The Setup

"I Like to Gamble!"

I came across this artist a few years ago while reading a finance news story or was it an art article, I can't remember which exactly. Two quite different subjects are usually not intermixed and should not be easily confused, but in this case you will see why. What I had read was the story of an artist who took a chance and was rewarded thousands of times over. I was recently reminded of this story when I took the picture of this artwork and only later realized the artist was David Choe.

David Choe is a Los Angeles born artist of Korean descent. He didn't always know he was going to be an artist, but by the time he was 21 he was well on his way to self-expressing artistic freedom. By the time the year 2003 rolled around, David had been to jail, had done some extensive hitch hike traveling, and lived life to the fullest all the while continuing to pursue his artwork. He initially started out as a street graffiti muralist but was branching out into other art forms such as comic book making and painting. David's path was marked with forks, dead ends and even unmarked trails when forging his own way forward. He was living life on his terms and doing it his way.

Sometime around 2005, Choe was commissioned by Sean Parker to do some artwork for the offices of Parker's new venture. Both were at low points. Choe still struggled financially as an artist and Parker's company, Napster, was being sued for Billions and Trillions of Dollars. Choe knew that he could earn a huge paycheck but Parker's passion for his dream inspired him so much, that Choe was willing to forego his paycheck and instead receive shares of stock in Parker's new company. Choe states that, "I took a gamble," but I believe he sells himself short in his modesty. He did not like what Parker's company was doing or represented, but rather knew that Parker strongly believed in his new endeavor, and so with that he became a stakeholder in Parker's vision. Instead of receiving $60,000 Dollars for his art work, he received shares.

"I Could Actually Change the World"

In 2012, Choe's life became the center of attention both his art as well as his financial prowess. His gamble was about to pay off and the media wanted to know who he was. Facebook was getting its IPO ready, and based on the numbers, Choe would be receiving a windfall in the hundreds of millions of dollars for those shares he had received back in 2005. Ultimately, after Facebook went public and David Choe made some small financial moves, he retained somewhere around $200 Million Dollars of Facebook shares. Shortly after he was quoted saying, "this is like a godlike amount of money, where I could actually change the world and do things to help humanity and do good things."

Steemit is the perfect platform to practice David Choe's ideal of believing in ourserlves and in believing in each other. No other medium has the ability to both support the content creator/provider and the user/consumer like STEEMIT.COM. Much like Choe, STEEMIT.COM is also forging its own way, trail blazing new paths where in supporting others, we better ourselves. STEEMIT.COM could actually change the World!

The complete mural in Downtown LA Arts District

Full Steem Ahead!
06/24/2017
@streetstyle


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