5 ms·

By the way, Peter Thiel already sold the majority of his FB shares around the time of the IPO. See: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/peter-thiel-facebook

By the way, Peter Thiel already sold the majority of his FB shares around the time of the IPO. See: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/peter-thiel-facebook-stock-sale-billion-dollars-364152 https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/peter-thiel-facebook-... Notice that at the time the article was written he had sold about 37 million shares and had only 5.6 million left. The prices he got were absolute peanuts compared to the current price -- he sold 17 mln shares for $38, and another 20 million for about $20. The current price is $180. I am not writing this to criticize Peter Thiel, obviously the stock market is very difficult to predict. And, unfortunately, I did not buy FB at $20, so I cannot say I had a better mastery of the market than him. The point I want to make is that is downright silly to make any conclusions about FBs valuation based on this sale.

claudiulodro 9y ago
Hindsight is 20:20. I think the most likely prediction for a social media IPO is similar to TWTR or SNAP where it just keeps dropping and dropping. FB is an outlier in my opinion.
- api 9y ago
  ... for now. We just tried to use it to advertise and had exactly this experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag Pulled the plug. Nothing but worthless traffic, no engagement.
  - siquick 9y ago
    This sounds more like an issue with your ad targetting than with Facebook. First step: only target users in countries that you care about and (sadly) do not target Indonesia, India, Pakistan or anywhere in Africa as these are mostly where the fake profiles are.
    - npkarnik 9y ago
      I disagree that any specific advice will help an individual marketer...I think the biggest issue is that the economics of acquisition on social (factoring in internet marketing budgets and customer LTV) doesn't work well for brands that aren't already operating at significant scale. Otherwise, Teespring would be a billion dollar company by now ;) My guess is that social marketing works ok for brands that have a strong competitive position AND healthy margins.
      - CaveTech 9y ago
        Healthy margins and product appeal moreso than competitive position. Teesprings product offering is far too broad to benefit specific targeting which really just leads to low user intent, which leads to huge acquisition costs. No one gets excited for tshirts. Products outside of these hugely saturated markets do amazingly well if you know what you're doing.
    - stanmancan 9y ago
      Did you watch the video that the parent shared? From the sounds of it, targeting didn't seem to help at all. The video stated that they seem to think that clickfarmers will like -anything- so that a sudden surge of likes from a specific region on a specific page seems less fishy.
      - api 9y ago
        That is what we found. Targeting didn't matter. YMMV of course but we did not find Facebook ads effective at anything but reaching click farms.
  - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
    tl;dr on that video: You pay Facebook to promote your page to X number of people. The problem is that paid third-world clickfarms spam likes to everything they can find, not just to things they're paid to like, in order to camouflage themselves. Thus, the majority of likes you get by promoting your page are fake and don't actually represent engaged fans. You're paying for nothing. (Feel free to correct me)
gkoberger 9y ago
Only on Hacker News would we consider making over a billion dollars "absolute peanuts," and criticize Thiel for not being enough of a visionary to wait. When you're Thiel, having the money liquid is more valuable than waiting. One way to look at is that he could have 5x'd the money had he not touched it. But I'd bet whatever he did with the money since the 2012 IPO (starting companies, investing in companies, etc) had a much better return than 5x.
- hristov 9y ago
  Only on Hacker News I can write an entire paragraph explaining how I am not criticizing Thiel and then still get slammed for criticizing him.
  - csallen 9y ago
    The culture here is often contrarian to a fault.
    - virgilp 9y ago
      No it's not.
      - yalph 9y ago
        Now this feels like Reddit.
      - JakeAl 9y ago
        I'll go with maybe.
  - huiuyhn88 9y ago
    Only the Sith deal in absolutes!
  - api 9y ago
    There's a lot of really weird vicarious worship of the wealthy around here. It's ironic that it's called Hacker News since traditionally hackers came from more of a "fight the man" zeitgeist. At times it borders on sycophancy, like when every single utterance of a VC no matter how banal is analyzed as if it's the words of some venerated guru. The extreme of this would be the Silicon Valley right and its full and explicit embrace of feudalism and monarchy. ... and no, I'm not criticizing Thiel. The vicarious sycophancy of the HN community is a lot weirder and at times more troubling than the behavior of the actual SV rich.
srdev 9y ago
In stock trading, we say that there are a million reasons to sell and only one to buy. Sales aren't a particularly good signal, since they can be very specific to ones' personal situation.
- JBlue42 9y ago
  The one reason to buy - because you think it will go up?
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    Well, you think you can't get a better return on your investment elsewhere. Just going up isn't enough if something less risky goes up faster. Going down a little can even be a relatively good bet if everything else is absolutely tanking. Losing 1% of your principle is a pretty good deal if the stock market (and the dollar) go down a lot.
    - JBlue42 9y ago
      Ha, thanks! I was just curious so took a wild guess.
flylib 9y ago
I mean the price he sold at IPO was way higher then what he bought in at the seed round as one of the first investors, it is one of the best seed investments ever, given he was already one of the longest shareholders by the time of the IPO it made sense to sell

claudiulodro 9y ago

Hindsight is 20:20. I think the most likely prediction for a social media IPO is similar to TWTR or SNAP where it just keeps dropping and dropping. FB is an outlier in my opinion.

api 9y ago
... for now. We just tried to use it to advertise and had exactly this experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag Pulled the plug. Nothing but worthless traffic, no engagement.
- siquick 9y ago
  This sounds more like an issue with your ad targetting than with Facebook. First step: only target users in countries that you care about and (sadly) do not target Indonesia, India, Pakistan or anywhere in Africa as these are mostly where the fake profiles are.
  - npkarnik 9y ago
    I disagree that any specific advice will help an individual marketer...I think the biggest issue is that the economics of acquisition on social (factoring in internet marketing budgets and customer LTV) doesn't work well for brands that aren't already operating at significant scale. Otherwise, Teespring would be a billion dollar company by now ;) My guess is that social marketing works ok for brands that have a strong competitive position AND healthy margins.
    - CaveTech 9y ago
      Healthy margins and product appeal moreso than competitive position. Teesprings product offering is far too broad to benefit specific targeting which really just leads to low user intent, which leads to huge acquisition costs. No one gets excited for tshirts. Products outside of these hugely saturated markets do amazingly well if you know what you're doing.
  - stanmancan 9y ago
    Did you watch the video that the parent shared? From the sounds of it, targeting didn't seem to help at all. The video stated that they seem to think that clickfarmers will like -anything- so that a sudden surge of likes from a specific region on a specific page seems less fishy.
    - api 9y ago
      That is what we found. Targeting didn't matter. YMMV of course but we did not find Facebook ads effective at anything but reaching click farms.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  tl;dr on that video: You pay Facebook to promote your page to X number of people. The problem is that paid third-world clickfarms spam likes to everything they can find, not just to things they're paid to like, in order to camouflage themselves. Thus, the majority of likes you get by promoting your page are fake and don't actually represent engaged fans. You're paying for nothing. (Feel free to correct me)

gkoberger 9y ago

Only on Hacker News would we consider making over a billion dollars "absolute peanuts," and criticize Thiel for not being enough of a visionary to wait. When you're Thiel, having the money liquid is more valuable than waiting. One way to look at is that he could have 5x'd the money had he not touched it. But I'd bet whatever he did with the money since the 2012 IPO (starting companies, investing in companies, etc) had a much better return than 5x.

hristov 9y ago
Only on Hacker News I can write an entire paragraph explaining how I am not criticizing Thiel and then still get slammed for criticizing him.
- csallen 9y ago
  The culture here is often contrarian to a fault.
  - virgilp 9y ago
    No it's not.
    - yalph 9y ago
      Now this feels like Reddit.
    - JakeAl 9y ago
      I'll go with maybe.
- huiuyhn88 9y ago
  Only the Sith deal in absolutes!
- api 9y ago
  There's a lot of really weird vicarious worship of the wealthy around here. It's ironic that it's called Hacker News since traditionally hackers came from more of a "fight the man" zeitgeist. At times it borders on sycophancy, like when every single utterance of a VC no matter how banal is analyzed as if it's the words of some venerated guru. The extreme of this would be the Silicon Valley right and its full and explicit embrace of feudalism and monarchy. ... and no, I'm not criticizing Thiel. The vicarious sycophancy of the HN community is a lot weirder and at times more troubling than the behavior of the actual SV rich.

srdev 9y ago

In stock trading, we say that there are a million reasons to sell and only one to buy. Sales aren't a particularly good signal, since they can be very specific to ones' personal situation.

JBlue42 9y ago
The one reason to buy - because you think it will go up?
- humanrebar 9y ago
  Well, you think you can't get a better return on your investment elsewhere. Just going up isn't enough if something less risky goes up faster. Going down a little can even be a relatively good bet if everything else is absolutely tanking. Losing 1% of your principle is a pretty good deal if the stock market (and the dollar) go down a lot.
  - JBlue42 9y ago
    Ha, thanks! I was just curious so took a wild guess.

flylib 9y ago

I mean the price he sold at IPO was way higher then what he bought in at the seed round as one of the first investors, it is one of the best seed investments ever, given he was already one of the longest shareholders by the time of the IPO it made sense to sell