Meet world's unluckiest man who sold 10 percent of Apple shares for 800 dollars

Apple is one of the richest companies in the world. Its market cap is around 2.9 trillion dollars, which makes it the world's biggest company in terms of market capitalisation. Any person who held even one percent stake of the company would have 29 billion dollars currently. There is a man who once held 10 percent shares of the company. He sold these shares off for only 800 dollars (Rs 65600 in current times). The name of this person is Ronald Wayne. He is one of the three co-founders of the company. Here's his story.

Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne started Apple. Wayne was 42 years old at that time whereas his co-founders were in their twenties. He was entrusted with mechanical engineering and documentation. He received a 10 percent stake. He made the first agreement, he even made the logo of the company. The first logo was the photo of Issac Newton who was shown eating an apple under a tree.

Steve Jobs had taken a loan of 15000 dollars to fulfil the first contract for The Byte Shop which was notorious for not paying the money to its vendors. Wayne thought Steve Jobs would not get his money back.

Wayne had many assets at that time whereas the other two had nothing to lose. He thought he would land in financial trouble if the company didn't survive. He took his name off the contract and sold his stakes for just 800 dollars. Had he held the shares, he would have 290 billion dollars. He would have been the world's richest man.

Wayne, however, said in an interview that he didn't regret the decision. He said Apple wasn't the place for him. He would have been checking documentation for the next 20 years had he started there.

In the year 1990, he sold the contract for just 500 dollars. In 2011, that contract fetched 15.9 lakh dollars in an auction.