Apple’s forgotten co-founder

last updated 8 January 2015

Living on a retirement pension in a remote California desert town is the little-known “third founder” of consumer electronics giant Apple. Back in the early 1970s, Ronald Wayne, now 75, worked with Steve Jobs at Atari. Jobs was about to launch a computer firm with his friend Steve Wozniak, and asked Wayne to draw up the partnership agreement. It gave them each 45 percent, and Wayne 10 percent. The idea was that he would act as a “tie-breaker” between the two bosses. But after two weeks, Wayne got the jitters. A previous venture had left him saddled with big debts, and he didn’t have the nerve to get involved in another start-up. “I was getting too old, and those two were whirlwinds,” he tells the London Daily Telegraph. “It was like having a tiger by the tail.” So he gave up his share, and in return received a check for $1,500. Today, that stake would be worth about $23 billion. But he’s not bitter. “Would I like to be rich? Everybody would like to be rich,” he says. “But I couldn’t keep up the pace. I’d have been the richest man in the cemetery.” Instead, he says, “I will be a footnote in history because I happened to have known someone.”