Back then, in 2005 Facebook was nothing. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, today has a net worth of $71 billion, according to Forbes. But there are others as well who did a piggy ride and eventually turned out to make a huge amount of money by just taking the right step at the right time.
The Drop In the Ocean
David Choe’s work caught an eye of Facebook’s President, Sean Parker, in the early 2000s. Sean was also the founder of Napster, when Facebook was just a fledgling start-up.
David, as a graffiti artist, was asked to come in and paint Facebook’s first office. He naturally demanded for a remuneration for is work, being $60000, for painting the entire building.
The Probability Test
Probability is the key to making a decision and choosing between two things. David’s probability test did make a change. For his work, David was offered two choices by Parker, to choose between cash and company stock, advising him to go for the stock.
Obviously, Facebook wasn’t a name then, and there was no guarantee that Facebook’s stock wouldn’t end up completely worthless. But there was something that made him believe in Sean and exclaimed that he saw potential in him.
The Piggy Ride
David went for the stock and when the company went public in 2012, at $38 per share, his stock option was worth $200 million, making him quite a multi-millionaire. Of course, the amount is just a drop in the Ocean in comparison to Mark Zuckerberg’s worth but is not an amount that can be ignored.
The Final Words
When Mark founded Facebook, it was an age of finding purpose and pursuing it (he was just 19!). He was a dropout from Harvard University. But today he has received an honorary degree from the Ivy League school.
Today he exclaims that just finding purpose is not enough. The ultimate challenge of today’s generation is to create a world, where everyone has a sense of purpose.
The three ways he talked about creating such a world are:
1. By taking big meaningful projects and working on them together.
2. By redefining equality so that everyone has the freedom to pursue purpose.
3. By building community across the world.
