too old to take risks. He had his whole life ahead of him.
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Ronald G. Wayne, the third in the running within Apple
Ronald Wayne always thought that if he had stayed at Apple, his life would have been boring, limited to working in the documentation department. His aversion to risk, aimed at the most immediate personal well-being, They separated him from a career full of riches.
Consider that Apple Inc. has a stock price of $192.07 (176.21 dollars) and a market capitalization of approximately $2.95 billion. Additionally, Apple reported quarterly revenue of $119.6 billion and quarterly earnings per share of $2.18. This data gives us a clue and reflects the current value of Apple stock and its financial performance in 2024.
If Ronald Wayne had retained his 10% stake in Apple, based on current market capitalization, his stake could be worth approximately $295 billion. approximately 270.64 billion dollars. He would top the Forbes 500 list. Today, Bernard Arnault, the French businessman with a fortune estimated at $1.1 trillion, would be in the lead, but Wayne would be just behind, ahead of Elon Musk’s $195 billion, $194,000 million. of dollars from Jeff Bezos or the tycoon Larry Ellison.
However, it is important to remember that this is a hypothetical calculation and the actual value of a stock can be affected by many factors, including stock dilution, taxes and investment decisions. personal over time. Maybe he would have sold and bought more stocks and increased his potential wealth.
Today, at age 90, Wayne barely leaves the house and lives quietly in his home in Pahrump, Nevada, living off government subsidies. In fact, with the money he made from selling his shares, Ronald opened a postage stamp store in Milpitas, California. It was the 70s and business had no place at that time. Despite several financial failures, he filed more than a dozen technological patents, without ever bringing them to fruition. His precarious economic situation does not allow him to fly beyond paper.
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