You’ve heard of the “two Steves” who founded Apple Computer, but there was a third founder as well: Ronald Wayne. Today is his 90th birthday.
Wayne met Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak when all three were working at Atari. Wayne was older, and at Atari created the company’s manufacturing and inventory control system. He was a well-respected business executive at the time, and also had a creative side — he designed the cabinets for Atari arcade games, and also led several game development projects.
He got involved with the Steves in the mid-1970s when they were arguing about computer design, the future of the computer industry, and probably everything else. Wayne wanted to mediate between them and invited them to his home. All three talked for two hours, and in the process Jobs suggested they form a new company. Each Steve would own 45% and Wayne would own 10%, and his main role would be to act as tiebreaker when the other two were arguing. By all reports, there was a lot of arguing.
The Steves were in their 20s, but Wayne was 41 and owned a house and other assets. Also, he had attempted his own startup a few years before, designing and building slot machines. The company failed, and it took Wayne more than a year to extricate himself from the debts involved. Those things were critical factors in what happened next.
The three founded Apple Computer on April 1, 1976. At first it was not Apple Computer, Inc.; it was a three-way partnership. If a corporation owes money, the founders are not usually liable for those debts. But in a partnership all the partners are liable. The two Steves didn’t have much in the way of tangible assets, and each one had sold his most valuable possession (Wozniak sold his HP calculator; Jobs sold his car) to get electronic parts. So they had nothing to lose if Apple Computer, like most startups, failed. But Ronald Wayne had a lot to lose, and had recent experience losing it.
Nevertheless, they set out to build the company, and Wayne designed the first logo. He also wrote the documentation for the Apple I computer. But the company needed a lot more materials to build computers, and they managed to get a line of credit from a computer seller to fund what they needed. That was the last straw for Wayne; he withdrew from the company. He said that although he believed the company would succeed, “at the same time there could be significant bumps along the way and I couldn’t risk it. I had already had a rather unfortunate business experience. I was getting too old and those two men were whirlwinds. It was like having a tiger by the tail. I couldn’t keep up with these guys.”
Wayne received $800 for his 10% stake in Apple. Nowadays, of course, the company is worth trillions, and it’s easy to look back and criticize Wayne for his decision, but he’s always been happy about it. He says if he’d stayed, given all the stress, he “probably would have wound up the richest man in the cemetery.”
You can read more about him, and order his new book, at his website. There is still one open question though, and if I knew Ronald Wayne I’d ask him. On his 90th birthday today, what’s his opinion about thinking, when he was 41, that he was “getting too old?”
