They say, to become a billionaire you should get lucky but sometimes, even when luck comes
to you with open arms, you might be too dumb to accept it. Some people had the opportunity
right under their nouse, but their arrogance led them to think that they smarter than that.
So they ended up missing the greatest opportunity of their life. If they would have been a little
bit more humble and gave it another thought, they would have been today on Forbes billionaire's
list. You better watch this video till the end,
because who knows, you might come across a similar opportunity and miss it as well.
A lot of people don't know but Apple wasn’t only founded by Steve Jobs. Some of you might
have heard about Steven Wozniak but I am sure that most of you don't know that Ronald Wayne
was also one of the founders of apple in 1976. He was assigned to supervise jobs and Wozniak
since he was in his 40s while they were in their 20s and didn't have any professional
experience so they asked him to join the company in exchange of 10% of ownership. Ronaldo wrote
down their first partnership agreement and created the first logo with Isaac Newton sitting
under a tree. Back then, Apple was a tiny company with 3
people in Job’s garage. Of course, Steve had his vision to grow the company bigger
and make great computers but Roland didn't get the idea. So he left the company and sold
his 10% stake for 800 bucks. If he would have kept his shares, he would
have been a billionaire today, since Apple became the most valuable company in the world.
Of course, he would not own exactly 10 percent because the company raised money multiple
times and had 4 stocks splits since going public.
That wasn’t the only opportunity he missed. Remember the first contract he wrote down
when he joined the company. He sold it for 500 dollars in 1990s. However, the exact same
contract was resold at an auction for 1.59 million dollars.
I really feel sorry for this guy.
But our second hero missed even a greater opportunity. In 1976, Apple was running out
of cash, so Steve jobs approached Nolan Bushnell to invest 50 thousand dollars in exchange
of 1/3 of the company. Nolan was a pretty successful guy at that time so he didn't give
a damn about a guy who is trying to make computers and missed the greatest opportunity he would
ever come across. If he wasn’t so stubborn and had a little bit of faith in jobs and
accepted the offer. He probably would be as rich as bill gates today.
At least he didn't accept the deal and then wasted it as Laszlo Hanyecz did. He was one
of the first believes in bitcoin back then when most of us didn't even know about its
existence. And mining it was pretty easy since the network was tiny. In fact, no one even
used bitcoin to buy something so Laszlo decided to be that first person. In May of 2010, when
the price of the bitcoin was 0.08 cents, he ordered 2 pizza and paid for them with 10K
bitcoins. This is the picture of the 2 pizzas. If he would have kept his bitcoins and sold
them in December of 2017. He would have made at least 150 million dollars. He definitely
wouldn’t be a billionaire but that’s better than a pizza.
However, I would say a pizza is better than nothing. James Howells was one of the first
six people to mine bitcoin. He would set his laptop to mine bitcoins all night But his
girlfriend stopped him because apparently, the noise of the fan was simply too loud.
Even in a such a short period of time, he had mined 7500 bitcoins. Imagine if he kept
mining all of these years, he would have owned tenths of thousands of bitcoin today. But
that's not the sad part of the story. In 2010, his computer broke down, so James took out
the hard drive that contained the bitcoins and left it in a drawer and forgot about it.
After 3 years when he was cleaning up his house, he accidentally threw out that hard
drive. A few months later when he reconnected with the network, he realized that the bitcoin
price has enormously increased, he rushed to the landfill site to find it but he couldn't.
If he didn't thew that hard drive, he could have sold it for a 140 million dollars in
December of 2017.
5. Joe Green
When Mark Zuckerberg was developing Facebook in his dorm room, he asked Joe Green to help
him out in exchange of 5 percent of ownership, since both of them previously worked on a
project called Facesmash, which you might have heard about. But Joe’s father who was
a professor discouraged him. Unfortunately, he listened to his dad and lost the opportunity
because that tiny ownership would definitely have made him a multi-billionaire.
Listening to your parents is good, but sometimes you have to take the initiative and decide
for yourself. Who do you think missed the greatest opportunity out of these five, let
me know in the comments below? As always hit that like button if you have
enjoyed the video and subscribe if you don't want to miss the next video. Thanks for watching
and I will see you in the next one.