Ronald Wayne's going to sell his house to buy it, then wallow in his tears.

Not a bad payment for a 11 days with the company and the effort I assume he put into convincing Wozniak, but still Wayne has to hate how he could have owned 10% of Apple, Inc.

If I was in Wayne's position, I seriously would have killed myself by now. He sugarcoats this matter very nicely and is highly philosophical about it, but I would bet $2300 that he slams his head against a work table adorned with broken glass and nails every single night of his life.

It's as if I had a winning $2.6 billion dollar lottery ticket and it flew out the window of my car while I was flying down the freeway: I could either try justifying it ("It was God's will."), or freely display the hidden despair that would from then characterize my godforsaken life and eviscerate dreams of what could have been ("I will now end my life by sawing my own head off with a rusty paint can.").

$2,300 = $2.6 billion

Quote:

Originally Posted by linkgx1

He says he doesn't regret it, but he plays the lottery\

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Sounds similar to the guy who wrote DOS and sold it cheap to Microsoft. Also the guys who wrote Visicalc but forgot to patent it and got hammered by Lotus 123. I imagine there there are many such regrettable missteps on the books. I personally know a fellow who designed the cartoon mascot of a huge multinational company when it was originally founded and was offered 10% but insisted on the graphic design fee instead which was around a thousand dollars at the time.

Oh man, first selling your 10% stake for next to nothing. Then selling the original agreement for likely not much either before Jobs returned to Apple. Not the best luck/foresight in the world

I've seen so many Apple documentaries that I forget which one I saw this in, but in one of them, I remember an interview with that guy and he was sitting in the back of a limo and saying that he didn't regret it.

Is he rich now from some other deals, or did they just hire the limo for that documentary?

I don't care what he says, of course he regrets it. Anybody would. He failed to see the potential in Apple and he was worried about losing some measly pocket change. I would have jumped off the tallest bridge that I could find a long time ago, if I were him.