Facebook Lists “What Keeps Mark Zuckerberg Up at Night”

As Facebook moves to go public they have to list their risk factors that could hurt. There are over 38 risk factors and some are pretty obvious. That may seem like a lot, but not in comparison to recent tech IPOs.LinkedIn listed 42 risk factors in its filing, Zynga offered 44, and Groupon had 55.

Of the 38, a few stood out for me:

#1- If we lose our leaders, like Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, that would really harm us.

This one stood out for me- it doesn’t matter how successful a brand is if there is no succession plan or talent planning system in place it can be the death of any organization. Now we don’t know what is going on inside and perhaps they do have a leadership succession plan but if I were Mark I would be looking for my replacement and if I were Sheryl I would be looking for a future Mark and to replace myself as well.

#2- People might sue us over all sorts of stuff posted on Facebook — intellectual property, copyright, defamation, and so on.

This is happening already and there are numerous lawsuits outstanding- I am not a law expert so I do not know what the ramifications of this could be but it seems to me that Facebook must have highly capable legal experts at their disposal. A lesson to all of us in business is to have legal professionals ready to support us as our business becomes more complex.

#3- Viruses, hacking, phishing and malware. Oh my.

To me as a personal user this is a big threat. I have had my Facebook account phished and hacked and it was not fun. I am guessing Zuckerberg and his team are working on protecting themselves from this very real threat. If viruses increase and people’s accounts are hacked they will simply step away from Facebook and possibly move to Google+.

#4- We’re continually expanding abroad, and we may not understand all the risks in new countries.

Expanding in new countries requires a whole new level of infrastructure and sophistication. Facebook has the resources but there are some markets where the risks may outweigh the gain of market penetration in a particular country. Again for all business looking to expand globally there are many opportunities but not without the challenge of understanding payment rules, taxes and legal ramifications.

Whew! These were only 4 of the 38 items that pose potential risk to Facebook as they go public. Take a look at the complete list here.