Facebook Board Member: No IPO Til ‘09, They'd Think About $10b Offer

Facebook isn’t likely to go public for at least another 18 months, according to Peter Thiel, an early investor in the company. Thiel gave a long subscriber-only interview to TheDeal.com, which is summarized on the Deal’s VC Ratings blog.

He says no sale is likely soon, either, due to the gap between what the board thinks the company is worth and what potential buyers would be willing to pay.

I think the preference we have would be to do neither — to neither take the company public or sell it. If it were to consider a sale, it would take a large number to get the company’s attention. If we got an offer from someone for $10 billion, we probably would listen to them. I don’t think we’re going to get that offer, and we’re not going to solicit it.

The blog post also said that, according to Thiel, of the $150 million in projected revenue the company will do in 2007, only half will be from the Microsoft (MSFT) ad deal that many observers had suggested accounted for all of Facebook’s revenue.

Thiel’s fellow Facebook board member Jim Breyer of Accel Partners had recently put the company’s expected 2007 revenues at “over $100 million.”