Direct Listing

The idea of a direct listing is intriguing.

Music streaming service Spotify, valued at roughly $19 billion in the private markets, has also filed for a direct listing and will debut on the NYSE on April 3. ....... A direct listing lets investors and employees sell shares without the company raising new capital or hiring a Wall Street bank or broker to underwrite the offering.

If You Are Twitter

Of course you are looking at the Facebook IPO.

Avoiding Facebook Fate Is Twitter CFO Goal on Way to IPO

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Facebook Doldrums

Facebook's problem is very real. This is not like when Amazon's stock price nosedived after the dot com bubble burst in 2000. That was an industry wide event. This is a Facebook specific event. Compared to that LinkedIn is doing fine for now.

And this is about cold, hard cash.

Data mining is where the money is at for Facebook. More mobile usage is not bad news - quite the opposite - if data mining is the primary way you monetize. More engagement means more data.

Below $20 is the red zone. Facebook has already entered that.

How Facebook Could Save Its Shattered Share Price

Now as it plunges towards half its IPO value, it’s entering a state of emergency

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Facebook At $25: This Is Not A Glitch

Image via CrunchBase

Despite hitting its earning projections, Facebook stock falls to a new low at $25

UPDATE: Currently, the stock sits at $24.43, down 9% in after hours trading.

LinkedIn's earnings have doubled every quarter since it went IPO, and so its lofty valuation has held ground. Facebook's IPO was a nosedive, and part of it was blamed on some kind of a technical glitch, but that could not have been the full story.

For the size of its user base Facebook has lukewarm revenues, and there are no plans/signs of robust growth there. The revenue trajectory feels like a plateau, and hence the hammering.

This is what I said on May 23.

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Bundling Investors

Image via CrunchBaseFacebook not going IPO is real bad news for the average investors, people who might buy 10 or 20 stocks at $100 each. The growth in wealth that Facebook might see as it moves from a $10 billion valuation to a $50 billion valuation and beyond, all that is going to rich individuals and institutions. If Facebook had gone IPO at a billion dollar valuation, the 50 billion in wealth creation might have gone to average people.

Google, GroupOn: Facebook Needs To Go Public

Image via WikipediaFacebook has so far never made an acquisition. Acquihires like Dropio and Hot Potato don't count. And a company can not do internal innovation forever. The price you pay to get big is you are open to innovation from outside. You keep a clear vision of where you want to go as a company, and you make acquisitions along the way in emerging spaces and sub spaces.

Facebook was ready to go IPO last year based on its fundamentals. But a recession perhaps was not a great time to go public. But now the recession is over. Further delays will cause Facebook harm. To put it down bluntly, Facebook can not make GroupOn like acquisitions if it stays private.

How Companies Get Valuated

I don't know a whole lot on the topic. I have a broad idea. I get the concepts. But I have not bothered to master the details. There are too many versions, too many ways they get done. Android is not fragmented, what is really screwed up and fragmented is how companies get valued.

How companies get valuated reminds me of when they taught me several pre-Charles Darwin theories of evolution at high school. They were all over the place. They all lacked the basic beauty of Darwin's theory of evolution.

What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?

Image via CrunchBase

I am in my 30s. Isn't it a little too late to be asking that question? I take solace in the fact that we live in an era when people will have a few different careers before they retire and go ahead and die. That would be fine except I seem to be having a few different careers at the same time, in parallel: no complaints. I have tried to learn positivity from my man Obama.

Finally I might have found it: a for profit micro finance startup with IPO ambitions. (Microfinance: The Next Big Thing?) And the fact that I am about a year away from my green card feels like no hindrance at all. I will just get someone else to incorporate the company. The conversation is in full swing, the work is on.

Google Car, Google Monorail
Physically Aware Internet
Solar Panels To Roll Out
To Natural User Interface
Offshoring The Wind Harvesting: Google Wind
Etsy, GroupOn, Zynga
Becoming Whole With The Mobile Web
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Before this I have been emailing my 12 line resume - in text format, my machine does not have Microsoft Office on it - to all sorts of people on Craig's List. For the longest time I did not even send cover letters. What is that? The thing is I have never had a job. Don't ask how that came to be, but that is the fact. Then I started sending cover letters, the same standard, half hearted cover letters where I was calling all sorts of jobs my "dream job." The truth is there is no dream job out there. My dream job necessarily has to be self created.

Then I have thought of tech consulting and social media consulting. (An Online Social Media Instructor, Not Your Usual Yoga Guru)
Image via WikipediaThere are more than a dozen coders in India on stand by for me as we speak. I find them projects, they get working, I pay them their hourly rate, take my cut, and we all end up happy: that has been the idea. (Becoming Whole With The Mobile Web)

I just talked to the guy in Kerala last night, and to the dude in Pittsburgh today.

I was going to doodle along for a year like that, doing a few things, but not really doing much, learn some Scala along the way, (Al Wenger Wants To Learn Scala) and get into the mobile web upon getting my green card. I have a mobile app in mind that would grow from the small screen to the big screen.

I have had people ask me if I might have run for president if I had been born in the US. First of all, people, I am utmost flattered. But that question is too theoretical. That is like asking what would life be like if earth had moon's kind of gravity. The mental exercise is not worth it. Microfinance fascinates me, the affordable housing issue in NYC does not.
Image via WikipediaThere are a few things I wanted to do in tech, but then I will keep my serial entrepreneur options open, and perhaps I will get to invest in ideas that I might not get to bring to fruition myself.

Large scale group dynamics is my thing. I am really, really good at it. (Iran) Even when I have expressed Nasdaq headed tech company ambitions, I have thought more in terms having money to pour into microfinance, and less in terms of private jets. But why take that long route? Why not go straight into microfinance? There is no limit to how much money you can raise if you do it right. This is potentially a market in the trillions of dollars.

But make no mistake, the tech part of this startup is central to what it is going to be. This is first and foremost a tech startup. The concept feels like having your cake and eating it too.

This is one brave new century.

Related articles

• Microfinance: The Next Big Thing? (technbiz.blogspot.com)
• Google Car, Google Monorail (technbiz.blogspot.com)
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• Al Wenger Wants To Learn Scala (technbiz.blogspot.com)
• A New Model for Microfinance (humanrights.change.org)
• As Microfinance Explodes in India, Regulators Step Up Oversight (fastcompany.com)
• The 2010s Belong To New York City (technbiz.blogspot.com)
• For-Profit Microfinance Matures, India and Africa Lead the Way (fastcompany.com)
• Abusive Microfinanciers Have Prompted Lawmakers in India to Regulate the Industry (fastcompany.com)
• Craig Newmark: Microfinance, the Grameen Bank, and Lisa Simpson (huffingtonpost.com)