Apple at 40: The forgotten founder who gave it all away

> full-blown mental illness, as happened with one of Apple's earliest employees

Can you share who is this early employee? Couldn't find him using Google.

I've heard about Burrell Smith and mental illness, but I've never heard the suggestion that Steve Jobs was a driving influence that exasperated it. It also never occurred to me to make that connection, although it seems like an obvious one now having heard it.

Do we have any concrete reason to believe that was the case, or at least someone's anecdotal comments supporting it?

You made the right choice. I have talked to lots of people who worked at Apple in the early days, including some key people from the first dozen or so employees. I never met anyone who said it was enjoyable working with Jobs. (Lots of people said they grew a lot, learned a lot, and so on, but never anything along the lines of "I felt great going in to work every day".

For those reasons I went to Microsoft. And you know what? I felt great going into work every day. That's way more important than a billion dollars.

Also, I'm a somewhat high net worth individual (nothing remotely in the Steve Jobs range). I'm lucky to be where I am, but the price of being a billionaire seems much too high for me.

You appear to be at peace with your decision. It is a much deserved peace.

> But "what if?" can work both ways.

Going a little off topic, I've always felt someone could make a decent sci-fi story from that: what would the world look like if everyone had the ability to irrecoverably alter a single decision from their past? Would it be wasted on trivial matter? Would it drive people crazy to have such uncertain power and never know if/when they should use it? Would people not use it out of principle?

In the late 1970s, I worked at a small company called Aph. They did contract work developing single board computers. I did a couple myself. They built all their own tools, software, assemblers, etc., all of which were first class. One employee (the famous Hal Finney) even wrote a Basic interpreter in assembler.

In fact, they had everything they needed to build a consumer computer. It was all better than what Apple had.

The thing we lacked was vision. We coulda been billionaires! We lacked a Steve Jobs.

I loved poker until I played it professionally. I love programming, but not when I'm at work. I'm growing a garden, but I know I'd hate being a farmer.

The only job I truly loved was working with children, but there was no (financial) future in it. I didn't have to work, but I wouldn't have been able to live either.

I've always wanted to make video games. More than anything in my life. I got two degrees in computer science, then got hired by a major games studio. And I have to tell you, I absolutely love what I am doing. Every day I come into work not only looking forward to the challenges but also taking incredible pride in my work. When the games I work on are actually on the shelves in shops it's such a great feeling it can't be compared with anything. The people I work with are fantastic and very friendly, I couldn't have a better manager. It's literally the best job I could imagine, if you told my 12-year old self that the nights spent learning Visual Basic on my dad's PC will result in this I think I would have exploded with joy.

But(there always is one).

The pay is terrible. With my education and experience I could be easily making 2-3x what I make now, and I'm not even exaggerating. I've been told by multiple people that I have to be mad to work for such low compensation.

And yet. All my friends who make better money writing software almost universally hate their jobs, and their bosses. They live in nicer houses and drive better cars, but not a single one is proud of the product they help make. It's just another web app or financial product for them, it doesn't matter what it is or who it's for, as long as they get the money at the end of the month.

So now in the light of that statement - even if you find something that you can do as a job, you have to consider if it's worth the sacrifices(in my case, financial ones). At the moment, I feel like it is. But it doesn't mean I will always feel that way.

That's pretty much bullshit for the pure reason that a job very rarely can only include the things you love. I love programming but I hate polishing up the same features for days, but that's what's necessary to make a good app. I hate testing, but it's part of the game.

How photographers really spend their time : http://www.cambyte.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/piechart.j...

Having said that I'm sure, some people in some industries reach that dream but I can't think of any...

I mean, I've also yet to find someone to pay me for jacking it to internet porn all day, and even apart from that I think the world has enough rockstars, professional sports players, and actresses. You have to take that phrase with a healthy dose of salt.

I think that statement is a bit hyperbole. I agree with it in some sense: I love my job, and am grateful I get to do that instead of digging ditches every day. That being said, if money wasn't an issue, I'd absolutely work less hours, and only on projects I thought interesting. I don't think I'd actually quit though.

It's probably impossible since you have to be consistent and regular even when you don't feel into it that day. Unless there's something that is always giving you chills of pleasure 24/7 for decades. Low probability.

It's not just you. The concept behind that quote needs to die. Pretty much every form of paid labour is exploitation and there is a miniscule amount of humanity's needs that can be met with labour that someone would really love to spend their time doing.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/01/in-the-name-of-love/

It's not just false, it's harmful because it creates unrealistic expectations. And, I mean, let's face it, only a certain class of people can even make a pretense of it in the first place.

I figure there's two different kinds of "love".

- The dopamine reward kind. E.g., food, sleeping around, alcohol. The dopamine response burns out eventually, and you're left with nothing.

- The deeper satisfaction kind. The sort reward I imagine a civil engineer gets, knowing he designed the bridge he drives across every day. I figure this one can last.

Additionally, I figure some people "love" the superficial parts. Who will love their job more, the game developer who is passionate about test automation, or the game developer who is passionate about video games?

I think in general to find that kind of enjoyment at your job, it's about the skillset you love to employ (Problem solving? People skills? Politics? Care?) and finding the jobs that fit that skillset, rather than trying to pick a job that associates with puppies because you love puppies.

It seems that the average age of startup founders is actually 40 according to this article: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/235357

I can see why, by then you get some financial stability and kids get older, a good amount of experience etc...

Was not Apple incorporated as a limited liability company which limits your losses?

Having nothing to lose means being not affluent. Wayne quit because he had resources that Jobs+Woz didn't.

True, but I think it's quite reasonable to say that his share would still have been worth N * 10^9, for some value of N > 1

Before the age of angel investors, most corporations got their initial working capital through personally-secured loans. Those were either loans directly to founders (their credit card, perhaps) which was then loaned to the corporation, or a direct loan to the corporation personally secured by the founders.

The corporate veil is often thinner than you think and priciplals of young companies are often asked to sign personal guarantees on contracts.

Apple was a partnership when Ronald Wayne was involved. They didn't incorporate until 8 months later, in 1977.

(This leads me to ask "Why?" - corporations are made specifically to shield principles from liability for corporate debts. But maybe it was a bit harder to incorporate in 1976 than it is now.)

Jobs even ripped off Woz when the opportunity presented itself. He was the last person to give any part of "his" baby away.

"When they made Breakout for Atari, Wozniak and Jobs were going to split the pay 50-50. Atari gave Jobs $5000 to do the job. He told Wozniak he got $700 so Wozniak took home $350."

I don't know what it was like back then, but these days (at least here in the UK) banks want personal guarantees from directors/owners etc. for business loans, even to Ltd companies.

With micro-businesses that are incorporated, where you have one, two, or even three people involved, it can be fairly hard to maintain the legal wall that separates your personal assets from the business. I am part of a two person LLC. If I didn't have, say, the right kinds of liability insurance, a creditor could make the claim that the corporation really doesn't exist and go for my personal assets. If bank accounts are co-mingled, all bets are off. The list goes on of activities and facts that can, regardless of corporate legal filings, take you back to the state of sole proprietorship or partnership. On top of that, the cost of defending that status in the event of a suit can be nasty to boot.

Getting a loan for a small company often involves the owners guaranteeing the loan, because small companies tend to fail and banks don't like being left unpaid. If the loan was to the company with no extra terms then yes, he would be free and clear, but the bank probably wouldn't agree to that.

Indeed. It calculates what a 10% stake would be worth now, but it is highly unlikely that he would still be a 10% owner even if he had stayed the course. It is not as though Steve Jobs still held 45% of the company at the time of his death.

If I were Ron Wayne, I'd take solace in the fact that in 99 out of 100 similar scenarios, my choice would have been the right one. If he's still kicking himself, he needs to understand that he's a victim of survivorship bias. Being "older but wiser" won't help him avoid the same mistake in the future, because it wasn't technically a mistake at the time. He made a rational choice based on the information and experience he had available to draw on.

I don't consider myself unmaterialistic. I'm happy that I'm comfortable and secure. I don't put too much value on material things but some of them do make my life better. If I could get a ton more money without anything else in my life changing, then sure, I'd take it.

But if that money came with power, a high profile job, I'd have to work a ton, have a ton of stress, change my lifestyle, my main social circles would have to be with other rich people, nearly all the attention I ever got would be from people I can't trust not to want something... just no. I'm happy now and that's not an equilibrium I want to upset. Nothing about the day to day lives of rich, powerful people seems like so much fun as to outweigh the negatives, which if you pay attention, seem to be many.

"The best life is one the gods don't notice."

Everybody knows about Jobs and Woz, but I hardly ever see mention of the third guy. I'd bet that most Apple fans couldn't come up with the name "Ronald Wayne" without looking it up, and likely don't even realize there was a third.

Seems like he was happy with the decision, he doesn't strike me as particularly materialistic.

> "If money was the only thing that I wanted, there are many ways I could've done that. But it was much more important to do what appealed to me."

From his wikipedia page it does seem like it

>In the early 1990s Wayne sold the original Apple company agreement, signed in 1976 by Jobs, Wozniak and himself, for $500. In 2011 the contract was sold at auction for $1.6 million.

only on this coast