Facebook Gets A New Friend: Up to $15 Million From German Investors
A second post-Microsoft investor for Facebook: German Internet entrepreneurs the Samwer brothers (what a fun phrase to type!) have invested a "$10 million to $15 million" amount in Mark Zuckerberg's social network.
The WSJ ($) says the deal values at Facebook at the literally incredible $15 billion MSFT agreed to when it invested $240 million last year, and says Hong Kong's Li Ka-Shing did the same when he invested another $60 million last fall.No details on size of deal, except that it's less than the $240 million that MSFT plunked down last fall, when Facebook garnered its much-ballyhooed $15 billion valuation. Following that deal, Zuckerberg and co also convinced Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing to give them $60 million. We don't recall hearing what valuation Li bought in at, and no details about the Sanwers' valuation, either. Reuters:
The WSJ ($) says the deal values at Facebook at the literally incredible $15 billion MSFT agreed to when it invested $240 million last year, and says Hong Kong's Li Ka-Shing did the same when he invested another $60 million last fall.
"We think Facebook is, after Google, the most innovative company to have emerged in the last few years. We think it will be the phenomenon for the Internet that Windows was for the desktop," [Alexander] Samwer said.
Alexander, alongside brothers Oliver and Marc, made their name in 1999 when they sold German Internet auction site Alando.de to eBay for $50 million in shares.
After a brief spell working for eBay, they then set up ringtone firm Jamba, which they sold to the U.S. company Verisign for $273 million in shares and cash in 2004.
As a user facebook has gone from interesting to annoying. It's never been useful.