Zero to IPO: The Apple Story — From a Garage to $1.7B
Every investor knows Apple as the first trillion-dollar company. But in 1976, it was three men in a California garage, one of whom sold his entire 10% stake for $800 — twelve days after signing the founding papers. This is how the most improbable startup in history went from soldering irons to the biggest IPO since Ford.
This is the ninth edition of IPOlist.in's "Zero to IPO" series — the founding-to-listing journeys of the world's greatest companies. Previous editions: DMart, Zomato, Infosys, Maruti Suzuki, Paytm, Nykaa, LIC and Delhivery.
The Founding: A Garage, Two Steves, and a Nervous Third Man
On April 1, 1976, Apple Computer Company was founded in Los Altos, California — in the garage of Steve Jobs's parents' house. The founders were 21-year-old Steve Jobs, 26-year-old engineer Steve Wozniak, and 42-year-old Ronald Wayne, a colleague from Jobs's Atari days brought in to supply "adult supervision" and draft the partnership papers.
Wozniak was the genius; Jobs was the salesman. Wozniak had designed a computer board — the Apple I — and to fund its creation, Jobs sold his Volkswagen Microbus for a few hundred dollars while Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator for $500. Wozniak first showed the prototype at the Homebrew Computer Club in July 1976. The Apple I went on sale as a bare motherboard for $666.66 — a price Wozniak later said he picked simply because he liked repeating digits.
The $800 Mistake: Wayne's 10% Walkaway
Ronald Wayne held 10% of Apple, with Jobs and Wozniak holding 45% each. But Wayne was 42, had assets, and feared personal liability — in a 1970s partnership, every founder was personally on the hook for company debts.
Twelve days after co-founding Apple, Wayne sold his entire stake back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800, later accepting another $1,500 to forfeit any future claims. He kept only the original partnership agreement — which he sold to a collector for $500 in 1994. That same document auctioned for $1.59 million in 2011. Wayne has said in interviews he has no regrets, but the 10% stake would have been worth hundreds of billions of dollars today.
Takeaway for investors: equity in a young company is a call option on an unknown future. The price of certainty is often paid in hindsight.
The Apple II: From $175,000 to $118 Million
With Wayne gone, Apple Computer, Inc. was incorporated on January 3, 1977, and multimillionaire Intel veteran Mike Markkula stepped in with $250,000 of funding and business expertise, becoming the company's first chairman.
The Apple II, unveiled in April 1977 at the first West Coast Computer Faire, was a genuine personal computer — color graphics, open architecture, and a plastic case — built for homes, not hobbyists. The revenue curve was violent:
| Year | Annual sales | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| 1976 | $175,000 | Apple I era |
| 1977 | $2.7 million | Apple II launch |
| 1978 | ~$7.8 million | Disk II floppy drive ships |
| 1979 | ~$48 million | Apple II Plus, VisiCalc — the first killer app |
| 1980 | $117–118 million | IPO year; sales doubling roughly every four months |
By 1980, Apple was profitable ($11.7 million trailing profit), growing insanely, and visibly the future of computing. Going public was the obvious next step.
The IPO: December 12, 1980 — The Loudest Debut in Tech
The offering was underwritten by blue-chip Morgan Stanley alongside the scrappier Hambrecht & Quist. Early filings floated a price near $14; demand was so hot the bankers kept raising it. The numbers, per the Computer History Museum's "This Day in History" account:
| IPO detail | Figure |
|---|---|
| Listing date | December 12, 1980 (NASDAQ) |
| Shares offered | 4.6 million |
| Price | $22 per share |
| First-day close | ~$29 (+32%) |
| Amount raised | Over $100 million |
| Market value at close | $1.778 billion |
| Instant millionaires | Over 40 of Apple's ~1,000 employees |
The shares sold out within minutes. It was the largest US IPO since Ford Motor Company went public in 1956. The Wall Street Journal wrote that "not since Eve has an Apple posed such temptation." A 25-year-old Steve Jobs ended the day worth roughly $217 million — while colleagues who'd joined months earlier suddenly outranked others, exposing Cupertino's internal class divide.
Here's the math that still staggers: 100 shares bought at the $22 IPO price would have multiplied through five stock splits into 22,400 shares — worth roughly $632,800 by the 35th anniversary in 2015, a gain of 28,663%, beating even Berkshire Hathaway over the same period.
After the IPO: Triumph, Exile, and the Comeback
Apple's post-listing arc reads like a Hollywood script:
- 1984: The Macintosh launches with the legendary "1984" Super Bowl ad — a smash hit.
- 1985: After boardroom battles, the board sides with CEO John Sculley and forces Jobs out. He founds NeXT and buys Pixar.
- 1996–97: Apple, near death, buys NeXT for $429 million. Jobs returns, first as interim CEO, then permanently.
- 1998–2001: The iMac, then the iPod ("1,000 songs in your pocket") — Apple pivots from computers to consumer electronics.
- 2007: Jobs announces the iPhone in January; it launches in June and redefines an industry.
- 2011: Jobs dies on October 5, 2011; Tim Cook takes over.
- 2018–2022: Apple becomes the first company to cross $1 trillion (2018), $2 trillion (2020), and $3 trillion (January 2022) in market value.
Today, Apple is a multi-trillion-dollar company — an installed base of over 2 billion active devices, and a market value that dwarfs the economy of most nations.
Takeaways for Investors and Entrepreneurs
- Profitability before the IPO: Apple went public with $11.7 million in profit and 4× annual growth — a reminder that the strongest listings are profitable growth stories, not just growth stories.
- The co-founder risk nobody prices in: Wayne's $800 exit is the costliest "safe" decision in business history. Diversification is wise; abandoning a compounding machine at the start is not.
- Buy-and-hold, for real: The IPO investor who held through Jobs's firing, the near-bankruptcy, and the dot-com crash outperformed almost everything. Time in the market beat timing — by orders of magnitude.
- Category creation compounds: Apple didn't just sell products; it invented the modern PC, the MP3 player, and the smartphone. Companies that define categories earn monopoly-like returns.
FAQs
When did Apple go public?
Apple Computer went public on December 12, 1980, on NASDAQ at $22 per share — the largest US IPO since Ford in 1956.
Who founded Apple?
Apple was founded on April 1, 1976, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne. Wayne sold his 10% stake for $800 twelve days later.
How much did Apple's IPO raise?
Apple sold 4.6 million shares at $22, raising over $100 million. The stock closed at ~$29 on day one, valuing the company at $1.778 billion.
What happened to Apple's early investors at the IPO?
Over 40 of Apple's roughly 1,000 employees became instant millionaires from stock options. Mike Markkula, the first chairman and $250,000 seed backer, became one of the company's largest shareholders.
What if I had invested $1,000 in Apple's IPO?
100 shares at $22 cost $2,200 and, through five stock splits, would have become 22,400 shares — worth roughly $632,800 by the IPO's 35th anniversary in 2015 (excluding dividends), per Fortune's calculation.
Was Apple's IPO a success on listing day?
Yes — shares sold out in minutes and rose 32% to close at ~$29, making it the defining tech IPO of its era and minting a generation of Silicon Valley wealth.
Sources: Computer History Museum ("This Day in History," Dec 12), TechCrunch / Crunchbase "A Look Back in IPO: Apple," Cult of Mac Apple-history archives, company-history records of the 1976 founding and 1980 offering. Historical market figures are as reported by these sources; prices are pre-split 1980 dollars.
Read more in the series: The DMart Story · The Zomato Story · The Infosys Story · The Delhivery Story
Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes. Historical facts are presented from cited sources; figures may vary across historical accounts. This is not investment advice.