Apple co-founders Steve Wozniak and Ron Wayne popped on over for an interview with Bloomberg to discuss Steve Jobs’ resignation as CEO from Apple. It’s a wonderfully fond and illuminating interview, but there’s one big surprise: Woz was skeptical that Steve could turn Apple around when he came back to the company in 1997.
In addition, there’s a lot of talk from the Apple co-founder people tend to forget, Ron Wayne, who sold his stock in Apple after just twelve days… a share of Apple that today would be worth $35 billion.
Why’d he leave? On one level, Wayne was concerned by how close to the bone Apple was running things. Apple was making orders with parts manufacturers on credit, then paying off that credit with their computer sales. If there were any hiccups, neither Steve Jobs nor Wozniak had any cash, and Wayne was concerned he’d be on the hook for the outstanding money.
The other problem, though, was that Wayne just felt overshadowed by two geniuses. He felt that he was standing in the shadow of greats, and that as a creative guy, he simply wouldn’t be able to work on the projects he wanted to work on in Apple, and been consigned to pushing papers around some back office.Honestly, he’s probably right.
Anyway, it’s a great interview, with a lot more nuggets than this about Apple’s early years. Go watch!
