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Sheryl Sandberg's Magic Facebook Finances
New York, 3:45 AM
Mon Nov 23
12 posts in the last 24 hours
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Sheryl Sandberg's Magic Facebook Finances |
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04/10/09
Imagine you had every strategic advantage Facebook had, *without* Zuck. A massive infrastructure, users, great name, logo recognition, ads.
You're likely 50% below profitability, if you include taxes and shit. If you went public, you would be on the pinksheets. VC's are broke and jumping from buildings.
You consult God. He can not save this flawed business model.
These childish notions of creating a gluttonous blob of users and controlling the world through an unnecessary, virtual middleman don't work, and never will.
Venture capitals give naive kids with no biz experience tools and funding to build stuff no one goes to. And even if they do, you don't know how to tax them without them revolting.
Give it up, Zuck. Dismantle this useless site, make your last facebook "PR blogging" to the users of what a great time you have and how you care about Facebook. Swallow your pride chum.
04/09/09
Where are the hard numbers?
Forecasting profits, in a depression?
Motherfuck?
All in all, this amounts to no sign of profit. In fact, it's a negative, because now we know they have nothing.
She should of said nothing.
04/09/09
And amortization? At least with the others, you can come up with a scenario in which they don't matter. Amortization really is just shuffling money around so the books look better. At the end of the day, there's no difference between amortizing a loan and not.
04/09/09
re: the capex detracting from an "otherwise profitable" company: it's a valid point but specifically in facebook's case, it's just fuzzy math. when they start obfuscating finances by including EDIBTA in their talks without the specifications of what their big ticket one time expenditures are or a strong assurance that there *won't be many more,* it's worrisome.
sheryl sandberg took lots of fun out of working at facebook; hopefully she's helping them to operate a leaner operation financially as well.
as an aside, i spend some money on facebook advertising for my company. the numbers are DISMAL. i've been waiting a few months to see what happened before i pulled the plug. think i'll go do that now.
04/09/09
Let's talk about net cash flow. That is what pays rent, and salaries.
04/09/09
04/09/09
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04/09/09
One more analytical step would make such a difference here: Are Facebook's capex really the difference between positive and negative net income? And are their capex really the type that are likely to pay for themselves via future growth? That would make this post something more than just backtalk aimed at an executive's obvious and essentially trivial promo-speak.
04/09/09
04/09/09
Backtalk at executives' obvious promo-speak certainly has its place, and I do enjoy it. Plus, EBITDA skepticism is a pretty good analytical point for one post.
Seriously though, there's a great analysis to be done here regarding which capex models a company like Facebook should follow in transitioning from the startup phase to steady growth.
04/09/09