On April Fools' Day 1976, he got together with Jobs and Wozniak to write Apple's incorporation document. He typed up the three pages himself, and even designed the company's first logo. But only 12 days later, Wayne left Apple and a 10 percent stake in the company that today would be worth billions. Wayne now lives in a modest home in Pahrump, Nev., just outside Las Vegas — and survives, primarily, off his Social Security check and a small business selling vintage coins.
So there's that. Another lesser-known but considerably wealthier Apple co-founder is Mike Markkula. His Wikipedia page tells his story: Markkula made millions on stock options he acquired as a marketing manager for Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel and, in 1974, retired at the ripe old age of 32. Steve Jobs, who was referred to Markkula by a venture capitalist, then lured him out of his premature retirement to join Apple as co-founder and CEO.
Steve Jobs and Mike Markkula circa 1977
Most interesting to me is what Markkula is doing now: He is an investor and an adviser for a company called Crowd Technologies which concentrates on social networks and the "wisdom of the crowd" including a product called Piqqem for social investing. (TechCrunch wrote a not-so-kind review in 2008.) This intrigues me because 'Crowd Technologies' sounds very much in line with the company I plan to create (only without the investing part). I want to know how this one social investing company was able to get Markkula on their side.
For being an Apple co-founder, Markkula has a rather scant appearance on the Inter-Web. I was only able to find a couple of seconds of video of him (here; skip to the very end). With any luck, he will have a Google Alert for his name and he will come find me and want to be my investor, adviser, and best friend.
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Speaking of Apple and Steve Jobs... While I have so far remained unfazed by the Steve Jobs fanaticism I observe around me, I am a fanboy of one of Jobs's biggest fanboys, Charlie Rose. I am very curious to know why Rose, who gets a glimmer in his eye whenever he talks about Jobs (typically 2-3x per half hour), has interviewed him only once, in 1996, for 23 minutes, with another guest doing most of the talking and scenes from Toy Story intermixed. It is always fun to play the bar game "which celebrity or world leader has Charlie Rose not interviewed". There are impressively few, so I want to know why Jobs appeared only once. True, Jobs tends to be media shy and, true, the Toy Story interview did not go so great, but I suspect there's more to it than that, but I was unable to find any answers through Googling. Let me know if you've got the gossip (or just make some up).
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Earlier:
Charlie Rose commencement address
Steve Jobs commencement address
