At least that is what everyone has been led to believe. Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is scheduled to appear at the TechCrunch Disrupt! conference in San Francisco today, his first public appearance since Facebook’s notorious IPO.
Zuckerberg joins a veritable parade of high-tech luminaries including Marissa Meyer, new CEO of Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), Reid Hoffman, executive chairman of LinkedIn Corp. (NYSE: LNKD), and Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM).
Anyone expecting an expression of remorse or doubt from Zuckerberg related to Facebook’s IPO is likely to be disappointed. That’s just not his style. From Zuckerberg’s point of view, the initial public offering was a success because it met his goal of a $100 billion valuation. Everything else was just noise.
Whether he will say anything specific about Facebook’s future or the company’s plans on how it will go about raising revenue is also questionable. There is really nothing to be gained by saying anything, so Zuckerberg most likely will speak in platitudes and generalities. Anyone who still believes he puts any store in what analysts or shareholders think has probably been living under a rock.
Facebook’s shares are up 0.8% at $18.95 in early trading this morning. The post-IPO range is $17.55 to $45.00.
Paul Ausick
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