Who’s Selling Facebook Stock? Mark Zuckerberg, Matt Cohler, Maybe Dozens More

Vasanth Sridharan | August 6, 2008 7:13 PM

mark-zuckerberg.jpgWe know that Facebook is going to let employees sell shares this fall, reportedly via a controlled process that will value the company at $4 billion.

But in the meantime, other Facebookers are selling chunks of their equity stakes on their own. We've previously reported that an investment bank says it has brokered deals for two tiny slices at a valuation "north of $6 billion"; we've also heard reports of equity stakes offered for valuations ranging between $3 billion and $5 billion.

So who's been selling already? BusinessWeek cites two Valley brokers who say that "dozens" of Facebook employees have sold or selling shares. The magazine's Spencer Ante says confirmed sellers include CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former VP Matt Cohler.

See Also
Facebook Wants To Get Serious. Its Users Want To Play Games
Confirmed: Facebook Letting Employees Sell (And Buy) Stock This Fall
Is Facebook Letting Employees Cash Out?

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17 Comments

stone said:
I've been raising issues for several months now. This company is still way too young to be in the spot they are in. Something is wrong here. Anyone care to debate what is really happening at Facebook? People do NOT sell stock in a company that is, in fact, a rocketship, unless, in fact, something is seriously wrong.

Tom Buchok (URL) said:
@stone -- I'm still not sure how "different" Facebook is from MySpace in terms of revenue potential. And FIM/MySpace couldn't be termed a "rocketship"...

My guess: Yahoo!'s $2bn offer a year ago is looking pretty good. Some people want at least a little bit of dough, like now.

FB is a nice company and they'll stick around, but I think their outlook may be changing a tad.

Thoughts? Others?
stone said:
@Tom,

My point exactly --- you are right, outlook has obviously changed. Facebook is still a relatively new, young company. Employees should not be fighting to sell their stock. They should be focused on building value.

Facebook management is clearly worried about a feeding frenzy. Their employee base could all start selling outside of Facebook's organized process. All hell looks like it may break loose. My guess is that Mark Z. is close to the end of his run as CEO. He clearly cannot keep the troops in line which is job #1 for a CEO.
jenkins said:
Attention all apps companies: you are building your business on very shaky ground!
Anton said:
Just to play devil's advocate...

It could allow FB to alleviate some of the pressure to have exit event. Employees can "recharge" by booking gains now and re-focus on work and building value.

I do agree, however, that FB could benefit from some new leadership. Zucker's done a great job but the job seems to be to big now...Its not just about product development anymore etc.

stone said:
Anton,

I agree that this is precisely what will happen but it's an awfully risky test. No one really knows what will happen here because this is extremely rare. And, who are all these buyers of FB stock? My guess is that this publicity is going to make it much harder to sell the stock.
anon said:
This is the future. Going public is dead thanks to SarBox overhead and lack of tort reform.
clickbot said:
@anon -- your comment might look good on a bumper sticker, but whoever is buying will need to exit as well...
if you were a 25-30 year old being paid ~ $100k (which is not much, esp in sf or ny), participating in the corporate rat race like every other young professional, and you held this mystical thing known as facebook stock, cashing some of it out would definitely provide for a recharge and allow people to refresh their drive for continuing to build facebook. facebook is not a typical company. linkedin is not a typical company. both of these companies were run out of either closet-looking office space with paper signs or dorm rooms as recently as a few years ago. i bet the buyers of fb stock are hedge funds because they seem to like overpaying for private companies these days (*cough, ning, slide, spot runner). beats investing in public cos.
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