Apple's 'Forgotten' Third Founder Claims He Still Owns 10%. So Why Isn't He A Billionaire?

Fifty years ago today, on April 1, 1976, Ronald G. Wayne founded what was then known as the Apple Computer Company with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, his coworkers at the game maker Atari. The Steves each got a 45% stake of the fledgling company, and Wayne received 10%. Less than two weeks later, Wayne, fearing liability should the start-up run into financial trouble, legally removed his name from the Apple partnership.

It has been widely reported that Wayne sold his his 10% stake in Apple for $800, though he has disputed that categorization, saying he thought the check he received in the mail was a “gratuity.” In 1977, he received an additional $1,500, reportedly to forfeit any future claims to the company.

Today, of course, Apple’s market cap is some $3.6 trillion. Meaning, had Wayne held onto his share, he’d be an obscenely rich man.

“I haven’t enough fingers and toes to count the number of times over the years that people have asked me (in pitying tones) if I’d ever regretted my decision,” Wayne wrote in his 2011 memoir. “I will state, here and now (but probably not for the last time) that I have never regretted my action.” He added, “Jobs, in particular, was an absolute whirlwind. It was like having a tiger by the tail. It took little consideration for me to conclude that if I stayed with the enterprise, I’d probably wind up the richest man in the cemetery.”

Wayne, now 91 and living in Pahrump, Nevada, recently revealed a new wrinkle to the story. “But all along, from then to now, I still held and now hold, as far as I’m concerned, a 10% stake,” he told Fast Company. “I never sold my interest in Apple to anyone at any time for any amount of money whatsoever.”

In my recent video interview with him, Wayne made a similar assertion, but frustratingly, declined to get into the details.

Read on to hear Wayne’s thoughts on what it’s like being Apple’s “forgotten founder,” how Steve Jobs’s death affected him (or rather did not), and how Wayne himself thinks he’ll be remembered. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Mark Yarm: Hi, Ronald. How are you doing?

Ronald G. Wayne: About as well as can be expected since I’m 91 years old.

MY: You met Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak at the video game maker Atari. What were your first impressions of both of them?

RGW: They had wonderful ambitions and ideas, and I found them quite interesting. And at the same time, they kind of viewed me as a mentor, because I was in my 40s. They were in their 20s, and I had 20 years’ experience in the field, so they could draw upon me for information they had no direct access to before.

They were absolute foils for each other. Jobs was all business: “How do we make money? What can we do to get somewhere?” And Woz was a very whimsical fellow. And everything he did, he did for the pure fun of doing it. He wanted to build product and just give it away. And of course, Jobs had a different idea. He wanted to build product and sell it for as much as he could get for it. They were perfect for each other.

MY: How did you end up co-founding what was then known as the Apple Computer Company in 1976?

RGW: Jobs came to me one day at Atari and said he and his buddy Wozniak, whom I hadn’t met yet, were planning to set up a company to manufacture personal computers, which I thought was a slick idea. It was the right product at the right time. He said he had only one problem, and that was that Wozniak did not understand the significance of proprietaryship, that is to say, the circuits that he would design would become the property of the company that they were putting together. Wozniak was very parental about the circuits that he designed. That, of course, prevented them initially from putting a company together, because they couldn’t resolve it.

Ronald G. Wayne holding an original Apple Computer Company contract (Credit: Charles A. Stigger)

So Jobs came to me trying to get me to talk to Woz about the proprietorship concept. And I said, “Fine, no problem.” I invited them over to my apartment, and that evening they came by. And it took me about 25 minutes to get Woz to understand the importance of the proprietorship in the circuit designs. When Woz said, “I understand,” Jobs jumped up, literally, and said, “That’s it! We’re going to form a company.” He and Woz would have 45% each, and I would have 10% as a tiebreaker. And that’s how it all began.

I dragged them into my office, sat down, and typed up the original founding contracts—three copies. It was something of a shock to Wozniak; he’d never seen anybody who wasn’t an attorney sit down and type up a partnership agreement. We signed the three copies, and that was the formal beginning of Apple Computer.

MY: You also designed Apple’s first logo. Tell me about the thought behind the design.

RGW: I had caught some of Wozniak’s whimsy and decided that rather than producing a 20th-century logo, I would produce a 19th-century logo. It was Newton under the apple tree in a gothic profile, with a ribbon around it saying Apple Computer Company, and a little note at the bottom, saying “A mind forever voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.” That was a line from Wordsworth, one of my favorite poets. It took me about a day, a day and a half, to put that together. It was all pen and ink, and I thoroughly enjoyed doing it. And then, of course, they went out and got a regular logo, in the form of the apple. My logo was whimsical. Theirs was business-like, shall we say.

Apple 1976 logo

Apple’s original logo, designed by Wayne (Credit: Charles A. Stigger)

MY: Famously, you exited the company 12 days later. What was your thinking behind that?

RGW: There were difficulties interpreting how a company should be run, and we had disputes about it, and I just sort of slipped away. That was it. I can’t say much more about that.

MY: From what I’ve read, you thought you might be held liable for the business if it failed.

RGW: You know about that?

MY: Yeah, it’s in your autobiography. So, Apple is now worth some $3.6 trillion. If you still owned 10% of it, you’d have $360 billion. You’ve repeatedly said that you don’t regret exiting the business. Why not?

RGW: The fact is that I slipped out from under the liability situation. First of all, I never actually sold my 10% share. I never actually sold that. There was no contract with anyone, nor did I receive payment from anyone under contract to sell my 10%. I feel that I still own 10% of the enterprise, but that’s something we have to argue about.

MY: Oh, have you ever approached Apple about this?

RGW: Not yet, not yet.

MY: What are you waiting for?

RGW: I don’t think I can discuss that at the moment. [Since this interview was conducted earlier this month, Wayne has publicly made the claim that he still owns 10% of Apple a couple of times. In a follow-up call with PCMag, he declined to elaborate on this assertion.]

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MY: OK. But you’ve said in the past that you don’t regret not becoming insanely rich. Why not?

RGW: Naturally, I would [want that]. However, I am also a realist. Circumstances evolve, and you go with the drift, you do the best you can with the circumstances you’re in. I’m a pragmatic person and follow things according to events as they evolve.

MY: Just to clarify, do you have any regrets here?

RGW: Regrets? It’s difficult to say. Would I like to be a billionaire? Of course I would. But if you call that a regret or not, I don’t know.

“Jobs’s death? It was just an event—that was all. It’s not something that affected me personally.”

MY: When was the last time you saw Steve Jobs before he passed?

RGW: Oh, my goodness, that was many, many years ago, decades ago. I can’t pinpoint the last time.

MY: Were you surprised at how iconic a businessman he became?

RGW: No, because that was his drive. Everything he did was, “How do we make money?”

MY: How did his death affect you?

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RGW: I wasn’t glad, and I wasn’t sad. It was just an event—that was all. It’s not something that affected me personally.

MY: Have you kept watch over Apple? Do you have any opinion on Tim Cook’s management style?

RGW: I effectively lost virtually all interest in Apple over a span of time. I had other things to do. I had a living to make. I had things to do and places to go and food to eat and jobs to do. I didn’t think much of Apple.

MY: I read a profile of you from about 10 years ago that said you didn’t own any Apple products. Is that still the case?

RGW: I never owned an Apple product except an Apple phone that was given to me about six years ago. I was given [an Apple] laptop once. I gave it to a family member to show me how to use it, and I never saw it again.

MY: What do you use for a laptop or a personal computer?

RGW: I have a Dell.

“Apple in 2076? Theoretically, that’s difficult to tell, because the whole world is going to turn upside down and inside out between now and then.”

MY: How does it feel to be referred to as the “forgotten founder” of Apple?

RGW: “Forgotten founder” would be reasonably accurate. The vast majority of people do not even know me as a co-founder.

MY: Do you wish more people knew you as a co-founder?

RGW: I have many wishes. That’s not large on my list.

MY: What are your bigger wishes?

RGW: Eventually, to become wealthy and to do all the things I couldn’t do before because I didn’t have the means. For instance, I spent a considerable amount of time and effort trying to get the world to understand—before it all hit the fan—this economy and what they needed to do to defend themselves. I attempted to publish several books on the subject, only I didn’t have the means of distributing or marketing them. That’s been a tragedy, not so much to me as to the public that remained ill-informed.

MY: Where do you think Apple will be in 2076?

RGW: Theoretically, that’s difficult to tell, because the whole world is going to turn upside down and inside out between now and then. As I said, economically, we’re heading for a trainwreck. It’s unavoidable, right?

MY: What do you think your legacy will be?

RGW: My hero when I was a child was Leonardo da Vinci, a guy who did everything he wanted in every kind of field he could get his paws into. I was a polymath. I could do everything. I did it because I was job shopping for 12 years, which gave me exposure to doing every facet of engineering work, from being a machinist to a tech writer to an illustrator to a draftsman to an engineer. I created the first totally electronic slot machine to be qualified by the Gaming Commission. I did a number of things that were firsts and originals. They were the result of pursuing things that fascinated me, and I just ran off in that direction. I think I’ll be remembered as a polymath.