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IPO
This graffiti artist was paid in stock for decorating Facebook's first HQ
Now he’s worth over US$200 million.
BACK IN 2005 – before status updates, friend requests and pokes even existed for most of us – a young graffiti artist agreed to take stock in a company called Facebook as payment for the work he completed at its first headquarters.
Good call, Mr David Choe.
Once the stock debuts, his sketches and murals on the walls of the Silicon Valley office could have netted him a massive $200 million – instead of the few thousand dollars he was initially offered.
But NBC Los Angeles reports that the street artist wasn’t exactly making a business decision at the time as he had labelled the whole Facebook venture “ridiculous and pointless”.
Although first hired by the company’s first president Sean Parker, Choe remains friends with Facebook. Recently he went to the new HQ in Menlo Park to spraypaint a wall there. Mark Zuckerberg joined him:
YouTube Credit: Walrus TV
-Additional reporting by Business Insider
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