What's up guys and welcome back to wall street millennial on this channel, we talk about many cases of people who became rich most of the time billionaire rich and then somehow lost everything. For example, there was sean quinn, the irish billionaire, who was ireland's richest man in 2008., he was famous for quinn cement, which you might recognize if you've ever walked past a construction site even to this day. Unfortunately, the 2008 financial crisis was too much for his over leveraged business investments and he lost his entire six billion dollar fortune, and then there is the german generic drug magnate, adolf merkel, who is worth a jaw-dropping 12.8 billion dollars at its peak in 2007., like quinn, His business empire was destroyed by the great recession, but it wasn't until a speculative investment in the stock market in 2008 that he lost his last 100 million dollars. These former billionaires led the lives of financial roller coasters, having experienced decades of stardom before being brought down to earth, but there's another class of people entirely who were just inches away from experiencing those riches.

But never did that's exactly the case with ron wayne. The little known third founder of the world's most valuable company apple ron wayne was born in cleveland ohio on may 17. 1934. In his own words, he identifies as an engineer an author and a poet from a young age.

He was an avid stamp collector. He grew up in the world war ii and post-war period, part of the generation before the baby boomers, who remember a time when it seemed that life as we knew it, was not a guarantee. In the 50s he attended college in new york at the school of industrial arts. He studied engineering and, after graduating, moved to california to work at one of the major engineering firms there.

He pursued a career in electromechanical engineering and product development. He was especially interested in the inner workings of casino equipment and slot machines and designed many original parts of gaming devices. This interest in slot machines went hand in hand with his interest in coin collecting, which would later be a major part of his life in the early 1970s wayne, decided to start a business selling slot machines. He wanted to combine his expertise in engineering and his love of slots to make a little money in business.

He hired employees rounded up investors and incorporated his company. However, the business failed when he was unable to pay back his investors and debtors. He could have used. The bankruptcy laws to walk away from his debts - that is what most founders do, even if they personally have resources to pay the debts of their failed companies, but wayne was different.

He voluntarily paid back all the debts that he had taken out and repaid all of his investors. The full amounts that they had paid for their original stakes in his slot machine business. He says that he felt the responsibility for the business going bust. He couldn't stand the thought of having caused other people to take on financial hardships because of his own failure, so he spent the next year paying back all the debts from the business venture.

After his failed slot machine business wayne decided that he was much better off. Just staying in engineering rather than entrepreneurship, he found a job at atari, a company that made arcade games, video games and computers, while at atari he met two other young engineers named steve jobs and steve wozniak. At the time both steves were in their early 20s 20 years younger than wayne. The three became friends with jobs in wozniak describing wayne as very gracious and talented person.

They were particularly impressed by one of wayne's accomplishments at atari, a sophisticated documentation system. However, although the three became good friends, their ambitions were different due to their differing ages and life. Experiences, jobs in wozniak were born and grew up in the post-war boom period. For america, when it seemed like america's economy, was unstoppable, they were smart and hard-working and had not yet experienced any significant setbacks in their careers wayne.

On the other hand, experienced growing up during the great depression and world war ii and had experienced first-hand the pain of owning a failed business. Despite this, the three of them got along well due to their shared interest in engineering. In the late 70s, steve jobs and steve wozniak proposed the founding of apple computer. Jobs proposed that he and wozniak would each hold 45 percent of the company's shares and wayne would hold 10 percent.

The 10 percent was lower than the 45 percent for jobs in wozniak because of wayne's lesser role in the company, as primarily the mechanical engineering and documentation lead. But jobs looked up to wayne's expertise and experience and also knew the importance of having good documentation within a company wayne agreed and wrote up a partnership agreement confirming the arrangement in the first weeks of business at apple computer wayne illustrated apple's first logo and wrote up The documentation with the first apple computer, the apple one, the logo depicted isaac newton sitting under an apple tree with a sentence around the border. Reading quote a mind forever wandering through strange seas of thought, but his contributions to apple would end. There wayne felt out of place at apple.

He saw both jobs and wozniak as younger, more energetic people than himself describing working with him as grabbing a tiger by the tail. Furthermore, he was scarred by his previous venture and business with the slot machines. He had finally repaid his debts for that venture returned to a stable life in engineering and built up a nest egg of his own. He himself said that he was more suited to engineering than to business, and wozniak would be doing most of the engineering work at apple.

So 11 days after apple was started. Wayne sold his 10 stake in the company back to jobs in wozniak for just 800. He additionally sold his right to any claims against the company for another 1500 and with that, his entire stake in the success of the company was gone just weeks after he helped found it. Jobs in wozniak were both surprised and sad to see him go and tried to convince him to stay at multiple points after he left.

But his mind was made up and he went back to his career in engineering at a small firm called ldf semiconductors. In the decades after wayne, left apple apple grew to become the most valuable company in the world. Both jobs and wozniak became fabulously wealthy and invented some of the most iconic pieces of consumer technology. To this day, such as the ipod and the all touch screen.

Interface of the iphone jobs and wozniak stayed in contact with wayne who never sued to get back his stake in the company as many other people would jobs in wozniak even invited wayne out to a release of the new mac computers in 2000 when they flew him. First class and offered jobs, personal chauffeur at the airport, there was no bad blood between wayne and the other. Two wayne has said that he doesn't blame anyone else for his missing out on apple's rise, not even himself. He says he made the best decision for himself using all available information at the time.

If he had stayed with apple, he would have become a billionaire, but he says that he may have died of stress in the process, but he does regret one thing. For many years he kept the original contract they signed with jobs in wozniak in a file. Drawer years later, he decided to get rid of it and sold it to a collector for 500 in 2011 that same contract sold at auction for 1.6 million dollars. That's hardly the same as selling his 10 stake in apple for 800 years earlier, but still he missed out on almost 10 000 times the value that he got for the contract with the contract.

He should have been able to tell that apple would become big at the time he sold it and not parted ways for it so easily for many years after wayne parted ways with jobs in wozniak wayne worked in engineering eventually moving to florida, but in 2004, when He was 70 years old. He was robbed of everything he owned his interest in coin collecting and the history of economics and currencies had spurred him to keep the majority of his wealth in the form of gold and silver, two precious metals seen as immune to inflation. He kept hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gold and silver coins in a safe in his home, which was broken into and his life savings stolen. With nothing left.

He was forced to sell his home and severely downsized his lifestyle. He moved to a mobile home park in nevada to reduce his living expenses and officially retired, to support himself and supplement social security. He started up a coin collector trading operation, although he hardly lives the lavish lifestyle that one might expect. One of the three founders of apple to afford he has found peace with his retirement.

He says quote in this world of dealing and collectibles. My life has truly settled in most comfortably. It may not be a world of wealth as that which had been held by steve jobs, but it is certainly one of joyful satisfaction and personal fulfillment unquote. So that's the story of apple's little known third founder these days.

He spent some of his free time playing slot machines at nearby las vegas at peace, with the fact that if life had just gone slightly differently for him, he would have made more money now than what anyone could ever win in a casino. His original 10 stake would be worth tens of billions of dollars today, making him one of the richest people on earth after having had to endure seeing his own business fail experiencing one of the most unfortunate personal finance decisions in history and being robbed of his life Savings at the age of 70. This man has endured more than his fair share of emotional trauma. Maybe in another parallel universe, things would have worked out differently for him.

Alright, guys that wraps it up for this video. If you enjoyed the content, make sure to like subscribe and share also check out our second channel the economic outlook, where we discuss interesting topics in economics in the meantime. Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you in the next video wall street millennial, signing out.