Facebook’s IPO is a huge milestone in the company’s life, but Zuckerberg and his executive team will no doubt be keen to reinforce with staff that it is the beginning of a new phase not the end of an old one.
That could be tough. Motivating a stock-owning engineer who has worked huge hours to take a “start-up” to the public market could be difficult – they’ve climbed a peak and in some ways it could be all downhill if the company’s entrepreneurial culture is replaced by pressure from Wall Street for financial returns.
There won’t be an immediate exodus – Facebook’s employees can’t sell their stock before October, so they will have time to see if the company’s culture changes post float.
But Facebook should heed the words of Jamie Still, a former LinkedIn developer who left the company in February after cashing out about $US2 million in shares.
As he told the Wall Street Journal, he was ready for a new challenge in the shape of a role at a start-up called Zimride.
“There was no incentive for me to stay to collect stock. Four years is a long time to be at a company in the Valley.”
This is the fun bit. According to Forbes, the car of choice for your average tech-head is the electric-powered Tesla Model S, a snip at $50,000. The holiday of choice is likely to involve skiing and the best watch for a tech-head is the HM4 Thunderbolt, made by a company called MB&F and retailing for around $205,000.
Aside from the baubles, property is a likely place to park some cash. According to USA Today, house prices in the Silicon Valley have risen around 10% in anticipation of the Facebook float.
Philanthropic initiatives are also expected to increase as a result of the IPO.
But the most common use of the cash is expected to be recycling – that is, the Facebook millionaires are likely to plough a good deal of cash back into start-up ventures.
This was highlighted last week when four investors with ties to Facebook – including Peter Thiel, who was the first investor in Facebook and Adam D’Angelo, Facebook’s first chief technical officer – took part in a $50 million round of financing for Quora, a content-sharing start-up.
D’Angelo, who co-founded Quora with former Facebook employee Charlie Cheever, could well provide the prototype that other cashed-up Facebook workers will follow – get rich and go on the hunt for a new start-up challenge.
That will be incredible for the Valley’s start-up community, but potentially bad news for Facebook.
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
