Mac History

The two Apple founders both came from humble backgrounds and were not endowed with commercial success. In order to afford the first pieces of the Apple I in 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak almost literally sold the shirts off their backs. Jobs invested the proceeds from the sale of his VW bus ($1,500 dollars). “Woz” parted with his beloved programmable calculator Hewlett-Packard 65 and deposited 250 dollars in the company’s treasury.

Ronald Gerald Wayne, the “third founder” of Apple Computer, was with the company for only a short time. He illustrated the first Apple logo and wrote the Apple I manual. While at Apple, he also wrote their partnership agreement. Wayne worked with Jobs at Atari before co-founding Apple Computer on April 1, 1976. He was given a 10% stake in Apple, but relinquished his stock for 800 dollars only two weeks later because legally, all members of a partnership are personally responsible for any debts incurred by any of the other partners. After Apple’s IPO, Wayne’s stake could have been worth as much as US$ 1.5 billion. He claimed that he didn’t regret selling the stock as he had made “the best decision available at that time.” According to CNET, as of 1997 Wayne was working as an engineer for a defense contractor in Salinas, California.

The foundations for the commercial success were laid in 1977 by venture capitalist Arthur Rock as well as by the ex-Intel manager Mike Markkula, who invested 92,000 dollars in Apple and secured a bank loan of 250,000 dollars. The investment would pay off. Before Apple went public in 1980, Markkula owned a third of the company.

Markkula also brought in Apple’s first CEO, Michael Scott, then took the job himself from 1981 to 1983. Markkula served as chairman from 1985 until 1997, when a new board was formed after Jobs returned to the company. Wozniak, who virtually single-handedly created the first two Apple computers, credits Markkula for the success of Apple more than himself.

Excerpt of the TV documentary “Triumph of the Nerds” (PBS)
With the initial public offering on December 12, 1980, Jobs and Wozniak became multimillionaires, as Apple Computer was now valued at 1.8 billion dollars. Jobs possessed 7.5 million stocks (217 million dollars); “Woz” was assigned four million stocks (116 million dollars). Markkula’s share of seven million stocks was worth 203 million.

“I was worth about over a million dollars when I was twenty-three and over ten million dollars when I was twenty-four, and over a hundred million dollars when I was twenty-five,” Jobs said in an interview with Robert Cringley (”Triumph of the Nerds“) in 1996. “And it wasn’t that important because I never did it for the money.”

In the Forbes List of the 400 richest Americans (2008), Steve Jobs is ranked 189th with a net worth 5.4 billion dollars. However, Apple’s controversial stock options of 2001 have contributed to the Apple CEO’s wealth only on a small scale.

In the first instance, Steve Jobs has became a billionaire due to the fact that he had sold all of his stocks – except for one – after his dismissal from Apple in 1985 and invested five million dollars in the computer graphics division of George Lucas, which became Pixar later.

Within the following years, Jobs invested further millions in Pixar since the cartoon expert had to face a long dry spell. Jobs’ stubbornness paid off for him: with the initial public offering of Pixar in 1995, Jobs became a billionaire. As Pixar had been acquired by Disney last year, Jobs received a 6.7 percent share of Disney for his 49 percent share of Pixar. The Disney stocks alone make up about 4.7 billion dollars of Steve Jobs’ fortune today.

Steve Jobs returning to Apple Computer (MacWorld Expo 1997 in Boston)

In 1996, Apple announced that it would buy Steve Jobs’ other company, NeXT, for US$429 million. The deal was finalized in late 1996, bringing Jobs back to the company he founded. He soon became Apple’s interim CEO after the directors lost confidence in and ousted then-CEO Gil Amelio in a boardroom coup.

Jobs draws a salary of one dollar a year from Apple, which is occasionally enhanced by valuable gifts such as a 90 million dollar Gulfstream jet. In March 2003, he was awarded 10 million restricted shares of Apple stock. The annual report of Apple 2007 notes that Jobs holds 5.5 million shares of Apple stock through a series of restricted stock awards over the years that have vested. But it also points out that he hasn’t sold a single share of Apple stock in the 10 years since he rejoined the company.

Steve Wozniak had been less lucky when it comes to money. In order to finance a house and a car to the amount of two million dollars, Woz gave away many founder’s shares even before the initial public offering, which were worth much more by the IPO. 80 Apple employees who had left empty-handed in the company’s options program benefited from this so-called “WozPlan”.

When Wozniak abandoned his work at Apple in April 1981, he still possessed four percent of the Apple stocks, which were worth 70 million dollars at that time. A series of misinvestments and two divorces made Wozniak’s fortune diminish rapidly. However, he still should be a millionaire. By his own account, Woz is still drawing a small paycheck from Apple today and is still listed as “employee”.

Wheel of Zeus, Wozniak’ latest enterprise, in which he intended to develop and distribute a GPS positioning system for dogs, does not seem to be crowned by success either. By now, the company’s former web address www.woz.com redirects visitors to Wozniak’s private homepage www.woz.org. (Edited in June 2008).

Woz was more fortunate with his book iWoz, which has probably sold reasonably well and provided for several public appearances. Woz is a regular guest of Steve Jobs’ keynotes at the MacWorld Expo.

Authors@Google: Steve Wozniak