In January, private company stock marketplace SecondMarket published data on private company stock sales that they helped complete in 2009. And February’s report showed the transactions that took place in January, which showed a strong demand for consumer products and services startups. The majority of transactions in January were sales of Facebook stock. SecondMarket just released its February report, which you can download here.
Transactions more tripled in February, from $13 million in sales to $43.8 million in sales last month. A full 48% of the transactions were sales of Facebook stock, compared to 38% in January. And last month, we reported that sales are being completed for as high as $40 per share (or a $17.6 billion valuation). But we learned this week that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is in no rush to take the company public. LinkedIn took 18% of the transactions, and sales of both Twitter and Zynga stock were each 15% of the total. LifeLock rounded the group out with 4% of the total.
The transactions concentrated mainly in consumer products and services (85%) and media and entertainment (15%). Similar to January’s trends, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter attracted the most transactions on SecondMarket.
On the buying side, Facebook led the way with one-third of all buyside demand followed by Twitter (7%) and LinkedIn (5%). Interest in Zynga (3%) also rose in February. On the seller side, ex-employees of start-ups stepped up their selling activity in February, comprising over 80% of sales, the highest percentage in the past nine months.
Noticeably missing from the report was Tesla, which filed for a $100 million IPO in late January.
TechCrunch_Private_Company_Presentation_Final_2010_03_09
I think it’s kind of scary that there is so much demand for Twitter stock. Regardless of price, I would be a bit weary to invest in a company without a clear business model.
it’s all speculation, you can say the same thing for facebook, relying on an advertising-only model is doomed to fail. There has to be some real roots for any of these companies to succeed. For LinkedIn, I can see it, since they do offer premium services and whatnot, but for the others it’s a bit rediculous and purely speculation that the companies will eventually turn a profit — and by profit I mean not just being “cashflow positive” because that says very little if anything.
Sounds like you don’t understand facebook… look up Mafia wars and find out how much they made last year, or how about Farmville. The facebook model is unstoppable, but nobody understands it because it’s well hidden from the public. With 400million customers on a virtual site it’s easy to change the model from advertising to games to the next thing. The model is the customers… don’t you see? They can give them anything and build revenue. Ads and games are bringing in loads what’s the point in changing
Funny that transactions in LifeLock stock represented 4% of the market in February and that they announced the $12M FTC fine in March.
I guess SEC Insider Trading regs don’t apply here?
Very interesting report. I saw these guys on “Venture” on the Bloomberg Channel hosted by Cris Valerio the other day. Great company.
“SecondMarket: Facebook And Zynga Dominate Transactions In February”
Doesn’t the graph clearly show that LinkedIn with a higher % of transactions than Zynga?
@Scott, I was thinking the same thing – but hey, putting Zynga is the title of the article is sexier, right?
Somebody needs to go back to pie chart school…
Zynga are making quite a lot of money with their games.
Lou Kerner & Eli Halliwell published on Feb 28th “Facebook: The World’s Dominant Media Company” http://track.com/articles/facebook-the-worlds-dominant-media-company/ – perhaps relevant?
Zynga and Facebook? Maybe because there are already millions and millions of Zynga poker fans in Facebook? :)
NICE…….I REALLY LIKE IT