0:00 Twelve days after Apple was founded, one of its three co-founders sold his entire ten percent stake in the company for eight hundred dollars.0:10 Just… let that sink in.0:12 Twelve days.0:13 Ten percent.0:14 For less than a grand.0:16 It’s staggering.0:17 Last week we dug into the ruthless deal that built McDonald's, and this feels like the inverse—not a shark making a killing, but someone walking away from the biggest one in history.0:31 Who was this guy?0:32 His name was Ronald Wayne.0:34 And he wasn't some kid.0:36 He was forty-one years old, the quote, "adult in the room," brought in to mediate between the two Steves—Jobs and Wozniak.0:45 He literally drafted the original partnership agreement that gave himself that ten percent.0:52 Okay, so he wasn't an idiot.0:54 Why on Earth would he sell?0:56 For EIGHT HUNDRED dollars?0:58 Because he was the only one with anything to lose.1:02 See, this wasn't Apple Inc.1:04 yet.1:04 It was Apple Computer Company, a partnership.1:08 And in a partnership, you have unlimited personal liability.1:12 Wait—what does that mean, exactly?1:15 It means if Jobs and Wozniak ran up a debt they couldn't pay, creditors could come after Ronald Wayne's house.1:23 His car.1:24 His savings.1:25 And at the time, Jobs and Wozniak had, uh, basically nothing.1:30 They were raising startup capital by selling a VW bus and a calculator.1:35 Ohhh.1:35 So this wasn't about him not believing in the product.1:40 This was him looking at two college dropouts in a garage and thinking, "These guys could bankrupt me." Precisely.1:48 He saw all risk, no safety net.1:51 So he took the $800, and later another $1,500, and walked away from what would become a multi-trillion-dollar company.2:00 So Wayne is out.2:01 Apple is just two guys with about thirteen hundred bucks and a circuit board.2:07 How do they get from that to… you know, the Apple II and world domination?2:12 Money.2:13 And expertise they didn't have.2:15 A guy named Mike Markkula came in and invested two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in 1977.2:22 THAT was the moment Apple went from a hobbyist partnership to a real corporation.2:29 And the growth was just… vertical.2:31 Give me the numbers.2:33 Between 1977 and 1980, their annual sales grew from about seven hundred seventy-five thousand dollars to one hundred and eighteen MILLION.2:43 Whoa.2:44 Yeah.2:44 That's an average annual growth rate of five hundred and thirty-three percent.2:50 It was a rocket ship, and Wayne had jumped off at the launchpad.2:55 But even for the guys who stayed on, it wasn't a smooth ride.3:00 The official story is Jobs and Wozniak, the two genius friends.3:04 The reality was intense power struggles.3:07 Right, because Jobs eventually gets forced out of his own company.3:12 Exactly.3:13 Forced out by the CEO he personally recruited.3:17 And Wozniak left too, around 1983, after a plane crash messed with his memory.3:23 The idea of this happy, collaborative duo is mostly a myth created in hindsight.3:29 It was volatile and, honestly, pretty ruthless.3:32 So what happened to Ronald Wayne?3:35 I have to know.3:36 Does he just spend his days staring at the wall, thinking about the billions he lost?3:42 You'd think so, but no.3:44 He's been asked this a thousand times, and his answer is incredible.3:49 He says he doesn't regret it.3:52 He admits he lost out on, you know, unimaginable wealth, but he says he got a "character-building experience" instead.4:01 That sounds like something you tell yourself to be able to sleep at night.4:06 Maybe.4:07 But then he says this, and this is the quote that gets me.4:11 He said, "If I had known it would make 300 people millionaires in only four years, I would have stayed those four years.4:20 And then I still would have walked away." Wow.4:24 So even with perfect foresight, he still would have left.4:28 Yep.4:28 He said, "Steve and Steve had their project.4:32 They wanted to change the world in their way.4:35 I wanted to change the world in my own." It was never his dream.4:40 He just happened to be standing next to it when it ignited.4:45 It completely reframes the story.4:47 It's not a tragedy of a bad decision.4:50 It's the story of a man who knew what he wanted, and what he wanted wasn't to be Steve Jobs.4:57 Right.4:58 The story isn't about the money he lost.5:01 It's about the life he chose.5:03 It makes you wonder how many other Ronald Waynes are out there—the people who made the perfectly logical choice to step off the rocket ship, one minute before launch.
