It's the opposite: not wall st. screwing SV but SV screwing Wall St. on this one. Facebook is giving itself a super-high valuation, as high as they can get away

It's the opposite: not wall st. screwing SV but SV screwing Wall St. on this one. Facebook is giving itself a super-high valuation, as high as they can get away with, because that way they get as much money from the initial stock sale as possible (rather than seeing Goldman flip their IPO'd stock for a pretty profit to Goldman rather than to Facebook). Since Facebook is the first SV company with a mega-IPO to be truly in tune with Wall St's tricks (LinkedIn totally blew it) there is indeed a good chance their stock price could head south after IPO. On the other hand the hype keeps things going so who knows...