BoomTown was right, Facebook has scored itself a “golden geek.” TechCrunch claims that Netscape/Opsware/Ning founder Marc Andreessen will join Accel Partners’ Jim Breyer, Founders Fund’s Peter Thiel and, of course, founder Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook’s board of directors. Which makes perfect sense, really. After all, as BoomTown pointed out back in May, Andreessen is “the man who was Zuckerberg before Zuckerberg was cool.”
Posted at 10:17 AM PT
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Tagged: Accel Partners, BoomTown, Digital Daily, Facebook, Founders Fund, Jim Breyer, John Paczkowski, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Netscape, Ning, Opsware, Peter Thiel, board | permalink
Who says Google is hoarding Silicon Valley’s tech talent? Gideon Yu, a Valley train-hopper with stints at Yahoo and YouTube (in the same year) is leaving the search company to become CFO of Facebook. “I consider it kind of a coup that we were able to recruit him here,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told The Wall Street Journal. “He’s just excellent.”
Yu’s appointment comes amid speculation that Facebook is planning to go public within the next two years, if it’s not acquired first. “Facebook has captured everyone’s imagination,” analyst Greg Sterling told Reuters. “The anticipation is either that it’s going to be a takeover target bigger than YouTube or that it’s going to have a hot IPO like Google.”
Facebook says that’s complete tosh. “We’re not looking to sell the company, and we’re really not looking to IPO any time soon,” Zuckerberg said. “Our board and we believe it’s probably best to push some of these things off as long as possible.”
Unless the company’s approached with an obscenely large offer. Then all bets are off. “If we got an offer from someone for $10 billion, we probably would listen to them,” Peter Thiel, a Facebook director, told TheDeal.com. “I don’t think we’re going to get that offer, and we’re not going to solicit it.”
