The Forgotten First Customer

In 1962, a record executive at Decca Records listened to a young band audition in a London studio. They were raw, unpolished—energetic, yes, but not marketable, he decided.

“You boys aren’t going anywhere,” he told them. “Guitar groups are on the way out.”

The band, of course, was The Beatles.

That man’s name was Dick Rowe. He didn’t vanish into obscurity, but history would forever remember him as the guy who passed on the biggest band of all time.

Sometimes, the people closest to greatness don’t get to ride the wave. Sometimes they just open the door… and watch someone else take the rocket.

In 1976, Silicon Valley wasn’t a tech hub. It was a garage-filled sprawl of hobbyists, engineers, and computer tinkerers—guys with soldering irons and circuit boards, building what they believed might be the future.

Two of them, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, had built a strange-looking computer: the Apple I. It was a circuit board without a case, keyboard, or monitor—just the guts. They had no company, no storefront, no backing. Just an idea and a dream.

They needed a buyer. Or at least, someone who would take them seriously.

Enter Paul Terrell.

Terrell ran a little store in Mountain View called The Byte Shop. It was one of the first dedicated computer retail stores in the country, back when computers were still considered obscure curiosities. He was always on the lookout for something interesting to put on his shelves.

When Jobs walked in, he wasn’t selling an idea. He was asking for a favor. Would Terrell be willing to buy 50 units of the Apple I?

Terrell hesitated. The Apple I wasn’t a finished product. It was essentially a kit. He told Jobs that hobbyists were already growing tired of building from scratch. What he needed was a ready-to-use machine—something a customer could plug in and actually operate.

Jobs, ever the salesman, didn’t blink. “We can do that,” he said.

Terrell agreed. He placed an order for 50 fully assembled Apple I computers, to be delivered in just 30 days. It was Apple’s first real sale—$500 a unit, cash on delivery. No venture capital, no backers. Just an ambitious 21-year-old promising to meet a deadline.

Wozniak was shocked when he found out. Jobs had promised something they hadn’t yet built. But they got to work. Day and night, they hand-assembled the boards in Jobs’ parents’ garage, enlisting friends, cutting deals, pulling parts from wherever they could find them.

And they delivered.

That order—50 hand-built machines—was the first time Apple made real money. It gave them credibility. Momentum. Proof that someone outside their friend group believed in what they were building.

Without Paul Terrell, there may have been no Apple II. No Mac. No iPhone. No trillion-dollar empire.

But here’s the thing: Terrell didn’t get rich off the deal.

He wasn’t an investor. He didn’t get equity. He didn’t try to partner or scale. He just bought some computers for his shop, sold them to hobbyists, and moved on.

He stayed in the industry, sure. And he’s respected among early computing circles. But when Apple exploded, Terrell wasn’t on the rocket.

He was the guy who opened the launchpad gate.

It’s easy to focus on the people who build the empires. The Jobses. The Bezoses. The Gates.

But none of them get very far without someone willing to say yes early.

That first customer. That first believer. That first hand that reaches back and says, “Sure, I’ll give you a shot.”

Those yeses matter.

And in finance, the same dynamic shows up more often than you’d think. Some of the most meaningful returns I’ve seen in clients’ lives didn’t come from timing the market or outsmarting the system. They came from being early on something others were too cautious to touch.

It might be an early-stage investment they believed in.

It might be buying a house before it became a “hot” neighborhood.

It might be saying yes to a friend’s venture when it was still a spreadsheet and a dream.

Of course, not every “yes” turns into Apple. But here’s the trick: neither Terrell nor Jobs knew what Apple would become. They just saw something that looked like it could go somewhere, and they didn’t overcomplicate it.

Sometimes the best opportunities don’t come with perfect clarity. Sometimes they come wrapped in risk, with a dose of unknown, and just enough promise to say, “Why not?”

Being early doesn’t guarantee success. But being too slow—or too skeptical—can quietly lock you out of stories you might’ve been part of.

Paul Terrell didn’t get rich. But he got to see the spark. He saw it before the rest of the world. And for one moment, he was the only guy who said yes.

Sometimes, that’s how all the great stories start.