Facebook's development from founding to IPO: a case analysis

¶ … collegiate social network that provided friends the opportunity to stay in touch with each other as they moved on with their academic careers to a social network-based business model generating billions of dollars in revenue, Facebook has gone through many transformations as a business. The intent of this analysis is to evaluate the progression of Facebook on the most critical key dimensions of its performance as measured by financial metrics. Facebook's innate design structure enables it to be personalized for specific user's tastes, as the ergonomics and user experience enable this design objective (Kane, et.al.). Predicated on the ability to create highly personalized user experiences and align many of the world's most powerful brands with potential customers via their platform, Facebook is today a formidable force in online advertising (Smith, 357). The IPO provided the necessary funds to allow for Facebook to grow these core aspects of their infrastructure, accenting their value with deep analytics and insights that are readily used for defining advertising profiles, digital marketing campaign strategies and digital services to brand marketers (Kane, et.al.).

Funding of Facebook

The most significant events in Facebook's funding history began in 2004 and progress up to the IPO in 2012. Peter Thiel was the first major investor, providing $500,000 from Clarium Capital, in 2004. Peter Thiel also attempted to purchase Facebook that year for $10M and was rejected (Kane, et.al.). As Facebook's user base continues to exponentially increase, Thiel leads Accel Partners to invest $12.7M, giving the company a $87.5M valuation (Kane, et.al.). There are over a dozen additional investments made through the next several years leading tot the company's IPO, with Microsoft investing $240M in October, 2007 to gain a 1.6% stake in the company. In May, 2009, Digital Sky Technologies invests $200M and in June, 2010 Elevation Partners invests another $120M, bringing its total investment to $210M. In the year prior to the IPO, Goldman Sachs invested $450M and DST also added $50M, fueling a market valuation of $50B by late 2011 (Kane, et.al.). In May, 2012, Facebook completes its IPO and has a $223B market cap as of March 8, 2015.