The forthcoming Facebook IPO is a big deal in the news, and for good reason. It's going to make a lot of people very rich. This is really the first big technology IPO in a long time, and it's impossible not to compare it to the many companies that came and went in the dotcom boom more than a decade ago. The one I think of the most is that of Google.
Mark Zuckerberg does not appear to be in this for the money. He's had countless chances to be a billionaire, and passed on all of them. There is some indication that Facebook itself doesn't really need the money. However, there are enough investors and vested employees that want something back, that it is time for them to get what they're due.
The net result of this IPO is that a lot of good people will leave the company. They won't share Zuckerberg's ideals about making something great. They'll be kicking it on a beach somewhere sipping girly drinks with umbrellas. I don't fault them for that. However, it will change the very fabric of the company, maybe not for the better.
Facebook's strength is that they're able to move relatively quickly and continuously innovate. The site had changed dramatically over the five plus years it has been generally available to the public outside of schools and businesses. It's like having a child, in some ways, because you see them every day and you don't realize how much they change. They're able to evolve like that because of the "hacker" culture so ingrained in the company. It leads to quality problems a lot of the time (as I'm very fond of bitching about), but for the most part, they move fast.
This is the opposite of most companies as they get bigger. Combine getting bigger with the likely turnover that will come, and it's hard to tell if they can keep up the pace they've had. Zuckerberg said in the filing that he's committed to challenging the way that business goes, and he has a majority of voting shares to make that happen, but how will it go in practice?
There is a natural curve that companies appear to follow. Microsoft certainly got big and stupid, and this became particularly obvious when Windows Vista shipped. What a train wreck that was. Google seems like it's getting big and stupid, with stories of management waste and people leaving. Yahoo is probably the worst of the bunch.
But it doesn't have to be that way. Amazon keeps getting bigger, and they somehow manage to get better at what they do. (Actually, I can give you a lot of reasons about why I think that's the case, but that's another post.) Even Microsoft seems to be swinging back the other way, in certain parts of the company, getting lean and fast in places.
I hope for the best for Facebook and its future. The thing that most excites me about business is less about the product, and more about the processes that run the business. This is especially true for things in the realm of software development.
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