Have you seen Breaking bad? Remember in the fifth season, the anti-protagonist talks about selling his shares in a company in return of a few dollars. And how the same company is worth Billions today in the show. Well, we have a real-life story that would give the character a run for his money.
There was a young electronics engineer called Ronald Wayne. He met two people close to his age and started a company. Well, like any business partner, he had a stake in the same.His job was to oversee the administration of the company in return of which he was given, 10% stake in it.
However, he got scared. The clause that a partner in the company would be responsible for any debts of the other two partners. He felt at risk and got nervous, real soon. He had his reasons, the primary of them was that he had lost a lot of money in his previous venture and thought of himself as a somewhat failed businessman.
So, he did what he thought was needed. Within 2 weeks of his partnership deal, he sold his shares to the other two partners. He got around 2300 USD which ensures that he would not have any claims over the start-up in the future. But to his bad fortune, the shares were worth more than 100 billion by August 2010.
Guess the value of the very same start-up right now? Close to 1 trillion dollars in 2018.
Guess the name of the company? It’s none other than, Apple.
Guess the names of the two partners of Mr. Wayne? Of course the iconic, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.
He had also written a book with the memoir title ‘Adventures of an Apple Founder‘ which heads on to explain all his memories with Apple and its foundation.
A start-up definitely has a huge risk factor involved. You can make big money or you can lose a lot of the same. However, this incident totally proves that you shouldn’t always let a bad experience rule your future decisions.
He could have waited for some more time, may be used actual data rather than a failed incident in his past to decide or at least asked for a better payout. After all, a little patience and faith is what it takes!
