Facebook IPO – Microsoft IS Facebook’s IPO – not the NASDAQ May 19, 2008
Posted by John in Technology.trackback
As Facebook postures to stay independent one angle needs to be explored. The IPO market just hasn’t come back and with looming recession and possible global depression – Microsoft is Facebook’s IPO.
This is an opportunity for Facebook to save face and declare victory (and turn all those employees into millionaires).
What is the exit and legacy for Facebook.? Remember the big end game for Facebook is an IPO (mint employees, investors as millionaires over and over) AND the entrepreneurial legacy of the founding team (relevance in history). Facebook could come out smelling like a rose to employees future employees and investors if they take the money from Microsoft and declaring that as their IPO. Say take $25 billion cash and $25 billion in stock for future employees. It’s the Silicon Valley way.
Everyone gets rich, founders declare victory in setting the agenda in a new paradigm, future wealth creation is preserved, and on and on it can go. It’s almost to good to be true.
The Alternative: risk losing it all in competitive warfare where you’re undermatched and overgunned; employees waiting year over year for an exit via IPO; founders who gets replaced by hostile investors;..the risks can go on and on. It’s about basic risk management.
Facebook should declare victory now and go public with Microsoft – mobilize your employees with cash; help reinvent Microsoft; and compete with Google (or go public with Google).
The going forward alone are risky. The conditions in the market make it risky to go alone.
I don’t know, John, if the IPO market is there for companies that have not generated solid, quarter after quarter profits. It ain’t the old days.
Alan,
If the IPO market was open Facebook would have the juice to go public big – imo; that being said what are the chances in the next 5-7 years. hell we’ve been at war in iraq for to many years now and the recession could last another 5+ years…
M&A is the new IPO and Facebook gets a big payday. If Msft structures it right it could be the IPO for Facebook; what’s worse in silicon valley 7 years of employees counting their paper money (getting restless) or dying from the competitive pressure.
Facebook needs to go public in some way fast…this could be an interesting way to position it – it’s market reality
I see, M&A as an alternative to making the market. That’s why you get paid the big bucks to think big thoughts!
[...] He shouldn’t, as this might be the social networking site’s golden–and I do mean solid golden–opportunity. (Furrier argues this Microsoft-as-Facebook-IPO here.) [...]
You’re spot on. No one at Facebook is going to get “Google-Rich” via an IPO, because, well, they’ll never make as much money as Google.
[...] other words, make a friendly Microsoft takeover of Facebook your own version of an IPO, as John Furrier has suggested here, and walk away a Silicon Valley [...]
[...] writes a memo to Mark Zuckerberg about the possible scenarios facing Facebook. She references my post called Facebook IPO – It’s Microsoft Not The NASDAQ. I see this as an opportunity for Facebook. Recently Facebook [...]
we hope to catch millions of fleeing student users as this plays out
srini
metanotes.com
[...] Zuckerberg Opportunity was a followup on the story on the big story that I have been tracking on Microsoft buying Facebook. The NY Times goes deeper into the deal side dynamics of the Zuckerberg Opportunity. (Note: [...]
[...] Ok I think that Facebook’s engineering of an liquidity event for their employees is a good thing. I’ve said on this blog that Microsoft’s run at buying Facebook was their IPO. [...]