Back in 2005, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg asked a little known graffiti artist named David Choe to come to the FB headquarters in Palo Alto to plaster graffiti all over their walls. Zuckerberg offered Choe $60,000 cash to complete the job which was probably a meaningful amount of money for a young graffiti artist right? Well, Choe boldly declined the cash and instead requested to be paid in $60,000 worth of Facebook stock. Guess how that turned out…
Choe’s request for stock instead of cash may go down as one of the smartest financial moves anyone has ever made in history. When Facebook goes public later this year at an expected market valuation of $100 billion, Choe’s stake could be worth as much as $500 million! And to blow you mind even more, Choe admittedly is not a very big fan of social media and at the time he was hired thought Facebook was “ridiculous and pointless.”
Since painting that first mural at Facebook’s headquarters, Choe has painted many more including all the walls of their brand new office complex. He has also gone on to be a fairly successful artist in his own right but obviously nowhere near the $500 million he’ll earn from the Facebook IPO. Here is a video of Choe painting some of the newer walls at Facebook with the help of CEO Mark Zuckerberg:
Do you think graffiti is worth $500 million? Makes you want to go out and buy some spray cans and start practicing on your local freeway overpasses!
David Choe Facebook Graffiti
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