Apple's third founder sold his 10% for $800 after twelve days

On April 1, 1976, Ronald Wayne co-founded Apple Computer with Jobs and Wozniak, taking 10% as the adult in the room — he drafted the partnership agreement, wrote the Apple I manual, and drew the company's first logo. Twelve days later he went to the registrar and renounced his stake for $800, later accepting another $1,500 to waive future claims.

His reasoning was sound at the moment he applied it. Apple was a partnership, not a corporation, so each partner was personally liable for its debts — and Jobs had just borrowed heavily to fill a parts order for the Byte Shop, a customer Wayne doubted would pay. Wayne was 41 with assets to lose and a failed slot-machine venture behind him; the two 20-somethings had nothing to seize. The risk was real, asymmetric, and pointed straight at him.

The Byte Shop paid. Apple incorporated nine months later — dissolving the very liability Wayne had fled — and his 10% would eventually have been worth hundreds of billions of dollars, the most expensive $800 transaction in history. Wayne, who never owned an Apple product until given one, has said for decades that he made the best decision with the information he had. He also sold his original partnership contract in the 1990s for $500; it later auctioned for $1.59 million.

Ronald Wayne sold his 10% Apple stake for $800 plus $1,500 to waive claims, totaling $2,300, a stake later worth hundreds of billions.

Unlimited personal liability in a partnership made the downside his house, not just his shares.

A recent business failure had recalibrated his risk tolerance to the last war.

He priced the downside precisely and the upside not at all — optionality never entered the math.

The exit was irreversible; the fear it answered was nine months from expiring.

A defensible decision can still be ruinous if you only price the downside. When the upside is unbounded, the option itself is the asset — don't sell it to buy calm.

Wayne lives modestly in Nevada, sells stamps and coins, and remains cheerfully unbitter — which may be the only part of the story anyone should actually copy.