2. Biography of Ronald Wayne
• Nationality: American
• Date of birth: May 17,
1934.
• Birthplace: Cleveland, Ohio,
United States
• Country of residence: USA
3. Introduction
• Ronald Gerald Wayne (born May 17,
1934) is a retired American
electronics industry worker. He cofounded
Apple Computer (now
Apple Inc.) with Steve Wozniak and
Steve Jobs, providing administrative
oversight for the new venture. He
soon, however, sold his share of the
new company for US$800, and later
accepted US$1,500 to forfeit any
claims against Apple.
4. Career
1) He was appointed chief draftsman for product
development at Atari, the videogame manufacturer
behind Pong(in 1975).
2) Wayne also ran a stamp shop in Milpitas, California
for a short time in the late 1970s, Wayne's Philatelics.
3) On 1 April 1976, he, steve jobs and steve Wozniak
start apple.inc
5. 4) on April 12, 1976, Wayne quit Apple altogether.
5) After leaving Apple, Wayne resisted Jobs' attempts
to get him to return, remaining at Atari until 1978,
when he joined Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory, and later an electronics company in
Salinas, California.
6) Wayne, meanwhile, passed the last 16 years of his
career as the chief engineer of a small military
electronics company.
6. Ronald Wayne - Apple
•Wayne wound up working at Atari in the 1970s, where he befriended Jobs and
Wozniak. “I admired Ron for his experiences and tales of being with startups,” says
Wozniak. “Most of all I was impressed, as a young person might be, by [his]
worldliness. He was well-educated on many topics of life and was skilled and creative
at many as well.”
•In March 1976, Jobs came to Wayne with a request. He and his friend Steve Wozniak
had developed a working design for a personal computer, which Jobs was eager to turn
into a business. But he was having trouble convincing the laid-back Wozniak not to use
the circuitry he’d designed for Apple elsewhere. “He was trying to get Woz to
understand that the circuit was proprietary to Apple,” Wayne explains. “But Jobs was
not the most diplomatic guy in the world.” On 1 April, Wayne invited the two younger
men to his apartment, where he’d agreed to explain the issue to Wozniak as “the grown-
up in the room”. With his intervention, Wayne says Woz quickly came around. “Jobs
was sufficiently impressed by my diplomatic skills that he immediately said, ‘We’re
going to form a company’.”
7. •When Apple was incorporated on April 2, 1976, Wayne was named
alongside Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak as one of three founders, with a
10 percent stake in the company. However, just 12 days after Apple
started up — feeling out of his depth because he “was standing in the
shadow of intellectual giants” — Wayne threw in the towel and sold his
shares for just $800 .
•Wayne drew the first Apple logo, wrote the three men's original
partnership agreement, and wrote the Apple I manual.
8. Why Ron Wayne Sold stoke in
Apple
• "I figured it was because we were getting parts on credit, building the
computers with no money, and selling them for cash to pay off the credit.
If anything fell through in that plan Steve Jobs had no savings account or
money or friends or relatives with money, and neither did I, so our adult
supervision, Ron, might be on the hook for the money. I thought that
might have scared him off, that he was taking a majority of the risk and
he only got 10%."
Wayne admitted that the risk had played a part in his decision,
especially given previous experiences as an entrepreneur. Prior to
working with Jobs, he had started a slot machine company that failed.
9. Facts about Ronald Wayne
• If he still had that stake, Wayne would be one
of the world’s 15 richest people.
• Wayne has never owned any Apple product.
He only recently bought his first computer — a
Dell.
• His main pastime seems to be playing penny
slots in the wee hours of the morning.
• He holds a dozen patents, but has never had
enough capital to make money off any of
them.
