Ronald Wayne Net Worth

What is Ronald Wayne's Net Worth?

Ronald Wayne is an American investor and technologist who has a net worth of $400,000. Ronald Wayne is known being one of Apple Inc.'s co-founders. At one point, Wayne infamously decided to sell his 10% stake in Apple back to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976 for $800. Today, that 10% stake would be worth over $300 billion.

Ronald Wayne is one of the most famous "what ifs" in business history. In 1976, he was a 41-year-old engineer working at Atari when two much younger colleagues — Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak — approached him about helping them launch a new computer company. Wayne agreed, became the third co-founder of Apple, and was granted a 10% stake in the company. Less than two weeks later, he walked away, selling his stake for just $800. It was a decision driven by caution, past business failures, and an understandable fear of financial liability. At the time, Apple was little more than a garage-based hobby project run by two ambitious kids. Today, it's the most valuable company in the world — and Wayne's forfeited stake would be worth over $300 billion. While Jobs and Wozniak became tech legends and billionaires, Wayne quietly faded from public view, living modestly and pursuing his love of stamp collecting, slot machine design, and political philosophy. Despite the staggering fortune he gave up, Wayne has always maintained that he made the best decision he could with the information he had. His story is a rare blend of brilliance, bad timing, and hard-earned peace with what might have been.

Early Life and Career

Wayne was born on May 17, 1934, in Cleveland, Ohio. He trained as a technical draftsman at the School of Industrial Arts in New York and then moved to California in 1956 when he was 22 years old. After working for a decade, he came up with an idea for his first business – a company selling slot machines. The company ultimately failed, and Wayne has since reflected that his failure was a lesson in the fact that he was not a great businessman but rather an engineer.

Apple Founding

Following this lesson, Wayne began working at Atari, where he built the internal corporate documentation systems. One of his co-workers at Atari was a young developer named Steve Jobs. Through Jobs, Wayne met Steve Wozniak. In their free time, Steve Jobs and a friend named Steve Wozniak were building homemade computers.

During a meeting at Wayne's home, where the three discussed technology and business, Jobs proposed that they found a computer company together. In the proposal, Jobs and Wozniak were to be the primary leaders of the company, each holding a 45% stake, while Wayne was to act as the tie-breaker if need be with a 10% stake in the company. Wayne agreed and wrote up the partnership agreement and the three officially founded Apple Computers on April 1, 1976. Here is a copy of the original partnership agreement:

Ronald actually held on to the original founding partnership document that is pictured above. He sold the documents to a private collector in 1994. In December 2011, that private collector auctioned the partnership document off to the highest bidder. It was projected to sell for $150,000. It ended up selling for… $1.59 million.

Ronald Wayne was responsible for illustrating Apple's first logo and writing the manual for Apple I. Here is the logo he came up with, which depicts Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree:

Leaving Apple

Unfortunately, Wayne's time with Apple was short-lived. Due to his experience with the failure of his slot machine company, as well as more experience in general, given his age of 41 compared to the comparatively young Jobs and Wozniak at 21 and 25, Wayne was quite risk-averse. Given the nature of Apple's partnership, he became nervous at the idea that he would be personally responsible for the possible debts incurred by either Wozniak or Jobs. While neither Jobs nor Wozniak had much to lose, Wayne did possess personal assets that he was worried future creditors may seize if necessary. He was also concerned that he would forever be working in documentation systems for the company rather than in his genuine interest in original product engineering. For these reasons, he relinquished his 10% equity in Apple only a few weeks after the company was formally created and received $800 in return. Jobs tried to get Wayne to return to the company, but Wayne refused.

When the company became an official corporation, he was paid an additional $1,500 US to give up all ownership rights, for a total payout of $2,300.

$300 Billion Mistake

If Ronald had held on to his 10% Apple stake, today, it would be worth more than $300 billion. He has said that he made the "best decision with the information available to me at the time" and does not regret selling his shares.

Ronald Wayne (Karen T. Borchers/Mercury News via Getty Images)

After Apple

Following his departure from Apple, Wayne continued working at Atari until 1978. He then joined the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and worked at an electronics company in Salinas, California. He also started a stamp shop in Milpitas, California, for a short time in the late 1970s called Wayne's Philatelics. Despite Steve Jobs' repeated efforts to bring him back to Apple in the early 1980s, Wayne declined. He said he had no desire to re-enter a high-pressure business environment and preferred a quieter life focused on his personal passions. Due to several break-ins, he moved the shop to Nevada.

Wayne retired to Pahrump, Nevada, where he continued to sell stamps and rare coins. He lives in a modest mobile home. He stated that he had never owned an Apple product until he was given an iPad 2 at a conference in England.

In 2008, Wayne appeared in the documentary "Welcome to Macintosh." He also published a memoir titled "Adventures of an Apple Founder" in July of 2011 and wrote a socioeconomic treatise called "Insolence of Office" the same year.

In 2011, he published two books:

• Adventures of an Apple Founder – a memoir recounting his version of Apple's early days.
• Insolence of Office – a treatise on political philosophy and economics.

Busch Light Commercial

In April 2025, Ronald parodied his famous mistake in a commercial for Busch Light. In the commercial, which is embedded below, Ronald tells the audience of a new "apple-related opportunity" that "you don't want to miss out on." The opportunity is the new apple-flavored version of Busch Light 🙂

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