“A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A billion dollars.”
– Sean Parker *
Trade Me has announced details of their IPO, valuing the company at over $1 billion.
That’s cool!
To those who may say this means the original shareholders sold too soon …
I was very fortunate to have a small role to play in this story. Relative to my contribution, I arguably ended up with far more than my fair share, so I try not to feel too sorry for myself.
* This quote was attributed to Parker in The Social Network movie, but according to a recent interview with FT, he doesn’t actually believe it – his words: “[A billion dollars is] not cool. I think being a wealthy member of the establishment is the antithesis of cool. Being a countercultural revolutionary is cool. So to the extent that you’ve made a billion dollars, you’ve probably become uncool.”
$1 billion feels cheap now – 5 years later. But I have to read the prospectus to see how cheap.
[...] cool to watch from a distance as they completed their IPO, and achieved a market capitalisation of over $1billion, although amusing to see media pundits say that we original shareholders obviously sold too [...]