Breaking: Samwer Brothers Invest In Facebook
Serial German entrepreneurs Alexander, Marc and Oliver Samwer have invested in Facebook, we've heard from a very reliable source - presumably as part of Facebook's recent $15 billion valuation round with Microsoft. We are still trying to nail down the size of the investment.
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook's $15 billion valuation round has been assembled piece by piece since October 2007, when Microsoft paid $240 million for its stake and effectively set the price for everyone else. Silicon Alley Insider asked in November who else wanted in at $15 billion and answered 'no one' — before Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing put in $60 million at the end of that month.
Today TechCrunch reports, via a source it calls very reliable, that Alexander, Marc and Oliver Samwer — the serial German entrepreneurs — have bought in, presumably on the same terms. The Wall Street Journal carried the same item, which gives the report reach even though Facebook itself has not confirmed the size or the investors.
First-order effects
- Facebook's $15 billion round adds another named backer, though the size of the Samwer check is still unconfirmed — the round is being filled by individual strategics rather than a single institutional lead beyond Microsoft.
Second-order effects
- The Samwers' base in Europe gives Facebook a well-connected European business relationship it did not have through Microsoft or Li Ka-shing, at a moment when the company is under scrutiny abroad alongside Microsoft's own antitrust troubles in the EU market.
Third-order effects
- If late-stage private rounds keep getting priced by Microsoft and then topped up by wealthy individuals and strategics, the $15 billion mark becomes a reference point set without any public-market check — a structural feature of how social-network valuations are being established in this cycle.
The trend: Facebook's record private valuation is being validated investor-by-investor — Microsoft, then Li Ka-shing, now reportedly the Samwer brothers — rather than by a single financing event.