Motivation Not to Leave a Startup

en.wikipedia.org

2 points·byoung2··4 comments

Sure, he could have become a billionaire, but that's not good rationale as a reason "not to leave a startup." For every "Ronald Wayne" there are many many more people who will never become billionaires (or even millionaires) no matter what investment or employment decisions they make. Using this guy as a reason to not leave a startup is like pointing to the last person who won the jackpot in a lottery and saying "that's why you should always buy lottery tickets."

Yeah, it's ridiculous. Same thing as pointing to Pete Best and saying "see, had he been a bit better, he would've been the fourth Beatle instead of Ringo". People should start realizing that hindsight is always 20/20. Maybe reading "The Black Swan"?

it should be motivation to structure your company in such a way so as to reduce risk to personal assets:

from the wiki page: " 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 seize "

"Had he kept his 10% stock it would have been worth over 35 billion dollars in August 2012.

After leaving Apple, Wayne resisted Jobs's attempts to recruit him back to Apple, remaining at Atari until 1978 when he joined Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and later an electronics company in Salinas, California. He is retired and now lives a quiet lifestyle in a Pahrump Nevada Mobile Home Park selling stamps and rare coins in Pahrump, Nevada"

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