Interestingly, the number of shares given outright for Viaweb (393,591), not including options, would be worth only $7,915,115 today.
edit: (not taking into account splits)
Considering the four splits since the end of 1998, the total number of shares would be 6,297,456 (393,591 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2) equivalent to $126,578,866 at a price of 20.10 (as of 2:04pm edt today).
From June of 1998 to the height of Yahoo's stock in December 1999, two splits had occurred making the total number of Viaweb shares 1,574,364. With a 108.17 price per share, Viaweb's shares were potentially worth a total of $170,298,954.
(Assuming they only held on to the 68,210 escrow shares, that still amounts to 272,840 shares after splits and a total of $29,513,102.80 on the day the escrow period ended.)
Uh, wow.
(This is assuming the numbers I am getting from Yahoo Finance are not corrected for splits, and I think they are.)
Even with the edits, your estimates are off. Historical prices in a chart are always split-adjusted. (Otherwise you would see big discontinuous jumps at each of the split-indicator dates.)
So the reported 108 YHOO high in December 1999 is equivalent to a price of 108 for a current 2008-share.
Thus the peak value of the (393,591 * 2^4) 6,297,456 2008-shares was about $680 million in December 1999. The other (61,126 * 2^4) 978,016 options probably added around another $100 million, assuming their strike price was very low.
Of course, timing is everything, and when the holdings were either hedged or sold determines how much ViaWeb shareholders actually came away with. A couple days after the exchange, June 12, 1998, the 6,297,456 2008-shares were worth about $45 million (at $7.11/share). One year later, when registration lockups may have expired, they were worth about $212 million ($33.8/share).
Looks like there were two 2:1 splits between 6/10/1998 (day of stock conversion) and 01/01/2000, so those 393,591 shares would have become 1,574,364 shares (assuming no one sold them before then).
At Yahoo's height, December 24th, 1999 (hilariously, almost the exact date the options were released from escrow after Viaweb's purchase), the share price was 101.81, which would have made the 393,591 shares worth about $40,071,499.
That's more than a 500% increase over today's value, representing 32 million dollars which could buy at least fifty Lamborghinis or seven million Caramel Frappuccinos.
edit: (not taking into account splits)
Considering the four splits since the end of 1998, the total number of shares would be 6,297,456 (393,591 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2) equivalent to $126,578,866 at a price of 20.10 (as of 2:04pm edt today).
From June of 1998 to the height of Yahoo's stock in December 1999, two splits had occurred making the total number of Viaweb shares 1,574,364. With a 108.17 price per share, Viaweb's shares were potentially worth a total of $170,298,954.
(Assuming they only held on to the 68,210 escrow shares, that still amounts to 272,840 shares after splits and a total of $29,513,102.80 on the day the escrow period ended.)
Uh, wow.
(This is assuming the numbers I am getting from Yahoo Finance are not corrected for splits, and I think they are.)