Buy the car in front of you, and lose a billion-dollar future opportunity. Every choice comes at a cost.
Why would an ordinary car dare to call itself “worth a billion”?
An Audi Q7 parked at JD.com’s headquarters is worth only around a million yuan, but the sign beside it reads, “A car worth 100 million yuan.”
The story is fairly simple. According to a story circulating online, in 2007, when JD.com first issued shares, Liu Qiangdong gave shares to more than a hundred longtime employees at no cost. Employee No. 001, Mr. Zhang, was among them.
In 2010, Zhang, who liked Audis, sold some of his JD.com shares and used the money to buy a Q7 worth around a million yuan.
Four years later, JD.com went public on Nasdaq, and its share price soared to more than a hundred times its original level. Had Zhang held on to the shares he sold to buy a car, they would have been worth more than 100 million yuan after the IPO.
By putting the car on display, the showroom placed the word “choice” right in front of everyone.
This car simply turns the “opportunity cost” we all face into something tangible—a car you can reach out and touch.
There is no inherent right or wrong in a choice.
But—
The costs we can see will always seem greater than the ones we can’t.
This “100-million-yuan” car may be a mirror for each of us.
Why would an ordinary car dare to call itself “worth a billion”?
An Audi Q7 parked at JD.com’s headquarters is worth only around a million yuan, but the sign beside it reads, “A car worth 100 million yuan.”
The story is fairly simple. According to a story circulating online, in 2007, when JD.com first issued shares, Liu Qiangdong gave shares to more than a hundred longtime employees at no cost. Employee No. 001, Mr. Zhang, was among them.
In 2010, Zhang, who liked Audis, sold some of his JD.com shares and used the money to buy a Q7 worth around a million yuan.
Four years later, JD.com went public on Nasdaq, and its share price soared to more than a hundred times its original level. Had Zhang held on to the shares he sold to buy a car, they would have been worth more than 100 million yuan after the IPO.
By putting the car on display, the showroom placed the word “choice” right in front of everyone.
This car simply turns the “opportunity cost” we all face into something tangible—a car you can reach out and touch.
There is no inherent right or wrong in a choice.
But—
The costs we can see will always seem greater than the ones we can’t.
This “100-million-yuan” car may be a mirror for each of us.