This is a great stock, bought some at $18 and a couple of weeks ago and now its nearly $21! That's a 16% return in just a couple of weeks, heck at this rate it will return over 400% annually!
Yes, its a satirical comment to illustrate the point that FB 'stock price' stories are all in the eye of the beholder. If Mark stays focused on building a great company and the rest will take care of itself.
I don't believe for a second this has been a plan in the making for over 8 years and if it was, it was just to keep control of his company, nothing more, not an overly elaborate plan specially designed to keep stockholders at bay when facebook would IPO 8 years later and the stock would inevitably flop and he would need to "rebuild" the companies strategies, what the hell is that?
Control is control, whether it's a public company or private company. Zuckerberg, at Parker's advice, was very wise to maintain complete control of Facebook, since his ambitions have always been a few orders of magnitude bigger than those of his investors.
We all have our own motives behind keeping control and I find it hard to believe that Zuckerberg's motives were as pure as claimed in the article (given the history of the guy and all).
I believe there is a high likelihood that the young Zuckerberg of 8 years ago may have had other motives behind keeping that control, far more personal motives than the original article implies.
Also, Based on Zuckerberg's stronger focus on product as opposed to business, which I feel is a pretty big weakness when your a CEO, I have my doubts he was even thinking about IPO back then, and I'm sure he is regretting thinking about IPO now.
Yes, its a satirical comment to illustrate the point that FB 'stock price' stories are all in the eye of the beholder. If Mark stays focused on building a great company and the rest will take care of itself.