13 ms·

Apple at 40: The forgotten founder who gave it all away

199 points by grahamel 11y ago

kmfrk 11y ago
Is he really forgotten at this point? I've been told about the founding of Apple more often than I have the gospel. Well, the other gospel anyway.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Everybody knows about Jobs and Woz, but I hardly ever see mention of the third guy. I'd bet that most Apple fans couldn't come up with the name "Ronald Wayne" without looking it up, and likely don't even realize there was a third.
randomgyatwork 11y ago
Seems like this guy has had bad luck in his decisions to sell apply stuff.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
  Seems like he was happy with the decision, he doesn't strike me as particularly materialistic.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - m52go 11y ago
    One doesn't need to be materialistic to feel regret about missing the chance to acquire money. Maybe he has philanthropic goals that will go unmet, maybe he has startup ideas that capital could've helped test, etc.
- moron4hire 11y ago
  > "If money was the only thing that I wanted, there are many ways I could've done that. But it was much more important to do what appealed to me."
- grahamel 11y ago
  From his wikipedia page it does seem like it >In the early 1990s Wayne sold the original Apple company agreement, signed in 1976 by Jobs, Wozniak and himself, for $500. In 2011 the contract was sold at auction for $1.6 million.
nxzero 11y ago
It's hard to tell if he's not materialistic - though he seems happy with the choices he made and in the end, happiness is a choice.
- gdulli 11y ago
  I don't consider myself unmaterialistic. I'm happy that I'm comfortable and secure. I don't put too much value on material things but some of them do make my life better. If I could get a ton more money without anything else in my life changing, then sure, I'd take it. But if that money came with power, a high profile job, I'd have to work a ton, have a ton of stress, change my lifestyle, my main social circles would have to be with other rich people, nearly all the attention I ever got would be from people I can't trust not to want something... just no. I'm happy now and that's not an equilibrium I want to upset. Nothing about the day to day lives of rich, powerful people seems like so much fun as to outweigh the negatives, which if you pay attention, seem to be many. "The best life is one the gods don't notice."
  - nxzero 11y ago
    Just to be clear, since it's a bit unclear, you're not the person the is the subject of the article, but a random person responding to the comment I posted.
ttflee 11y ago
Is there any term in agreements like that an entrepreneur who chose to quit prematurely shall transfer his/her share at the price of 1 dollar in 1970s?
personlurking 11y ago
I always wonder how true that last statement is - to the tune of "Find something you love so much that if you do it you'll never work a day in your life." I've enjoyed things that, when they became an obligation, I stopped enjoying. Though I think it says more about myself than the actual veracity of the quote.
- mod 11y ago
  I loved poker until I played it professionally. I love programming, but not when I'm at work. I'm growing a garden, but I know I'd hate being a farmer. The only job I truly loved was working with children, but there was no (financial) future in it. I didn't have to work, but I wouldn't have been able to live either.
  - nkassis 11y ago
    There was an article I read somewhere (maybe here?) a couple weeks ago that mentioned that employee happiness and autonomy are correlated. That could be the issue with turning passions into a job. You lose the autonomy you had before.
    - qznc 11y ago
      The motivation triple is "autonomy, mastery, and purpose" http://www.danpink.com/drive/ http://www.danpink.com/drive/
  - pmarreck 11y ago
    > I loved poker until I played it professionally. Probably a combination of intrinsic to extrinsic motivation (http://www.spring.org.uk/2009/10/how-rewards-can-backfire-and-reduce-motivation.php http://www.spring.org.uk/2009/10/how-rewards-can-backfire-an... and https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-trust/201403/new-kind-reward-increases-intrinsic-motivation https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-trust/201403/new-...) and a sudden lack of control. > The only job I truly loved was working with children There's gotta be SOMEthing you can do there, maybe volunteer, tutor, whatever? I mentor'd an at-risk teen for a while, he ended up going off to college. If that is a passion you have, you should sneak it in there somehow. Maybe teach kids why Texas Hold'em No Limit is the greatest partial-information game ever invented by man? ;)
CapitalistCartr 11y ago
This is an excellent example of why startups are dominated by the young, single, affluent. They have nearly nothing to lose. The rest of us do. "If the company goes poof, we are individually liable for the debts," Wayne explained. "Jobs and Wozniak didn't have two nickels to rub together. I had a house, and a bank account, and a car… I was reachable!"
- nkassis 11y ago
  It seems that the average age of startup founders is actually 40 according to this article: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/235357 http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/235357 I can see why, by then you get some financial stability and kids get older, a good amount of experience etc...
  - mikeash 11y ago
    It seems like a different environment now. The debt here sounds like a bank loan or something along those lines where they expected to get paid back in cash. These days, it's more likely to be a VC investment or a Kickstarter or something else where there's no debt created and the people giving the money are just buying some sort of share in the company's potential success.
    - takno 11y ago
      It is better, but it's difficult to guarantee that the company will never go through a stage where a personally-guaranteed overdraft is the best option. At least in the UK these are usually jointly and severally repayable by the founders. At that point I'd far rather be the founder in my early 20s with nothing but debt than the one with the house who is going to end up homeless.
    - digi_owl 11y ago
      I wonder if back then was better than it is now. The whole VC thing seems to lead to a whole lot of pump and dump schemes. It, and going public, seem to lead to a whole lot of short term thinking.
SonicSoul 11y ago
this is incredible. According to the article he backed out of the shares because of possible liability of the deal went south, but that doesn't make sense. If they incorporated his personal assets would not be up for grabs if the company couldn't pay it's debt. Also the fact that he did this means that he does care about financial stability and this seemed like a bad investment. In either case, it's impossible to predict these things so statistically he probably made the right move, but what bad luck!! Im surprised Steve didn't get him back into apple once they were well off, or maybe there is more to this story.
- CapitalistCartr 11y ago
  Jobs even ripped off Woz when the opportunity presented itself. He was the last person to give any part of "his" baby away. "When they made Breakout for Atari, Wozniak and Jobs were going to split the pay 50-50. Atari gave Jobs $5000 to do the job. He told Wozniak he got $700 so Wozniak took home $350."
  - cjslep 11y ago
    You may be curious to know Woz does not hold it against Steve Jobs. He clarified that with me before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8706690 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8706690
    - bithush 11y ago
      Woz seems to be such a gentle and kind guy who just loves tech and gadgets. I don't think I have ever read of anyone having a problem with him. Pretty interesting as most people at such a high level in any sector (not just IT) are usually known to be assholes.
      - CaptSpify 11y ago
        I've always felt that if people idolized Woz more than Jobs, the world would be a better place. That's probably just my own tinkerer/engineer bias coming to light though.
mooreds 11y ago
Don't forget that it is silly to equate 10% of the company at founding with $60 billion today. He would definitely be rich, but there would have been a fair bit of dilution.
- eric_h 11y ago
  True, but I think it's quite reasonable to say that his share would still have been worth N * 10^9, for some value of N > 1
snowwrestler 11y ago
We've all given stuff away by making decisions in our lives. We make what we think is the best choice, and then we live with the consequences. Regret doesn't change tomorrow. That said, were I in Woz or Job's shoes, I would have given this guy a big check at some point, as a thank you. Actually maybe Woz did--neither he nor Wayne seem like folks who would talk about such a thing if had happened. Not likely from Jobs though.
rottyguy 11y ago
Assuming he hung in, would he have sold out when Jobs got fired back in the 90's? We always try and maximize the winnings for a good story but miss the critical thinking along the way. Risk=Reward (or massive failure). Just sounds like Mr. Wayne was not big into risk.. Very understandable.
- goodcanadian 11y ago
  Indeed. It calculates what a 10% stake would be worth now, but it is highly unlikely that he would still be a 10% owner even if he had stayed the course. It is not as though Steve Jobs still held 45% of the company at the time of his death.
  - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
    Would Apple even be the same company if he had stayed? I mean, maybe it'd still be taking loans from Microsoft.
  - rottyguy 11y ago
    I'm also not convinced the stress of it all played didn't play a part to Steve's illness and eventual death. At 81, Mr. Wayne is still celebrating life.
1457389 11y ago
So am I the only one here who knows what Pahrump is (in)famous for?
- ChiCommTroll 11y ago
  only on this coast
gnicholas 11y ago
> "If the company goes poof, we are individually liable for the debts," Wayne explained. Definitely not true, since Apple was a corporation. Creditors can only "pierce the corporate veil" (and tap shareholder assets) where a corporation is a sham, which Apple certainly wasn't. I hope he had other reasons for walking away, since this one doesn't make any sense!
- bryanlarsen 11y ago
  Before the age of angel investors, most corporations got their initial working capital through personally-secured loans. Those were either loans directly to founders (their credit card, perhaps) which was then loaned to the corporation, or a direct loan to the corporation personally secured by the founders.
  - gnicholas 11y ago
    Good point—this may have been a factor. But this story [1] about Apple's founding indicates that they got financing based on a verified purchase order: > A bank turned the two scruffy guys down for a loan and another computer parts store declined an equity stake in the new venture. “Finally Jobs was able to convince the manager of Cramer Electronics to call Paul Terrell to confirm that he had really committed to a $25,000 order,” says Isaacson. Terrell confirmed it and then Jobs got the parts on 30 days credit. It's possible that Cramer Electronics would have asked for the loan to be personally secured, but it sounds like that would have been futile given the Steves' lack of other assets. I haven't read every story about early Apple, and would be curious to know whether they managed to finance operations this way, or if they indeed had to personally secure loans. 1: http://scorechicago.org/blog/steve-jobs http://scorechicago.org/blog/steve-jobs
- steveax 11y ago
  The corporate veil is often thinner than you think and priciplals of young companies are often asked to sign personal guarantees on contracts.
  - redler 11y ago
Stratoscope 11y ago
There are so many things that might have happened but for one key decision. You can't spend the rest of your life wondering "what if?" But it can be tempting! In my case, I had the opportunity to be the first programmer at Apple. I told the story on Reddit a few years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/h4n5w/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/h4n5w/ As you can imagine, I have wondered "what if?" more than a few times. :-) But "what if?" can work both ways. I could have become a billionaire and one of the most famous people in Silicon Valley. Or Steve could have driven me from the mild depression I'd occasionally experienced into full-blown mental illness, as happened with one of Apple's earliest employees. You just don't know which way it could have turned out. The other story on the front page today about Regis McKenna reminds me of one of the more remarkable coincidences I've encountered. As I told in the Reddit story, when I walked out of Apple's answering service in 1976 I thought to myself, "Those guys are flakes! They're never going to make it." It was one of those things that sticks in your mind. I remember vividly to this day exactly where I was walking and the exact words that were in my head. A couple of years ago I was reading Michael Moritz's Return to the Little Kingdom and ran across this: At first there was great uncertainty at the Regis McKenna Agency about Apple's prospects. The account executive, Frank Burge, explained, "People who knew Markkula and Apple wondered whether they would make it. We kept saying 'These guys are flakes. They’re never going to make it.'" Other than "these" vs. "those", it's the exact same words I was thinking. It was definitely a strange feeling to run across that quote!
- zuck9 11y ago
  > full-blown mental illness, as happened with one of Apple's earliest employees Can you share who is this early employee? Couldn't find him using Google.
  - Stratoscope 11y ago
    As you can guess, I was trying to be discreet. But it is rather public information at this point (it's even on his Wikipedia page). So here you go... http://tradertim.blogspot.com/2007/07/lonesome-tale-of-burrell-smith.html http://tradertim.blogspot.com/2007/07/lonesome-tale-of-burre...
japhyr 11y ago
"I said: 'Steve, whatever it is that you want to do, you can do it a lot more easily with money in your pocket. Go ahead and make the money, and do whatever you want to do. Just don't forget what you wanted the money for'. This was my takeaway. I have a very clear sense of how much is enough in my life. When I get there I'm going to quit my job, and be completely free to just take on work I care to do. I already enjoy the work I do, but I'd love to be fully in control of my own schedule.
girkyturkey 11y ago
With my luck, this would have been a story from my life! But as I always say, there are no "should have's" in life; there are "did do" and "didn't do". Life is too unpredictable to think "what if". It reminds me of the Matrix when Neo is in the Oracles kitchen and Neo knocks the vase over after the Oracle told him "Don't worry about the vase." Neo obviously confused says "How did you know I would break it?" and she finishes with "What really is going to bake your noodle is would you have still broken it had I not said anything?" No point in wasting energy on things that never happened.
Fr0styMatt88 11y ago
Wow.... something jumped right out at me in that article. The photo of Woz & Jobs holding the circuit board. Woz looks like he's jumping for joy, loving every minute of it. Jobs looks like a grump who couldn't care less and would rather be anywhere else but there. He looks so incredibly unhappy.
oniMaker 11y ago
As mentioned in this thread, the temptation to ask "what if?" is huge, and we all have built-in cognitive strategies for dealing with it. If this ability didn't exist, coping with non-fatal mistakes could easily overwhelm us and paradoxically become fatal! Imagine waking up every day knowing that you could have been a billionaire but for a single foolish decision, and having no way to get around that thought. You'd have a very poor quality of life indeed, even if you were perfectly materially comfortable. The fact that he cannot keep an Apple product hints at this; being confronted with a constant reminder would be too painful. It's a subtle and useful lie to think of yourself or pretty much anyone else as being non-materialistic or enlightened enough as to cheerfully give up billions of dollars in wealth. No doubt if this person was given a second chance with foreknowledge, he would take the deal. It's only afterward that we cry "sour grapes" in order to reduce our mental struggles to a manageable level. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance#.22The_Fox_and_the_Grapes.22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance#.22The_Fo...
- CamperBob2 11y ago
  If I were Ron Wayne, I'd take solace in the fact that in 99 out of 100 similar scenarios, my choice would have been the right one. If he's still kicking himself, he needs to understand that he's a victim of survivorship bias. Being "older but wiser" won't help him avoid the same mistake in the future, because it wasn't technically a mistake at the time. He made a rational choice based on the information and experience he had available to draw on.
yuhong 11y ago
I wonder what would happen if Gil Amelio stayed as CEO of Apple after the NeXT acquisition. The beige G3 did sell well and helped Apple return to profitablity: http://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/15/business/company-reports-sales-of-g3-computer-lift-apple-back-to-profitability.html http://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/15/business/company-reports-s...

199 points by grahamel 11y ago

kmfrk 11y ago

Is he really forgotten at this point? I've been told about the founding of Apple more often than I have the gospel. Well, the other gospel anyway.

mikeash 11y ago
Everybody knows about Jobs and Woz, but I hardly ever see mention of the third guy. I'd bet that most Apple fans couldn't come up with the name "Ronald Wayne" without looking it up, and likely don't even realize there was a third.

randomgyatwork 11y ago

Seems like this guy has had bad luck in his decisions to sell apply stuff.

ZenoArrow 11y ago
Seems like he was happy with the decision, he doesn't strike me as particularly materialistic.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- m52go 11y ago
  One doesn't need to be materialistic to feel regret about missing the chance to acquire money. Maybe he has philanthropic goals that will go unmet, maybe he has startup ideas that capital could've helped test, etc.
moron4hire 11y ago
> "If money was the only thing that I wanted, there are many ways I could've done that. But it was much more important to do what appealed to me."
grahamel 11y ago
From his wikipedia page it does seem like it >In the early 1990s Wayne sold the original Apple company agreement, signed in 1976 by Jobs, Wozniak and himself, for $500. In 2011 the contract was sold at auction for $1.6 million.

nxzero 11y ago

It's hard to tell if he's not materialistic - though he seems happy with the choices he made and in the end, happiness is a choice.

gdulli 11y ago
I don't consider myself unmaterialistic. I'm happy that I'm comfortable and secure. I don't put too much value on material things but some of them do make my life better. If I could get a ton more money without anything else in my life changing, then sure, I'd take it. But if that money came with power, a high profile job, I'd have to work a ton, have a ton of stress, change my lifestyle, my main social circles would have to be with other rich people, nearly all the attention I ever got would be from people I can't trust not to want something... just no. I'm happy now and that's not an equilibrium I want to upset. Nothing about the day to day lives of rich, powerful people seems like so much fun as to outweigh the negatives, which if you pay attention, seem to be many. "The best life is one the gods don't notice."
- nxzero 11y ago
  Just to be clear, since it's a bit unclear, you're not the person the is the subject of the article, but a random person responding to the comment I posted.

ttflee 11y ago

Is there any term in agreements like that an entrepreneur who chose to quit prematurely shall transfer his/her share at the price of 1 dollar in 1970s?

personlurking 11y ago

I always wonder how true that last statement is - to the tune of "Find something you love so much that if you do it you'll never work a day in your life." I've enjoyed things that, when they became an obligation, I stopped enjoying. Though I think it says more about myself than the actual veracity of the quote.

mod 11y ago
I loved poker until I played it professionally. I love programming, but not when I'm at work. I'm growing a garden, but I know I'd hate being a farmer. The only job I truly loved was working with children, but there was no (financial) future in it. I didn't have to work, but I wouldn't have been able to live either.
- nkassis 11y ago
  There was an article I read somewhere (maybe here?) a couple weeks ago that mentioned that employee happiness and autonomy are correlated. That could be the issue with turning passions into a job. You lose the autonomy you had before.
  - qznc 11y ago
    The motivation triple is "autonomy, mastery, and purpose" http://www.danpink.com/drive/ http://www.danpink.com/drive/
- pmarreck 11y ago
  > I loved poker until I played it professionally. Probably a combination of intrinsic to extrinsic motivation (http://www.spring.org.uk/2009/10/how-rewards-can-backfire-and-reduce-motivation.php http://www.spring.org.uk/2009/10/how-rewards-can-backfire-an... and https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-trust/201403/new-kind-reward-increases-intrinsic-motivation https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-trust/201403/new-...) and a sudden lack of control. > The only job I truly loved was working with children There's gotta be SOMEthing you can do there, maybe volunteer, tutor, whatever? I mentor'd an at-risk teen for a while, he ended up going off to college. If that is a passion you have, you should sneak it in there somehow. Maybe teach kids why Texas Hold'em No Limit is the greatest partial-information game ever invented by man? ;)

CapitalistCartr 11y ago

This is an excellent example of why startups are dominated by the young, single, affluent. They have nearly nothing to lose. The rest of us do. "If the company goes poof, we are individually liable for the debts," Wayne explained. "Jobs and Wozniak didn't have two nickels to rub together. I had a house, and a bank account, and a car… I was reachable!"

nkassis 11y ago
It seems that the average age of startup founders is actually 40 according to this article: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/235357 http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/235357 I can see why, by then you get some financial stability and kids get older, a good amount of experience etc...
- mikeash 11y ago
  It seems like a different environment now. The debt here sounds like a bank loan or something along those lines where they expected to get paid back in cash. These days, it's more likely to be a VC investment or a Kickstarter or something else where there's no debt created and the people giving the money are just buying some sort of share in the company's potential success.
  - takno 11y ago
    It is better, but it's difficult to guarantee that the company will never go through a stage where a personally-guaranteed overdraft is the best option. At least in the UK these are usually jointly and severally repayable by the founders. At that point I'd far rather be the founder in my early 20s with nothing but debt than the one with the house who is going to end up homeless.
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    I wonder if back then was better than it is now. The whole VC thing seems to lead to a whole lot of pump and dump schemes. It, and going public, seem to lead to a whole lot of short term thinking.

SonicSoul 11y ago

this is incredible. According to the article he backed out of the shares because of possible liability of the deal went south, but that doesn't make sense. If they incorporated his personal assets would not be up for grabs if the company couldn't pay it's debt. Also the fact that he did this means that he does care about financial stability and this seemed like a bad investment. In either case, it's impossible to predict these things so statistically he probably made the right move, but what bad luck!! Im surprised Steve didn't get him back into apple once they were well off, or maybe there is more to this story.

CapitalistCartr 11y ago
Jobs even ripped off Woz when the opportunity presented itself. He was the last person to give any part of "his" baby away. "When they made Breakout for Atari, Wozniak and Jobs were going to split the pay 50-50. Atari gave Jobs $5000 to do the job. He told Wozniak he got $700 so Wozniak took home $350."
- cjslep 11y ago
  You may be curious to know Woz does not hold it against Steve Jobs. He clarified that with me before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8706690 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8706690
  - bithush 11y ago
    Woz seems to be such a gentle and kind guy who just loves tech and gadgets. I don't think I have ever read of anyone having a problem with him. Pretty interesting as most people at such a high level in any sector (not just IT) are usually known to be assholes.
    - CaptSpify 11y ago
      I've always felt that if people idolized Woz more than Jobs, the world would be a better place. That's probably just my own tinkerer/engineer bias coming to light though.

mooreds 11y ago

Don't forget that it is silly to equate 10% of the company at founding with $60 billion today. He would definitely be rich, but there would have been a fair bit of dilution.

eric_h 11y ago
True, but I think it's quite reasonable to say that his share would still have been worth N * 10^9, for some value of N > 1

snowwrestler 11y ago

We've all given stuff away by making decisions in our lives. We make what we think is the best choice, and then we live with the consequences. Regret doesn't change tomorrow. That said, were I in Woz or Job's shoes, I would have given this guy a big check at some point, as a thank you. Actually maybe Woz did--neither he nor Wayne seem like folks who would talk about such a thing if had happened. Not likely from Jobs though.

rottyguy 11y ago

Assuming he hung in, would he have sold out when Jobs got fired back in the 90's? We always try and maximize the winnings for a good story but miss the critical thinking along the way. Risk=Reward (or massive failure). Just sounds like Mr. Wayne was not big into risk.. Very understandable.

goodcanadian 11y ago
Indeed. It calculates what a 10% stake would be worth now, but it is highly unlikely that he would still be a 10% owner even if he had stayed the course. It is not as though Steve Jobs still held 45% of the company at the time of his death.
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  Would Apple even be the same company if he had stayed? I mean, maybe it'd still be taking loans from Microsoft.
- rottyguy 11y ago
  I'm also not convinced the stress of it all played didn't play a part to Steve's illness and eventual death. At 81, Mr. Wayne is still celebrating life.

1457389 11y ago

So am I the only one here who knows what Pahrump is (in)famous for?

ChiCommTroll 11y ago
only on this coast

gnicholas 11y ago

> "If the company goes poof, we are individually liable for the debts," Wayne explained. Definitely not true, since Apple was a corporation. Creditors can only "pierce the corporate veil" (and tap shareholder assets) where a corporation is a sham, which Apple certainly wasn't. I hope he had other reasons for walking away, since this one doesn't make any sense!

bryanlarsen 11y ago
Before the age of angel investors, most corporations got their initial working capital through personally-secured loans. Those were either loans directly to founders (their credit card, perhaps) which was then loaned to the corporation, or a direct loan to the corporation personally secured by the founders.
- gnicholas 11y ago
  Good point—this may have been a factor. But this story [1] about Apple's founding indicates that they got financing based on a verified purchase order: > A bank turned the two scruffy guys down for a loan and another computer parts store declined an equity stake in the new venture. “Finally Jobs was able to convince the manager of Cramer Electronics to call Paul Terrell to confirm that he had really committed to a $25,000 order,” says Isaacson. Terrell confirmed it and then Jobs got the parts on 30 days credit. It's possible that Cramer Electronics would have asked for the loan to be personally secured, but it sounds like that would have been futile given the Steves' lack of other assets. I haven't read every story about early Apple, and would be curious to know whether they managed to finance operations this way, or if they indeed had to personally secure loans. 1: http://scorechicago.org/blog/steve-jobs http://scorechicago.org/blog/steve-jobs
steveax 11y ago
The corporate veil is often thinner than you think and priciplals of young companies are often asked to sign personal guarantees on contracts.
- redler 11y ago

Stratoscope 11y ago

There are so many things that might have happened but for one key decision. You can't spend the rest of your life wondering "what if?" But it can be tempting! In my case, I had the opportunity to be the first programmer at Apple. I told the story on Reddit a few years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/h4n5w/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/h4n5w/ As you can imagine, I have wondered "what if?" more than a few times. :-) But "what if?" can work both ways. I could have become a billionaire and one of the most famous people in Silicon Valley. Or Steve could have driven me from the mild depression I'd occasionally experienced into full-blown mental illness, as happened with one of Apple's earliest employees. You just don't know which way it could have turned out. The other story on the front page today about Regis McKenna reminds me of one of the more remarkable coincidences I've encountered. As I told in the Reddit story, when I walked out of Apple's answering service in 1976 I thought to myself, "Those guys are flakes! They're never going to make it." It was one of those things that sticks in your mind. I remember vividly to this day exactly where I was walking and the exact words that were in my head. A couple of years ago I was reading Michael Moritz's Return to the Little Kingdom and ran across this: At first there was great uncertainty at the Regis McKenna Agency about Apple's prospects. The account executive, Frank Burge, explained, "People who knew Markkula and Apple wondered whether they would make it. We kept saying 'These guys are flakes. They’re never going to make it.'" Other than "these" vs. "those", it's the exact same words I was thinking. It was definitely a strange feeling to run across that quote!

zuck9 11y ago
> full-blown mental illness, as happened with one of Apple's earliest employees Can you share who is this early employee? Couldn't find him using Google.
- Stratoscope 11y ago
  As you can guess, I was trying to be discreet. But it is rather public information at this point (it's even on his Wikipedia page). So here you go... http://tradertim.blogspot.com/2007/07/lonesome-tale-of-burrell-smith.html http://tradertim.blogspot.com/2007/07/lonesome-tale-of-burre...

japhyr 11y ago

"I said: 'Steve, whatever it is that you want to do, you can do it a lot more easily with money in your pocket. Go ahead and make the money, and do whatever you want to do. Just don't forget what you wanted the money for'. This was my takeaway. I have a very clear sense of how much is enough in my life. When I get there I'm going to quit my job, and be completely free to just take on work I care to do. I already enjoy the work I do, but I'd love to be fully in control of my own schedule.

girkyturkey 11y ago

With my luck, this would have been a story from my life! But as I always say, there are no "should have's" in life; there are "did do" and "didn't do". Life is too unpredictable to think "what if". It reminds me of the Matrix when Neo is in the Oracles kitchen and Neo knocks the vase over after the Oracle told him "Don't worry about the vase." Neo obviously confused says "How did you know I would break it?" and she finishes with "What really is going to bake your noodle is would you have still broken it had I not said anything?" No point in wasting energy on things that never happened.

Fr0styMatt88 11y ago

Wow.... something jumped right out at me in that article. The photo of Woz & Jobs holding the circuit board. Woz looks like he's jumping for joy, loving every minute of it. Jobs looks like a grump who couldn't care less and would rather be anywhere else but there. He looks so incredibly unhappy.

oniMaker 11y ago

As mentioned in this thread, the temptation to ask "what if?" is huge, and we all have built-in cognitive strategies for dealing with it. If this ability didn't exist, coping with non-fatal mistakes could easily overwhelm us and paradoxically become fatal! Imagine waking up every day knowing that you could have been a billionaire but for a single foolish decision, and having no way to get around that thought. You'd have a very poor quality of life indeed, even if you were perfectly materially comfortable. The fact that he cannot keep an Apple product hints at this; being confronted with a constant reminder would be too painful. It's a subtle and useful lie to think of yourself or pretty much anyone else as being non-materialistic or enlightened enough as to cheerfully give up billions of dollars in wealth. No doubt if this person was given a second chance with foreknowledge, he would take the deal. It's only afterward that we cry "sour grapes" in order to reduce our mental struggles to a manageable level. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance#.22The_Fox_and_the_Grapes.22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance#.22The_Fo...

CamperBob2 11y ago
If I were Ron Wayne, I'd take solace in the fact that in 99 out of 100 similar scenarios, my choice would have been the right one. If he's still kicking himself, he needs to understand that he's a victim of survivorship bias. Being "older but wiser" won't help him avoid the same mistake in the future, because it wasn't technically a mistake at the time. He made a rational choice based on the information and experience he had available to draw on.

yuhong 11y ago

I wonder what would happen if Gil Amelio stayed as CEO of Apple after the NeXT acquisition. The beige G3 did sell well and helped Apple return to profitablity: http://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/15/business/company-reports-sales-of-g3-computer-lift-apple-back-to-profitability.html http://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/15/business/company-reports-s...