Worst investment decision ever?

[braumeister]

Can you just imagine?

Today marks the 45th anniversary of Apple, co-founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne on April 1, 1976. Wayne sold his 10% share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak just 12 days later to avoid financial risk, which is unfortunate in hindsight given that his stake would be worth more than $200 billion today.

https://www.macrumors.com

He sold his share to Jobs for $800 and later received another $1,500 to forfeit any potential future claims. He has always said he doesn't regret it.

 

[Markola]

Wayne probably doesn’t regret the part about extracting himself from a partnership with a maniacal narcissist. Maybe it took him 12 days to figure it out?

 

[Fermion]

As a percentage though, how does that investment compare to the guy who bought a pizza with like 10,000 bitcoin?

 

[Time2]

Heck, I could put up with a "maniacal narcissist",
for a lot less than $200 billion.

 

[Aerides]

Hah so this made me look, and I did find one apple-decision - THIS he regrets:

(per wiki)
"In the early 1990s, Wayne sold the original Apple partnership contract paper, signed in 1976 by Jobs, Wozniak, and himself, for US$500. In 2011, the contract was sold at auction for $1.6 million.[16] Wayne has stated that he regrets that sale.[5][6][17]"

And I like this - which is why most of us strive to ER and leave a lot of potential cash on the table, leaving bosses and teams with plenty of narcissists, maniacal or not:

'he said that with the stress of staying with Apple he "probably would have wound up the richest man in the cemetery." He summarized, "What can I say? You make a decision based on your understanding of the circumstances, and you live with it." '

sounds like he's very zen with it.

 

[HarveyS]

I worked for a maniacal narcissist for 4 years at Mega. No, I did not earn anywhere near $200B.

 

[Closet_Gamer]

My worst choice was probably turning down a job at MSFT in 1995.

They wanted to make a lot of my compensation these "stock options" that weren't really worth anything right then and I had college loans to pay. So I politely told the recruiter that I'd rather have $5k more each year in compensation than a bunch of "stock options" that I didn't understand. They told me they'd pass.

(Is there an emoji for shooting yourself in the head?)

 

[Fermion]

My worst choice was probably turning down a job at MSFT in 1995.

They wanted to make a lot of my compensation these "stock options" that weren't really worth anything right then and I had college loans to pay. So I politely told the recruiter that I'd rather have $5k more each year in compensation than a bunch of "stock options" that I didn't understand. They told me they'd pass.

(Is there an emoji for shooting yourself in the head?)

My wife took a job at Microsoft in 1999 and was granted a ton of stock options that expired worthless after 7 years. Don't feel too bad...life is a roulette wheel.

 

[VanWinkle]

Heck, I could put up with a "maniacal narcissist",
for a lot less than $200 billion.

 

[Dawg52]

Worldcom. Rode it up and then into the toilet like a good soldier. So much for buy and hold.

 

[Jerry1]

But maybe if Wayne stayed, the infighting might have derailed the path that the Steves ended up taking. Hard not to, but you can’t look back.

 

[sengsational]

It's easy to presume Wayne would have held it all until today, but that's highly unlikely.

It's like the guy who bought $5 worth of bitcoin in the era where you could get tiny fractions of coin for free at bit dripper. How likely is it he wasn't tempted to get out at 10x or 100x?

 

[Stormy Kromer]

Being sold a Variable Annuity.

 

[UnrealizedPotential]

Not exactly a worst investment decision of all time, but I do wish I would have understood the power of compound interest earlier in my life than I did. The concept of compound interest didn't become real for me until my numbers got big enough for compound interest to take over and to be honest the numbers had to be bigger than I initially thought.

In regard to Wayne, it's impossible to know what might have been. there is a very good chance he would have sold his positions along the way and might not have ever even sniffed at 200B and deep down he might know it.

 

[HadEnuff]

Well, he is still breathing, and Jobs is not.

 

[JoeWras]

His attitude of no regrets is important. You are not living until you look back and realize some mistakes. Can't dwell on them.

One reason I like the series "Halt and Catch Fire" is it explores what it would be like working with a Jobs kind of person.

 

[Markola]

Heck, I could put up with a "maniacal narcissist",
for a lot less than $200 billion.

If you have not had the experience, consider yourself fortunate. Eventually, you want nothing more than to cash out. If Wayne figured that out in only twelve days, he is smarter and more decisive than most.

 

[Winemaker]

I rode mega corp stock from $6 (cost) all the way up to $118.50 just before the Great Financial Crisis. I sold bits and pieces on the way up, but I was going to sell 10,000s of shares when it hit $120. Never made it. I ended up selling the shares, on the way back down in various lots to the $70's. Had it went to $120, we would have hit our number in 2009, instead of 2014. But we could have easily lost all of those gains during the GFC as well.

 

[SnowballCamper]

Even Steve Jobs left Apple Computer from 1985 to 1997. Few things are as straightforward as the seem in retrospect.

 

[Car-Guy]

He sold his share to Jobs for $800 and later received another $1,500 to forfeit any potential future claims. He has always said he doesn't regret it.

He says he doesn't regret it? He may have said it but that's BS....

 

[markbike528cbx]

Heck, I could put up with a "maniacal narcissist",
for a lot less than $200 billion.

I would suggest my number is less than a double comma number.
Heck, I've put up with myself my whole life

 

[ERD50]

Not really a bad decision, it probably made very good sense for the reasons he gave. Bad outcome in terms of lost opportunity, but that's different than a bad decision.

Not buying a lottery ticket is not a bad decision. But if you somehow found out later that you would have bought the winning ticket, that doesn't change the decision process, only the outcome.

You never hear of the thousands of early investors who decided to sell out their share of a start up, and the start up went down the tubes to zero, making it a good decision with the expected outcome. That's not news.

I wonder if Ronald Wayne and Pete Best ever got together for beers?

-ERD50

 

[JoeWras]

The History Channel actually still has a decent show or two after you filter through the 95% trash.

One of them is new, called The Food That Built America.

Now they may take a bit of dramatic poetic license, but for the most part, their research is interesting and based on fact.

Their take on the Domino's Pizza story is that the one brother, James Monaghan, missed out on $800 Million when he sold his share of the business to his brother for a VW Beetle. I'm not completely sure where they got that number. Today's public value? Or the sale of the company to Bain Capital for $1B in 1998.

The history is clear that the sale was for the Beetle way back in '61. The History Channel story fills in the gaps you don't find on their website implying that Tom was the innovator and risk taker, while James was resistant to change, still keeping his job as a postman. The dramatic story also implies it wasn't exactly a fond split.

As an aside, The History Channel today also features a show (which has morphed into near-trash status) featuring a rich brother risk taker, and a poor brother postman. It is The Curse Of Oak Island. The show is popular enough, though, that the poor brother Rick is now surely rich. Good for him.

 

[Car-Guy]

^^^^^
The Food that Built America is a good one.... I think I've seen all the episodes so far.... A lot of good/interesting info... The thing that strikes me with each show is "these are the guys that made it"... How many 1000's+ tried and failed for one reason or another in the same industry. Same with any big business that's made it I guess.

Also agree, there's a lot of trash to filter out... Of course one mans trash is another mans treasure.

I still regularly watch Modern Marvels, Pawn Stars, American Pickers, and America Restoration in that order of preference.

 

[Markola]

Oh boy. If Domino’s Pizza is the food the built America, that explains a lot. In my life, it was just the food that fed the late night munchies in college.