Apple Had Three Founders: Two Became Incredibly Wealthy, One Went Bust

Apple has been in existence for 50 years, and many people know that it was founded by two individuals: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. However, there was actually another person who helped establish the company named Ronald Wayne on 1 April 1976.

Wayne’s role was to be the adult among the two Steves. This was because he was 41 years old at the time, while Jobs was 21 and Wozniak was 25.

Wayne helped found the company and named it Apple Computer half a century ago. This included writing the first formal partnership agreement that legally created the company.

Not only that, Wayne created Apple’s original logo. The image consisted of Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree with a pen and ink.

His stake in Apple was not as large as that of the other two founders. He received 10% of the shares, while Jobs and Wozniak each held 45%.

However, Wayne never received any significant profits as one of Apple’s founders. On the contrary, he is said to have been worried when founding Apple.

Quoting Phone Arena, one reason was that he was the only one among the three who had assets at stake, having just experienced a business failure and knowing the risks involved.

Apple was also still a partnership, not a corporation. This meant that the three partners had personal liability for any debts incurred by the company.

He eventually left after 12 days. Unfortunately, he was not as fortunate as the other two founders and was only given US$800 as compensation for the work he had done previously.

That amount was later increased by another US$1,770 a year later. This was because Apple’s first CEO, Mike Markkula, who was also an investor, decided to pay each partner.

If Wayne had stayed, Phone Arena writes that he could potentially have received US$377 billion from the 10% stake he held.

Not only that, he also failed to capitalise on a second opportunity to become wealthy from Apple. This happened when he sold his copy of the original Apple partnership agreement in the 1990s.

Wayne sold it for US$500. Twenty-one years later, the same document was auctioned for US$1.6 million.

Its value rose again when Christie’s auctioned the document for US$2.5 million.