Facebook picked a new CFO quietly, after its cloddish public parting with longtime top financial exec Gideon Yu earlier this year.
The fast-growing social-networking site said in late March it was looking for a CFO with “public company experience,” and it seems to have gotten one in former Genentech CFO David Ebersman.
And, indeed, with the addition of Ebersman, Facebook inches ever closer to an IPO.
This weekend on Twitter, someone paid BoomTown a compliment of a sort: “I read you because you are a solid fact-based reporter with a Miss Cleo intuition 
”
Yipes, because of being fact-based and since I had brought her up in an originating tweet, I had to point out that the well-known-via-infomercials Psychic Friends Network shaman turned out to be a bit of a fraud, although she’s always entertaining, with her jaunty Jamaican accent (she was not, of course, from there).
Nonetheless, it got me thinking about how I would predict what would result from all the deal-making that is suddenly in the air, after six months of ennui from the current economic downturn.
BoomTown is not going to go all servers and Solaris on you, as I am leaving the complicated details of the collapsed IBM bid for Sun Microsystems to Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski to sort out.
But I wonder if every failed tech merger with a squabblefest and a board in chaos will now be accused of blowing it, as most think Yahoo co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang did in rejecting the $41 billion buyout offer from Microsoft.
And former Netscape CFO Peter Currie certainly has his hands full–he is on the Sun board and also just signed up to be the financial adviser to Facebook, after it abruptly parted ways with its former CFO.
Dear Elliot Schrage:
BoomTown wins.
As Sheryl knows from experience, don’t mess with the Swish. Or Texas. Or Zohan.
Just don’t mess.
For everyone else, here is the entire memo that Facebook sent out this week to its staff about the departure of CFO Gideon Yu and the financial status of the social-networking start-up, which some had been questioning.
Back in the heyday, Peter Currie was the money man to see in Silicon Valley.
As CFO of Netscape Communications, he led the famed browser start-up into history, as the first great Internet rocket ship, when it went public on Aug. 9, 1995.
Rising to insane levels, the stock was ground zero of the Internet gold rush, despite the fact that it had no profits to speak of. But it did have a 23-year-old co-founder and tech wunderkind in Marc Andreessen and a growth trajectory that was astounding.
If you think it sounds somewhat similar to Facebook today–where Currie will now help out as temporary financial adviser after the social-networking site parted ways with its CFO, Gideon Yu, yesterday–you are correct.
In a back-to-the-future move, former Netscape CFO Peter Currie will be the key adviser to Facebook about financial matters, until a new CFO is found, sources said.
The temporary move puts a well-known and well-liked Silicon Valley figure in place at the social-networking company at what is surely a tumultuous moment. Currie has most recently been a venture investor.
Today, Facebook parted ways with its CFO, Gideon Yu, saying it was prepping for an eventual IPO. But other sources said the departure was due to increasing tension with Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Perhaps most interestingly, Currie is close with Facebook board member and Netscape Communications co-founder Marc Andreessen.
Facebook CFO Gideon Yu is leaving Facebook, as the company announced internally today that it was replacing him and searching for a new CFO on the path to an eventual IPO.
The Wall Street Journal also reported the news, noting that the huge social-networking start-up was looking for a CFO with “public company experience.”
But several sources within the company said the departure was more due to an increasingly strained relationship between Yu and Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg over strategic disagreements about a wide range of issues, from increasing ad revenue to fund-raising discussions with investors.
While it is not yet clear exactly what kind of business case study Facebook will turn out to be in the end–a raging success or a raging something else entirely–that has not stopped Harvard from feting the hot and hyped social networking site.
That would be the Harvard Business School Association of Northern California, which will bestow upon Facebook its 30th Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award on June 17 at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport.
Since we are refraining from writing about the current deals being mulled over by Facebook (see this post and also this disclosure)–one for its international ad business with rivals Google and Microsoft vying for the privilege of losing money in a guaranteed revenue deal and another to complete a mega-round of funding that will value [...]
Do you need me to draw you the bright straight line from Skype to Facebook or can you see it all by yourself?
Ok, for those who refuse to live in a little place I like to call reality, let’s review the news coming out of eBay yesterday regarding their 2005 acquisition of Skype for the then unheard of price of $2.6 billion.
The Internet auction giant declared the purchase of the once hot online telephone startup a dud Monday, taking an asset-impairment charge of $1.43 billion for the deal.
In addition, Skype founder and CEO Niklas Zennström was out. The move, said eBay in a filing, represented “updated long-term financial outlook for Skype.”
Quickie translation: Major buyer’s remorse.
We had much news we broke here on this blog last week (and much more to come, folks, so tune in early and often).
That included our exclusive report that Facebook was raising a massive round of funding at an even more massive valuation.
The news, which comes as no surprise (make hay while the sun shines [...]
While everyone has been focusing on the management roundelays at Yahoo this week, with President Sue Decker’s announcement of changes in the company’s ranks (here is my translation of her memo), the good folks over at Facebook have been quietly fine-tuning their titles.
So we are all up to date, here is the new–and much more helpful–Facebook page on top management.
And it seems now that all the executives at the hotter-than-ever social-networking company have become simple vice presidents (although some get extra titles, too).
Yesterday, I posted on the management shifts at Facebook, most particularly the changing of COO Owen Van Natta’s title to chief revenue officer and vice president of operations.
I also gave a rundown of all the top execs at the fast-growing social networking company and their duties (there are an awful lot of vice presidents with operations in their title, which I shall leave to another post to parse).
But, silly me, this is Facebook after all and I forgot the photos of each of the members of co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s brain trust, who will presumably make the popular site hugely profitable and an inevitable part of every man, woman and child’s life on the planet.
Right, boys? (Because there are no ladies in this group.)
Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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