The real winners in Facebook's upcoming public offering will be its current owners. Brian Barrett has a helpful pie chart illustrating just who these lucky few happen to be:
Honestly, I had no idea that Bono had such a large investment in Facebook. We've all heard of Peter Thiel and Sean Parker's investments in the social media giant, but Bono? Who knew?
They should have had Bono in the movie.
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In any case, all these people and especially founder Mark Zuckerberg stand to make a killing when Facebook goes public. Indeed, this would be a very, very good time to be a Facebook employee.
Barrett writes:
Two things from this: First, everyone on this chart is about to get very, very rich. The valuation at the time was $50 billion; today's could double that. They're the ones who are going to see a major payday; everyone else is going to be gambling that Facebook stock takes off like Google did back in 2004. Basically what I'm saying is nice work, Sean Parker!
Second is that even if you wanted to take make that gamble, there's a long, long line ahead of you. An IPO is not a democratic process. The banks who are helping Facebook decide how much it's worth, how many shares to offer, and at what price? They're not just in it for the (still very lucrative) commission. They also get first dibs in offering their big institutional clients—the Fidelities and Vanguards of the world—first dibs at shares in whatever the hot new offering is. And there hasn't been a hotter one than Facebook in years.
In other words, most of us aren't getting rich off of the Facebook IPO. Michael Hiltzick thinks this is a good thing:
There's been a lot of talk about whether, or how, Facebook will keep faith with its hundreds of millions of loyal users by letting them in on the IPO. Can we get real? The best way Facebook could protect its ordinary users is by not letting them anywhere near this IPO.
Hype or no hype, the current crop of investors in the company are about to become a whole lot richer than they were yesterday. For the average investor or tech blogger out there, no such luck.
Worse, from a user perspective, all the pressure associated with running a public company, and explaining every move to shareholders, could cause Facebook to make changes that alienate its customer base. "That kind of pressure can make a company lose sight of what made it so successful in the first place," Barrett notes. "Facebook, in particular, will be immediately under fire for not doing more to monetize each individual user. Its earnings are dramatically below its projections; if it doesn't find a way to grow quickly, it'll have hell to pay."
Then again, the influx of cash may propel the internet giant to new heights. Time will tell, of course.
Update:
Forbes staffer, Tomio Geron, points out that the chart itself may not be 100% accurate:
I don’t think this is very accurate. Saverin doesn’t show up in the S-1, which implies he has less than 1% stake. Unless they’re including him in employees. He may have had 5% in the past. Also Accel has 11.4%.
So take the chart itself with a grain of salt (it's originally from here, and the numbers are based off of pre-IPO information "according to The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian.") The broader point, that the pre-IPO owners of Facebook stand to gain the most from going public, stands.
