💻 How Apple Was Started in a Garage

Good morning Honeycrisp!

I guess that’s one type of apple…

The other is a 3 TRILLION dollar behemoth that was started in a garage in Los Altos, California.

The craziest part?

Apple wasn’t just founded by Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak..

No no no, there were three founders.

Three founders!

Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and this guy Ronald Wayne.

Ronald Wayne created this first logo:

But he was kind of sketched out by the whole startup thing, so he sold his 10% stake in Apple for $800 12 days after the company was founded 🤦.

This isn’t even what we’re meant to be talking about today..

But that 10% $800 stake would be worth like 300 BILLION dollars today..

RONALDDD!!!!

Oh no.

I googled ‘Where is Ronald Wayne today?’

Apparently he’s 88 years old and has a net worth of $400,000…

He sells ‘merchandise signed by Ron’ on his personal website ronaldgwayne.com

Tough.

Carrying on.

How did we get to this tragic income inequality anyway?

Well it was 1975.

And a young Steve Jobs works as a technician for Atari. He’s responsible for testing and repairing arcade games.

When Jobs was lucky, he got to work on the design of new Atari games.

One of his most notable contributions was the creation of the game Breakout – a single-player version of Pong:

But hang on, Steve! You didn’t design that whole game yourself..

No you didn’t.

Your friend Steve Wozniak helped you, didn’t he?

Thank you for being honest.

Steve and Steve were buds from high school. The two would geek out about the newest electronics and computer parts together.

And Wozniak helped Jobs design the circuit board for Breakout.

Then one day Wozniak showed up to Jobs with this new thing he had been working on:

Now that hunk of parts probably doesn’t look like much to you.

But in 1975, this is what most computers looked like:

They sucked because they were insanely expensive and insanely huge.

Here’s that giant IBM System/360 next to Wozniak’s creation:

Big. Small.

Wozniak had done something incredible.

He created a cheap, powerful, portable personal computer.

So the two start a computer business together: Apple Computer Co.

(Yes with Ronald, but let’s just ignore Ronald. I’ve already spent too much time in that rabbit hole.)

The only problem?

These clowns have no money to start their personal computer revolution.

So Steve Jobs sells his VW van for $800.

And Steve Wozniak sells his fancy pants HP-65 calculator for $500.

They get their first 50 computer order from their local computer shop in Mountain View, California.

And start assembling these Wozniak personal computer creations in Jobs’ family garage.

As for Ronald?

Well that’s a separate story we’re gonna have to dig into another time.

For now, just be happy you learned how you, too, can take $1,300, create a personal computer revolution, and turn it into a 164,000 person company worth 3 TRILLION dollars.

Actually..

No, you’re screwed.

Stay Cute,
Henry & Dylan 🌈

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