Facebook Raises $200M; Now Valued at $10 Billion

I am somewhat familiar with what all goes into the valuation process of a standard website, but I would know where to start estimating the value of a social network like Facebook, I can only imagine the work that went on behind closed doors to arrive at $10 Billion Dollars, whew! 

One thing that amazes me about the whole Facebook thing is how they have been able to remain a private company and raise so much capital, amazing!!!  I know that employee shares of Facebook were going for $10 a share a little while back (if you knew someone), but I am going to venture to say that that price has probably gone up a little bit.  I don’t see Facebook slowing down anytime soon…

Although that’s below the $15 billion valuation that was placed on the social network when Microsoft invested $240 million for a small stake back in 2007, it’s significantly higher than recent speculation that placed the value of Facebook as low as $2-3 billion.

As part of the deal, Facebook employees are cashing in some of their shares. According to a statement from the company “DST has indicated that it is planning to offer to purchase at least $100 million of Facebook common stock from existing common stockholders that would facilitate liquidity for current and former employees’ vested shares in the company.”

If the name DST doesn’t immediately ring a bell, it’s probably because most of its investments are outside of the US. But, so are most of Facebook’s users, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg points out. “We’ve worked hard to bring more than 200 million people – 70 percent outside of the U.S. – onto Facebook to share with friends, family and co-workers. A number of firms approached us, but DST stood out because of the global perspective they bring,” he said.

Recent stats show that Facebook has grown more than 300 percent in Europe in the past year, and is the number one or two social network in all countries except for Germany (#4), Russia (#7) and Portugal (#3).

Thus, DST would seem to make some sense strategically – one of its biggest investments is in Mail.ru, a top Russian-language site, and the company goes onto state in today’s release that its “main assets account for over 70 percent of all page views in the Russian-speaking internet and its social networks are the market leaders in more than 13 countries, addressing a combined population of more than 350 million.” In other words, expect Facebook () to continue to push hard into Europe, with a bit of help from its newest investor.

Facebook Raises $200M; Now Valued at $10 Billion