Forbes – Facebook‘s 10% decline today has turned the initial public offering of the century into the bust of the century, but consider this: A decade ago, the company probably would have gone public much earlier, say in May 2009 when Digital Sky Technologies pumped $200 million into Facebook at a $10 billion valuation.
As I reported earlier this year, companies are taking longer to go public for a variety of reasons, including all the laws and regulations designed to protect investors from the next dot-com bubble. That’s created a huge opportunity for hedge funds and private-equity firms to step in and supply the capital companies need to grow from the venture-capital stage to public company.
