Ryan Reynolds took equity instead of cash for advertising deals with Aviation Gin and Mint Mobile. Aviation Gin sold for around $600M and Mint Mobile for $1.2B, turning his stake into over $100M.
Take Ryan Reynolds, for example. He realizes, wait a second, you're paying me $1 million to do a commercial, so this has to be worth more than $1 million to you. How much more? $1.2? $2 million? $4 million? I don't know. Let's find out, right? And so he goes and buys into Aviation Gin and Mint Mobile and says, like, all right, I'm going to buy in on a huge stake, and then I'm now in charge of advertising. Yep. I now basically get paid in equity value for my commercials rather than cash. Aviation Gin exited for $600 million, Mint Mobile for $1.2 billion.
