Facebook's instant millionaires (and billionaires)

[Hector]

You didn't have to be an in house techie either.

The New York Times profiled graffiti artist David Choe as one example of how Facebook's public offering will change the lives of thousands of people. Choe was hired to paint murals on the walls of Facebook's Palo Alto office in 2005; instead of taking cash as payment, he accepted several hundred stock options. Those shares could be now worth north of $200 million...

Facebook Creates a New Millionaire’s Club…And a Few Billionaires Too | Daily Ticker - Yahoo! Finance


Man...why didn't I at least applied to be a janitor there?

[toys2cool]

wow!! good for them, pretty smart

[Brad]

Stock options are big risk with possible big reward if they hit. A similar situation happened with eBay. The day they went public they created a ton of new millionaires. They even had to restrict employees from checking the stock price way too often throughout the work day.

[livnxxxl]

A similar thing happened with AOL back in it's hay days.

[megocrazy]

More and more people are taking the high payoff gamble. Alanis Morrisette was one of the first celebs. She took options for mp3.com for the sponsorship of her first tour and netted about 30 mil. William Shatner did it with priceline too. He netted about 7 mil when it went public. I can see the gamble. It's high reward. Mp3.com went belly up in a short time but she cashed em in as soon as it went public. cha-ching.

[pmwasson]

I have a whole bunch of worthless stock options

[Adam West]

As someone who is highly interested in the stock market; I have yet to figure out why Facebook would have a market capitalization of $100B (that's billion) right out of the gate. I can see where they are going with it and how to make money but I won't be one who jumps into the IPO frenzy. Hopefully, those with options sell as soon as they can. Usually, they are forced to hold their shares for a period of time before dumping them onto the market.