Cash-Burning Facebook Borrows $100mm...Because It Couldn't Sell Stock?

Facebook is unique because, unlike other 'giant' silicon valley startups, they don't really offer anything new in terms of revenue. They are a sophisticated billboard. Google, on the other hand, built something new - targeting ads by keyword/content analysis.<p>Here is a thought experiment: If all of facebook's users came to your website tomorrow, chances are you could monetize them just as well as facebook. However, if you took all of google's users, you would not do as well because you lack their technology.<p>Facebook is like any other site on the net, just with more pageviews.

<i>But the real reason you don't often see emerging private companies take on big debt-loads is that borrowing money is riskier than selling stock, and it also subordinates the existing equity holders.</i><p>I can't get my head around this sentence. I remember Henry Ford bought out all his original investors (when Ford Motor was "emerging") because he didn't want to lose control. (And the family still hasn't). Creditors only have power when you're in bankrupcy court. Shareholders have power until judgement day.<p>EDIT: Holy beans! When you buy one dollar of Ford Motor stock, you are buying 10 dollars of Ford Motor debt:<p><a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=F" rel="nofollow">http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=F</a><p><pre><code> Market Cap (intraday)5: 16.20B Total Debt (mrq): 168.53B</code></pre>

The title is a bit aggressive. It's likely that Facebook it couldn't sell stock <i>at last fall's $15 billion valuation</i>. Rather than do a "down round" of financing -- a round with a lower valuation -- they likely found it easier or cheaper to use debt.

So how many servers does $100 million buy exactly? A bespoke built data center full of them I would have thought!

the question I have it how much of the new server farms are to accommodate growth and how much of it is them just struggling to have the current setup be resilient to the normal usage patterns that they see?

In the Startup Junkies series on iTunes, EarthClassMail borrowed the money to buy servers from a special bank made up of former venture capitalists who specialize in loaning money strictly for the purchase of physical hardware, also used as collateral. If Facebook already has almost half a billion dollars in investments, and feels this expansion will make them money, then they could pay off the loan without having to lower their valuation.

It's impossible to know if this was a good deal for them without knowing the terms.<p>Also, Google actually did lease machines early on, which is essentially debt (done for accounting reasons, as I understand it).