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I was curious enough to play out how much that chunk ended up being worth. Perot reportedly acquired 16% of NeXT for his $20M investment[1]. I don't know the

I was curious enough to play out how much that chunk ended up being worth. Perot reportedly acquired 16% of NeXT for his $20M investment[1]. I don't know the details of the cash/stock split but Apple ultimately acquired NeXT for $350M after paying off its debts[2]. That's $56M for Perot if he maintained that 16% stake. If he kept it all in Apple stock (unlikely I know, but fun to play this out) he'd have had about 2.3 million shares of Apple at the time. AAPL has split 28X since then[3], so if he held it, today he'd own 64.4 million shares. Total present-day value, not counting significant dividends in the meantime: $12.9 billion. Really, it doesn't matter if he kept it. By the uncaring math of Wall Street, that $20M investment ultimately generated $12.9 billion worth of value. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/30/business/company-news-perot-reportedly-invests-in-next.html https://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/30/business/company-news-per... [2] https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-acquires-next-jobs/ https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-acquires-next-jobs/ [3] https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/08/10/apples-stock-split-history.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/08/10/apples-stock-split...

microtherion 7y ago
That assumes that NeXT did not undergo any dilution post-1987. Not sure this was the case — IIRC, they had to raise several more rounds of investment.
- ccozan 7y ago
  Yes, but even so, the (fictional) RoI on the start money is a few orders of magnitude. Which is not quite ordinary.
  - microtherion 7y ago
    Sure, but how much was Perot being lucky vs. him being smart? If Apple had gone with acquiring Be instead of NeXT (which I think was a distinct possibility), Perot's investment could quite possibly have ended up a write-off.
    - cgy1 7y ago
      He was basically betting on Steve Jobs so for me Perot was being smart.
    - solveit 7y ago
      I'll take a 50% chance of a X1000. Less flippantly, it was a smart bet to make at the time even though things could have gone differently, since we (now) know there was a possible world (ours!) in which it went X1000.
  - nostrademons 7y ago
    It's interesting how much of that happened post-acquisition, though. Holding NeXT from 1987 - 1996 = max 3x return. Holding AAPL from 1996-present = 340x return. This return was available to ordinary people on the public stock markets, too - if you were an average Joe who put $60K into Apple in 1996, you would now have Ross Perot's initial $20M investment sitting in your pocket.
    - patrickthebold 7y ago
      I get your point, but let's take a minute to remind ourselves that the average person does not have 60k lying around to invest.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - sitkack 7y ago
        The average hypothetical alternate history investor seems to have that kinda money.

microtherion 7y ago

That assumes that NeXT did not undergo any dilution post-1987. Not sure this was the case — IIRC, they had to raise several more rounds of investment.

ccozan 7y ago
Yes, but even so, the (fictional) RoI on the start money is a few orders of magnitude. Which is not quite ordinary.
- microtherion 7y ago
  Sure, but how much was Perot being lucky vs. him being smart? If Apple had gone with acquiring Be instead of NeXT (which I think was a distinct possibility), Perot's investment could quite possibly have ended up a write-off.
  - cgy1 7y ago
    He was basically betting on Steve Jobs so for me Perot was being smart.
  - solveit 7y ago
    I'll take a 50% chance of a X1000. Less flippantly, it was a smart bet to make at the time even though things could have gone differently, since we (now) know there was a possible world (ours!) in which it went X1000.
- nostrademons 7y ago
  It's interesting how much of that happened post-acquisition, though. Holding NeXT from 1987 - 1996 = max 3x return. Holding AAPL from 1996-present = 340x return. This return was available to ordinary people on the public stock markets, too - if you were an average Joe who put $60K into Apple in 1996, you would now have Ross Perot's initial $20M investment sitting in your pocket.
  - patrickthebold 7y ago
    I get your point, but let's take a minute to remind ourselves that the average person does not have 60k lying around to invest.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - sitkack 7y ago
      The average hypothetical alternate history investor seems to have that kinda money.