In 1976 Apple was founded by Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs and a largely unknown former investor named Ronald Wayne. Two weeks after the company was started Wayne sold his stake for $2,300, believing that the company was on shaky ground and would never take off. Now 35 years later Ronald’s original contract with the company’s more famous founders has fetched $1.6 million at a Sotheby’s auction.
While Wayne was only with the company for a very short period of time he managed to do what was requested of him by Steve Jobs, namely he convinced Steve Wozniak to leave Hewlett Packard and help invent the first Apple computers.
Ronald Wayne would be worth nearly $36 billion in 2011 dollars if he had stuck to his guns as Jobs and Wozniak did.
The buyer of the business contract was Eduardo Cisneros, CEO of Cisneros Corp. who took it off the hands of seller Wade Saadi. Wade had purchased the original business contract from Wayne for several thousand dollars in 1994.
If you want to make millions or even billions of dollars I would suggest asking Ronald Wayne what he plans to invest in and then do the opposite.
Do you think Ronald Wayne has made some of the worst business decisions in Silicon Valley history?
