By now you’ve heard that graffiti artist David Choe is going to be richer than you’ll ever be, thanks to his amazingly shrewd decision to accept stock in lieu of cash when he did his thing at Facebook HQ in the company’s early days.
From the New York Times:
In 2005, Mr. Choe was invited to paint murals on the walls of Facebook’s first offices in Palo Alto, Calif., by Sean Parker, then Facebook’s president. As pay, Mr. Parker offered Mr. Choe a choice between cash in the “thousands of dollars,” according to several people who know Mr. Choe, or stock then worth about the same.
Mr. Choe, who has said that at the time that he thought the idea of Facebook was “ridiculous and pointless,” nevertheless chose the stock.
And more from yesterday’s LA Times:
Choe became infamous in Silicon Valley for allegedly being commissioned to spray-paint sexual graphics on the walls of Facebook’s first Palo Alto office in 2005 by the company’s founding president, Sean Parker. (If that really happened, though, it has been airbrushed out of the official Facebook history). Choe painted less — ahem — colorful murals for Facebook’s next digs in 2007, this time at the request of Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg. When Facebook outgrew its office and moved again, it carved Choe’s artwork out of the walls and took the pieces to the new place, where they were proudly hung.
Now Choe’s Facebook shares are estimated north of $200 million, and he’s getting more publicity than Banksy. Here he is on Howard Stern, explaining that he went for the Facebook shares over a payment of $60,000.