Seven years ago, an artist named David Choe was invited by Sean Parker to paint some murals at the new Facebook office. (Mark Zuckerburg, Dustin Mockowitz, and Sean Parker are pictured here with David Choe’s murals in the background.) No big deal, right? Well Sean offered the artist a choice to receive payment in cash (several thousand dollars) or the stock equivalent. Despite the fact that Mr. Choe thought the idea of Facebook was “ridiculous and pointless”, he wisely chose to be paid in stock options.
With Facebook’s impending IPO, that stock of his is about to be worth $200 Million!
On Mr. Choe’s website, he describes himself as “homeless, wandering the earth” and a an art school dropout. His dream is to retire early to illustrate the entire Bible. It looks like he’s about to have his dream come true.
And Facebook is about to make a lot of other people’s dreams come true as well. In the early days of Facebook, many employees were given stock options as incentive. Many of them are about to become multi-millionaires. And let’s not forget the billionaires. Mark Zuckerburg is expected to be worth around $28 billion after the IPO. Peter Thiel, who invested $500,000 in 2004 is expected to take away nearly $2 billion. Talk about a return on investment!
Facebook’s situation with its IPO is not unheard of in the tech world. When Google went public in 2004, it minted millionaires out of secretaries, a company masseuse, and a company chef.
All I have to say is I’m about ready to move to the Bay Area and get a job at a startup, regardless of the position! Maybe I’ll be the world’s first millionaire janitor.
