1. Even in a world where the winner is the winner and the loser is the loser, a king needs to have a mission and ideal to change the world, benefit the world, make the world more flat and fair, and make human beings more free and happy before he can become king for a long time. Facebook's prospectus is not so much a self promotion prospectus as a company on the cusp of the Internet age who has published a slightly boring "I want to talk to the world".
2. Of course, "self promotion" is definitely not absent. For example, "we do not provide services to make money, but make money to provide better services". (Add a smiley face here.) And "Facebook was not originally established to be a company, but to fulfill a social mission - to make the world more open and connected." (Add a smiley face here and blink an eye.) But I still believe that Zuckerberg founded Facebook because he thought it was interesting and loved it, Not to improve life through IPO in two or three years.
3. In the first half of Zuckerberg's open letter, a paragraph about "people to people" actually defines what Facebook does; A paragraph about "people and economy" actually outlines the business model of Facebook; Another paragraph is about "people and the government", which I think is the most worthy of excerpt: "We believe that building tools to help share will promote the government to open more honest and transparent dialogue, which will help to return rights to the people and delegate responsibilities to officials, and at the same time will allow some of the most serious problems of our times to get better solutions. By improving the public's ability to share, we began to let them make their own voice at an unprecedented height... Such a voice cannot be ignored. Over time, we believe that governments around the world will respond more quickly to questions and doubts raised directly by the people rather than through their agents. "
4. Chinese entrepreneurs face the most growing and potential market in the world. If there is any inspiration for Chinese entrepreneurs from the listing of Facebook, I think it should first be the spread of a belief: many enterprises can succeed, some are small success, some are hit in the middle, but only enterprises that make the world a better place can achieve Facebook level success. To put this sentence in reverse, it means that until one day, Chinese enterprises can also make effective contributions to the inheritance of human civilization and universal values in an innovative way. China may be able to have high-value enterprise giants, but it will not be able to provide the world with an enterprise template that can lead the trend and be respected.
5. Many people are very concerned about the valuation of Facebook. I said on my microblog that every time I was asked this question, I would ask: Do you believe in God? To some extent, what Facebook needs today's valuation is not technology and methods, not to mention some assumptions that are merely pat on the head, but - please allow me to use this word again - "faith". If you believe that it will become an epoch-making platform like Apple (with a market value of 425 billion dollars), Microsoft (with a market value of 250 billion dollars) and Google (with a market value of 190 billion dollars), then 100 billion dollars is not expensive. The only problem is that some people thought AOL, Yahoo, Myspace and BlackBerry were epoch-making. If it finally enters the latter camp, 75 billion dollars will not be cheap. Personally, I think Facebook has the best chance to become such a landmark company. Therefore, I think if your investment horizon is 1 to 2 years, such valuation may or may not be expensive; But if your investment horizon is three to five years or even longer, then today's price is far more likely to be inexpensive than it is expensive.
6. This is why Zuckerberg compared Facebook with the two eras of print media and television at the beginning of his open letter. Think about how many players in print media share the same pie, how many TV media share the same pie, and how many people there are in front of the social media pie table. We know why smart Mark wants to talk to us like this. This is positioning.
7. In terms of business, the biggest opportunity and challenge for Facebook in the future comes from the same place: wireless Internet. It may bring greater business value to Facebook than the traditional Internet; It is also most likely that there will be a new generation of giants who will make Facebook "have to die" in the future. (This is also the first risk factor in the prospectus: "If we can't keep users or add new users, or if our users reduce their closeness to Facebook"... only in the wireless Internet world will this possibility occur.)
8. In terms of social ethics, Facebook's biggest challenge will come from the difficult balance between precision marketing and privacy protection. I believe that after the listing of Facebook, the public and media in the United States will pay close attention to the legal and moral basis and corresponding behavior boundaries of monetizing private information. Users who have shared information will also have an allocation mechanism to challenge business interests.
9. As for the business model of Facebook, I think even if the revenue has reached 3.7 billion dollars, it is still in the process of exploration. As a social networking platform, there is nothing wrong with advertising revenue accounting for more than 80%. We can't think that social networking platforms have to make money by selling green dragon crescent knives and beautiful skirts just because QQ and WeChat are everywhere. However, in the long run, I think Facebook will have a great opportunity to "provide massive information for a large number of users", as I said when answering @ Lei Jun's question in the previous paragraph, and some of them will have a full opportunity to charge users. That is to say, if I bet on the long-term trend, I think the proportion of advertising revenue will decline rather than increase, but this is not because there is something wrong with the high proportion of advertising, but because there are too many opportunities elsewhere.
10. When it comes to Facebook's competitors, Google must be mentioned. In the long run, if the two companies can cooperate more than compete, their competitiveness will improve. For users and businesses, a Google+Facebook world is far more attractive than a Google+Facebook world. This means that industry giants should reach some basic consensus on what is public data, what is exclusive data, and what is user privacy data, and form a set of cooperation norms accordingly.
11. Facebook's listing is bound to create a number of wealth myths. An artist who once helped the company graffiti on the wall (you can also say that he was engaged in decoration) confiscated cash and received shares after finishing graffiti at that time. This time, he could be worth $200 million. Of course, some myths will certainly be exaggerated by the media, especially some domestic media that do not read the prospectus carefully. For example, Peter Thiel, who invested in Facebook in 2004, was reported by the domestic media yesterday that his return on investment was 20000 times, but in fact, it was less than 5000 times (assuming that the market value at the time of listing was 100 billion dollars). Of course, 5000 times does not change the nature of 20000 times, which is a myth.
12. Finally, let's recall the movie "Social Network". What if the two rowing brothers didn't invite Zuckerberg? Yes, there is no if in this world. This is exactly what I want to say to all angel investors and venture capital practitioners at this moment.
13. Finally, there is another article in Facebook's risk factor disclosure that mentions the possible impact of the government's ban on Facebook on the company. It lists four countries that prohibit Facebook from providing services to users, namely China, Iran, North Korea and Syria. I don't know how you feel. It seems that I'm swearing at Jienima.
