"Apple Co-Founder" Ronald Wayne Hand Signed 3X5 Card Embossed Todd Mueller COA

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"Apple Co-Founder" Ronald Wayne Hand Signed 3X5 Card W/ His Personal Emboss.
This
item
is certified authentic by Todd Mueller Autographs and comes with their Certificate of Authenticity.
ES-5709E, ES-5753E
Ronald Wayne
(born May 17, 1934) is a retired American electronics industry businessman. He co-founded Apple Computer Company (now
Apple Inc.
) as a partnership with
Steve Wozniak
and
Steve Jobs
, providing administrative oversight and documentation for the new venture. Twelve days later, he sold his 10% share of the new company back to Jobs and Wozniak for US0, and one year later accepted a final US,500 to forfeit any potential future claims against the newly incorporated Apple, totaling US,300. Wayne was born in
Cleveland
,
Ohio
, United States on May 17, 1934. He trained as a technical draftsman at the
School of Industrial Art
in New York. In 1976, Ronald Wayne built the internal corporate documentation systems at the three-year-old
Atari
, where he met coworkers
Steve Jobs
and
Steve Wozniak
. To help settle one of their typical intense discussions about the design of computers and the future of the industry, Wayne invited the two to his home to facilitate and advise them. In the ensuing two-hour conversation about technology and business, Jobs proposed the founding of a computer company led by him and Wozniak. Those two would each hold a 45% stake so that Wayne could receive a 10% stake to act as a tie-breaker in their decisions. As the venture's self-described "adult in the room" at age 41, Wayne wrote a
partnership agreement
, and the three founded
Apple Computer
on April 1, 1976. Wayne illustrated the first
Apple logo
and wrote the
Apple I
manual.
Wayne's business attitude was already risk-averse due to his experience five years prior with the "very traumatic" failure of his
slot machine
business, the debt of which he had spent one year voluntarily repaying. Jobs secured a US,000 line of credit to buy product materials for Apple's first order which had been placed by The Byte Shop, whose reputation as a notoriously slow-paying vendor gave Wayne great concern for his future. Legally, all members of a
partnership
are personally responsible for any debts incurred by any partner; unlike Jobs and Wozniak, then 21 and 25, Wayne had personal assets that potential creditors could possibly seize. Furthermore, his passion was in original product engineering and in slot machines, and not in the documentation systems he assumed Jobs and Wozniak probably wanted him to do indefinitely at Apple. Believing he was "standing in the shadow of giants" of product-design talent and avoiding financial risk, he quit the company. Reportedly, "Twelve days after Wayne wrote the document that formally created Apple, he returned to the registrar's office and renounced his role in the company", therefore relinquishing his equity in exchange for US0 on April 12, 1976. This period of time however has been disputed by
Steve Wozniak
, who in an interview said that Wayne left the company after a few months. Wayne has stated in following decades that he does not regret selling his share of the company, as he made the "best decision with the information available to me at the time". He said he had originally believed that the Apple enterprise "would be successful, but at the same time there would be significant bumps along the way and I couldn't risk it. I had already had a rather unfortunate business experience before. I was getting too old and those two were whirlwinds. It was like having a tiger by the tail and I couldn't keep up with these guys. Although Apple ended up at one point becoming the most valuable company in the world, 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.