FaceCrunch?

Read on Techmeme this morning that Facebook is tapping the markets - in Dubai. TechCrunch ran some numbers of its estimated cost cash flows - so I've set those against a reported revenue of c $300m pa and a starting bank balance of $240m, about 50% of what Facebook has had invested/loaned to date.



Projection thus is it hits the wall in about a year. Now I have no idea if the TechCrunch numbers are right or wrong, or that my estimate of cash in bank is accurate, and my estimate of a roughly steady state net cash burn is probably wrong - but even if you twist this some ways to the angels they burn out by Q6, which is less than the 18 months that seems to be being used right now as the minimum "gas in tank" required. And as we've shown, companies growing fast can get caught very quickly. Hence Dubai

Question, of course, is "why Dubai". As Venturebeat notes:

What if Facebook wants to raise more money? At what valuation, in that case? Trying to calculate what Facebook is actually worth at this point is, as usual, a Silicon Valley parlor game. Our other source puts it this way:

People always forget that a valuation is based 50 percent on the market (beta) and 50 percent the specific company. Google’s valuation has declined by 40 percent (as have all other major Internet companies) — even if FB were worth $15 billion last year and executing flawlessly, their valuation would be reset by the market.

Could it therefore be that the Silicon Valley locals may put a lesser valuation on it than some chaps from Dubai could be persuaded to?