I found this story sad & humorous at the same time. I also can relate to the author because I failed to see the early transition of Apple from the Apple circa 1980 company to Apple circa 2000. Could have made a lot had I seen Apple decades of dismal performance in the companies early history. Anyways a good read. In the interest of not promoting a stock I snipped the parts about Apple earnings and potential share price appreciation.
When I took a young, cocky, long haired, Levis wearing Steve Jobs around to meet Morgan Stanley’s institutional investors to pitch an Apple share offering 28 years ago, I vowed never to buy anything from the man. He was such a great salesman, and possessed such a messianic devotion to his product, the risk of getting legged over had to be great. I have to confess now that my prior prejudices caused me to miss the boat on Apple for the last decade, when the stock soared from $4 to $275, eventually topping Microsoft (MSFT) with a $238 billion market capitalization last week.
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To prove that I am not the world’s worst Apple analyst, let me tell you about Ron Wayne, who owned 10% of Apple (AAPL) and you sold it for $800 in 1976. What would that stake be worth today? Try $22 billion.
That is the harsh reality that Ron Wayne, 76, faces every morning when he wakes up, one of the three original founders of the consumer electronics giant. Ron first met Steve Jobs when he was a spritely 21 year old marketing guy at Atari, the inventor of the hugely successful “Pong” video arcade game. Ron dumped his shares when he became convinced that Steve Jobs’ reckless spending was going to drive the nascent start up into the ground, and he wanted to protect his assets in a future bankruptcy.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/apple%E2%80%99s-next-stop-1000Ouch maybe Ron should have retained $1 worth of Apple stock as a lottery ticket. Sold $799 of the shares he believed would be worthless due to bankruptcy and retained a single dollar stake in the company (0.0125% of company circa 1976). That $1 in shares would be worth $27.5 million today.