Ron Wayne, Apple's 'Lost' Co-Founder, Describes Steve Jobs In The Early Days (VIDEO)

Ron Wayne, Apple's third and "forgotten" co-founder, worked with Jobs at Atari, designed Apple's first logo, and sold his 10 percent share in the company 12 days after Apple was started.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV two days after Jobs announced he would be resigning as CEO, Wayne, joined by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, shared his take on Apple's early days and working with Jobs in the 1970s.

"Steve Jobs was a very dynamic person to start with. He was fun to be with," said Wayne, adding later, "I knew that the enterprise would be successful, although nobody could have anticipated the kind of success it would realize today."

Wayne explained that Jobs invited him to be a part of the company after Wayne was able to help resolve a disagreement between Jobs and Wozniak, Wayne describing his role as "philosophical tie-breaker in the case of any disputes in the future."

So why did Wayne leave less than two weeks after Apple got its start?

"I was a product developer and designer myself, but I was a little bit intimidated by the fact that I was standing in the shadow of some real geniuses," he said. He elaborated later in the interview, "I am essentially the creative, product development sort of guy, and I wanted to get into a great number of projects which, frankly, I could master. I also realized the fact that I was standing in the shadow of a couple of really brilliant guys here the level of my creativity couldn't possibly match theirs. As I said, I would have wound up doing rather mundane work"

Wayne offered another explanation in a profile published by Mercury News last year. Jobs and Wozniak had little money at the time, and Wayne feared creditors would come looking for him if things went awry.

"I just wasn't ready for the kind of whirlwind that Jobs and Wozniak represented," he told Mercury News. "I felt certain the company was going to be successful; that wasn't the question. But how much of a roller coaster was it going to be? I didn't know that I could tolerate that kind of situation again. I thought if I stayed with Apple I was going to wind up the richest man in the cemetery."

Wayne's 10 percent share of the company would be worth around $35.3 billion today, with Apple's total value estimated at around $353 billion.

Read more about what Wozniak and Apple employees have to say about Jobs's resignation here, or take a look at our overview of Jobs's journey to the top. See what Wozniak has to sayabout Apple's early days below.

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Comments

[Sundialsvc4]

03:14 PM on 08/29/2011

It's easy to look at anyone's decision "in hindsight" and to say, "DOOFUS!" ... but Apple really WAS "a few kids in a garage," and there were many years thereafter when the company's continued existence was in obvious doubt. Shares in the company for many years could be bought for $8 to $15 a share.

Apple got under benevolent wings pretty quickly, but at the time when Ron was directly involved, none of that yet existed nor was it really contemplated. If Apple had gone the way that all of its competition at that time =did= go, Ron Wayne would have been out a lot of money.

As it is, I daresay he's doing all right. For many years, those Apple shares could be bought for $8 to $15 each. Many of us did just that.

[kdlaiusa]

06:23 PM on 08/28/2011

Wonder who keeps all their Apple stock from day one until now.

[J242]

08:00 PM on 08/28/2011

I have more now than I did a year ago which is more than I had 5 years ago, etc, etc, etc... Steve's roadmap is in place for the next 5 years + so I'm not worried. ;)

[jabailo]

07:25 AM on 08/30/2011

Actually, looking at AAPL's price history...he could have rebought into Apply any time between 1980 and 2003 and still gotten the huge gains:

http://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1314703435070&chddm=3106886&chls=IntervalBasedLine&q=NASDAQ:AAPL&ntsp=0

[jabailo]

10:13 PM on 08/27/2011

So....what were these great "other products" he went off and developed...?

[masterinventor001embarq]

04:49 PM on 08/28/2011

Well its certaintly not just him its every significant product in every field of invention there is till you reach the top 10000 valuable products of the last 57 years and I am a 57 year old. then It continues back thru grandfathers the same way to 1768 and the bow and arrow.

[masterinventor001embarq]

12:36 PM on 08/27/2011

The thing you never hear is the battle for the patents on the significant IP involved in these products and where or who oriuginally produced them. Just because there rich and famious doesent mean they concieved anything there R+D guys and startup people who dont want to pay for there ideas. Steve is not likley to produce any more because its doubtful he produced any major conceptions to begin with.

[theveggiedude]

05:10 PM on 08/27/2011

But he does have 313 patents to his name, while Bill Gates has 9. Give credit where credit is due.

[masterinventor001embarq]

09:40 AM on 08/28/2011

I do but Its not. When these R+D guys get going with one of my original conceptions they produce all kinds of insignificant sub inventions most are designed to prevent copying their product from patenting around by competitors. So volume number of patents means they have lots of money to protect the main stolen conception. they also have lots of money to fight for those key patents in the first place. Unless a masterinventor such as myself can find a large scale investor then I can invent my whole life and recieve no credit or compensation for anything. Its actually a conspiracy that dates to 1803 and my great great grandfather.

[rmichael777]

11:23 AM on 08/27/2011

Yes...and No. I don't know all the details about Cook's compensation package, but the stock is primarily tied to annual increments to ensure that he stays onboard as CEO for a very long time. Plus, the stock's value is in direct proportion to the performance of the company - company goes down, stock value goes down. this is VERY different from the huge compensation/salary packages of most corporate CEO's which isn't tied to performance at all. And for the record, Steve Job's total annual salary from Apple last year (and for MANY years prior) was $1.00. If more corporate CEO's accepted only $1.00 in salary and the rest in stock, I have a feeling more companies would be performing better and producing better products.

[ifyouseekay]

11:11 AM on 08/27/2011

Ron an man with integrity. wow, how rare! hope the steve's front him some money.

[castleblanca]

10:51 AM on 08/27/2011

I saw this interview with Steve Wozniak, and it was really good.

I especially liked it when it was pointed out that if he had kept his stock, it would be worth $35 billion today.

[Nick Pirce]

10:39 AM on 08/27/2011

A pretty good interview with Steve Wozniak & Ron Wayne

[CalDemo]

10:16 AM on 08/27/2011

Yes, Sarah, corporations are people too.

On the Apple front, this morning's Silicon Valley's news highlights the compensation for new Apple CEO Tim Cook. His signing bonus included 1 MILLION SHARES of stock valued at $384,000,000. And that's SECOND in value to the $600,000,000 grant made 11 years ago to Jobs. And Oracle's Mark Hurd, who went from HP's severance of $12,2000,000 to Oracle's fiscal year end compensation of $78,4000,000.

That's a lot of zeroes in the hands of the corporate person.

[theveggiedude]

05:21 PM on 08/27/2011

My opinion is that all CEO's should be paid in shares of their company. The shares can become worthless. Or they can grow in value. It all has to do with the CEO's performance.

Mark Hurd got a lot of money - but was it tied to his performance? That is the question.

[twenty2727seven]

10:00 AM on 08/27/2011

So... HP... how about you hire a couple of actual techies so you have something interesting to read under the Tech section. Not just typical pop media.

[Billy D]

09:14 AM on 08/27/2011

Kinda like how reverend Wright feels now.

[greatusername]

09:46 AM on 08/27/2011

Your post will be hard to beat on the scale of idiocy.

[GeorgeBurnsWasRight]

01:02 PM on 08/27/2011

I wish I knew who said, "The problem with idiot proofing something is they keep making better idiots."

The proof of the saying can be found in the 2012 Republican candidates.

[ProCynic]

09:10 AM on 08/27/2011

Read about a guy selling hotdogs outside of a Rolling Stones concert a few years ago. He and Mick were good friends, the guy had been a member of the band before they got their record contracts.

The guys who created Visicalc (that became Lotus 123 and Excel) let it go for free. They covered their goof by saying 20 years later that they wanted it to be out there available for the common good.

Knew a guy in my office that claimed he had laid 10k into Google at IPO. Later when we were facing a layoff and Google was sky high, I commented on his good position, he told me he sold when it had doubled (didn't make sense cause he was still claiming to have it when it was tripled.)

Lots of might have been. Live in the now and live with what you have, it's much more interesting than what you don't have.

[Micheal Anderson]

08:37 AM on 08/27/2011

Much like the so called 'fifth Beatle' no one cares.

[ifyouseekay]

11:12 AM on 08/27/2011

the "fifth" beatle is just an american made up thing.

[GeorgeBurnsWasRight]

01:03 PM on 08/27/2011

Ringo Starr didn't replace Pete Best?

[cincinnati]

03:24 AM on 08/27/2011

Do I understand it right, that if Apple had more open software, etc. early on it would have crushed any opponents like IBM and it's deal with Microsoft ?

And that Apple's core, to speak, is more natural, logical, while Bill Gates quickly bought up the first lame
program he could to get the IBM deal.....and so we've had problems with it every sense ?!

Also recomment the film, for TV around 1990 maybe, about Microsoft's early days.....and basically Stealing from Xerox the window idea.

[Draekia]

07:03 AM on 08/27/2011

The windows idea was bought by apple and MS basically ripped it off Apple when they were developing Office.

[Micheal Anderson]

08:48 AM on 08/27/2011

They both ripped it off from Xerox. You really should read up on that. Simply Google "microsoft apple xerox" and read it yourself.

[Micheal Anderson]

08:47 AM on 08/27/2011

IBM releasing it's hardware was a fluke. They only opened the platform because they thought it would go nowhere, that all the money would stay in servers and industry/corporate markets. They never thought the PC would go anywhere. Once it did, IBM tried to close it back off with the PS/2 spec, the old PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports were a leftover from that battle.

Microsoft started out as nothing more than a debugger for IBM, until Gates bought out someone elses DOS (disc operating system) and reverse engineered it, changed it up a little, and snookered IBM into putting it on their PC platform. Again, that IBM thought would go nowhere, which is why they signed an insanely stupid licensing agreement paying MS for a copy of their OS for every PC IBM sold, whether it had MS OS on it or not. That came in handy later when IBM tried again to take back the market with their OS/2 Warp, which was a better Windows than MS Windows was.

In the beginning though, both Gates and Jobs stole the idea for their GUI from Xerox.

If Jobs hadn't of had Steve Wozniak with him he would have gone nowhere. Woz built Apple, not Jobs. All Jobs ever was was a carnival barker.

if Apple had won the PC wars, we would all be paying $10,000 for a computer today. Apple was and is far worse than MS or Intel as Wintel ever were.

[landmine]

09:34 AM on 08/27/2011

Do you know the leading untreated illness in the USA is?
Mental illness.

[hypnotoad72]

10:16 AM on 08/27/2011

100% correct.

I will add that IBM, seeing a potential dethroning of its own mainframe industry, chose the immensely inferior 8088 over the Motorola 68000 that was also being considered...

Had Compaq not cloned the off-the-shelf-parts-made IBM PC and won the lawsuit, things would also be radically different.

But I have read sources showing Apple appropriated the GUI legally, I'm ambivalent on the belief they simply stole it: http://obamapacman.com/2010/03/myth-copyright-theft-apple-stole-gui-from-xerox-parc-alto/

[mrupp002]

02:34 AM on 08/27/2011

I heard that he is working on the iCasket and it will be uploading through G5, his bandwidth directly to heaven at the instant of his death. No WiFi needed.