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Christian
Science Monitor...
Facebook
IPO turns graffiti mural into a $200 million payday
By Matthew
Shaer
February 3,
2012
Graphic: A
sign outside the Facebook headquarters (not by David Choe) welcomes
visitors.
The graffiti artist worked on Facebook’s old HQ back in 2005.
David Choe,
the artist commissioned to paint a mural in Facebook HQ in 2005, is
about to
become a very rich man indeed – all thanks to some graffiti murals and
the
Facebook IPO.
Good work
if you can get it.
In 2005,
the artist David Choe was hired to paint some murals in Facebook HQ.
Facebook,
then a young and scrappy social network, offered Choe a choice of two
forms of
payment: cash or Facebook stock. In an interview with the New York
Times this
week, Choe recalled that he eventually decided on the stock option,
even
figured his choice was “ridiculous and pointless.” Fast forward a few
years,
and Choe is poised to become a multimillionaire.
According
to the Times, assuming Choe hasn’t otherwise unloaded the stock, his
Facebook
shares will be worth approximately $200 million when Facebook goes
public later
this year. (On Wednesday, Facebook filed S-1 papers with the US
Securities and
Exchange Commission, a move that brings the social network, which could
be
valued at $100 billion, one step closer to its long awaited IPO.)
Choe, for
his part, seems to be handling the news pretty well. In a
not-appropriate-for-children post on his personal blog, Choe said the
whole
thing was “very very similar to another dream I have where I wake up at
noon to
my phone ringing, and the ringtone is butterfly wings, I pick it up and
it’s
Howard Stern, the view, Ellen, Charlie Rose, Telemundo and every news
outlet in
the world.”
The artist
went on to call himself “the most highest-paid decorator alive.”
Hey, you
know who else the Facebook IPO will benefit, aside from Choe and the
Facebook
brass? Social gaming juggernaut Zynga, which saw its shares soar in
morning
trading yesterday. According to the S-1 papers filed by Facebook, a
whopping 12
percent of Facebook’s revenue last year came from Zynga games –
approximately
$445 million, by one estimation.
Meanwhile,
a peek inside the Facebook filing papers shows that the social
network’s IPO
will likely create literally hundreds of millionaires.
Read this
and other articles at the Christian Science Monitor
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