Facebook’s Ambition Collides With Harsh Market
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: August 20, 2012
MENLO PARK, Calif. — Inside Facebook’s headquarters, a red-and-white poster affixed to a wall asks bluntly: “What Could Go Wrong?”
Below, in black ink, someone has scrawled in tiny letters: “Everything.”
The poster, one of several displayed across this sprawling campus, is part of the company’s risk-taking start-up culture, as is the fact that management has not pulled down the defaced copy. But as the company loses its luster on Wall Street, this exchange on the wall points to the improbable turn that Facebook’s fairy tale has taken.
Once hailed as the most valuable technology company to hit Wall Street, Facebook is now worth just over half what it was three months ago, with shares closing at $20.01 Monday. Wall Street analysts are openly wondering whether its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has the business skills to deliver on his promises.
Facebook’s troubles began in earnest with an exceptionally ambitious initial public offering. Even the grown-ups that Mr. Zuckerberg, 28, chose to run the business side of the company — Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operations officer, and David Ebersman, the chief financial officer — seem not to have been skilled enough to stave off that disaster. Nor were the bankers who handled the deal, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan
