In 2005, graffiti artist David Choe was commissioned to spray paint the first Facebook, Inc. headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif. Instead of taking a $60,000 cash payment, he opted for stock shares – a bet that stands to earn him between $200 million and $500 million once the IPO debuts. It was a risky decision at the time; Facebook was still a fledgling company, and this was back in the days when the social network was still limited to college students. But it paid off in a huge way.
Publicly, at least, Choe seems unfazed by his immense and newly minted wealth. "It's gonna sound horrible for me to say money is meaningless," he told Barbara Walters back in February, when the Facebook IPO was first announced. "But everyone's like: 'What are you gonna do now, now that you have all this money and freedom?' I'm like, 'I'm still gonna do whatever I want, except more people are just gonna bother me now.' "
