Singleton Picked Apple Over Other Startups Due to Consumer Psychology
Shane Parrish · Henry Singleton: The Greatest Capital Allocator in History [Outliers] · Apr 22, 2025 · at 50:33
Host Shane Parrish recounts a story told by Simon Ramo about why Teledyne founder Henry Singleton made an early venture investment in Apple Computer.
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“Well, Cy, he replied, I figured most of these millions of expected potential computer customers would at first be intimidated by computers, but could anyone be intimidated by a computer named Apple? Besides, he said, all the others except Apple, if they failed, would just walk away. Apple's founders, I noted, had mortgaged their homes to the hilt and borrowed heavily from their parents and their brothers and their sisters and their aunts and their uncles and their grandparents and their cousins, and they plowed every cent into the company. They just had to make good.”
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