What has fundamentally changed about their business since Facebook went IPO?

Only one thing has fundamentally changed: He now has to answer to a higher authority.

The public.

He's had a pretty free ride up till now.

But now, just like the rest of us, he has to answer to someone more powerful.

What is the benefit of going public with secondary markets now widely-used among "hot" SV companies?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/08/15/158891437/weve-been-acquired

David, I believe that Facebook did not have a choice. The SEC said they had too many shareholders.

This is the same thing that forced Google to go public in 2004.

Now the rules have changed, and Twitter will likely stay private a whole lot longer. Good timing.

Thanks Adam! Extremely helpful! How does SEC count shareholders? Our employees not share holders? And they had more than 500 employees for a while.

Employees become shareholders when they exercise their options or RPUs.

Facebook was able to use a trick to get around the 500 number for a while but they knew that only bought them a little time so they decided to voluntarily go public as a show of strength.

Whoops.

bane: until you start wearing exec hoodie then you have my permission to buy

Yes! Laughed when I read this.

David, you also had a lot of funds buy into Facebook and each fund only counts as 1 investor regardless of the number of people who actually invested into the fund.

I don't think Zuck is in over his hoodie, because he has built a tremendous company and there have been several companies who ditched the "inexperienced" builder for a "seasoned exec" who later tanked the company.

With that being said, Zuck and crew are great at building Facebook and getting users, but they are not great in understanding how to make money off it. In a sense it's too open to other businesses. Facebook credits was a start, but in a sense they own the largest and most utilized mall in the world and they don't make money on the tenants.

Look at how many companies come to Facebook to take advantage of their users, yet Facebook who built the infrastructure for them gets little to nothing out of it. LinkedIn realized that you can offer a great product to members, yet make real money off the enterprise. Facebook has more opportunities in front of them than they realize and if they want to know how to tap into them Zuck can give me a call. :)