I’m sitting backstage at TechCrunch Disrupt. I’m introduced to (let’s call her) Mary, a 22 year old recent college grad. She spends ten minutes setting up a science experiment on my desk. There are jokes about how she managed to get this thing through airport security. She then performs the closest thing to magic I’ve seen in a long time.
Stuff like that is what makes my job so much fun. In a year or so when this thing is productized you’ll be hearing a lot more about Mary.
I’ve only been skimming the news about Facebook’s IPO over the last 24 hours, but two or three times now I’ve read that Facebook’s CFO David Ebersman “decided” to increase the size of the offering at the last minute. Example (and, shame on the WSJ for just publishing what was fed to them).
This is the fall guy. This is the guy that I suspect Facebook is throwing to the wolves. Because someone has to be thrown to the wolves.
Some would say this is exactly what CFOs are for. The wolves.
Obviously Ebersman didn’t make the decision in a vacuum. If he did then Zuckerberg and the board are really to blame for not paying attention (something none of the stories mention). This was a joint decision by Facebook management and Morgan Stanley.
The whole Morgan Stanley mess isn’t over yet, either. There’s another very big part of the story that I’ve heard whispered at TC Disrupt that hasn’t broken yet. I may track that down tomorrow after the conference if it’s still unpublished.
I refer back to my Facebook IPO Spin article, which in hindsight looks 100% right. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Reuters reporters get subpoenaed at some point as lawmakers try to find out more about their sources.
All this aside, I still think Facebook has a certain destiny to fulfill. They completely blew their IPO from a psychology standpoint. But I like Facebook as a stock. I bought some shares on Monday below the IPO price. That’s both a disclosure and a statement of my belief that they’ll be growing significantly in the future. CrunchFund also owns some shares in Facebook from an acquisition that took place recently.
Uncrunched 