In a wide ranging interview with The Deal, Peter Thiel --one of the three directors on Facebook's board and one of its earliest investors-- downplayed the likelihood of an impending exit for the social networking company.

He said the startup will not file for an IPO for at least 18 months and suggested a trade sale is unlikely because of the significant valuation gap that exists between buyers and Facebook's board. Thiel also said that of the $150 million in projected revenue the company will do in 2007, only half will be from the Microsoft ad deal that many observers had suggested accounted for all of Facebook's revenue.

Here is an excerpt of the story by David Shabelman:

Thiel said the "earliest" Facebook would go public is 2009, "and hopefully not until significantly after that." One route could be to emulate Mountain View, Calif.-based Google Inc. and go to the public markets after its business is well established.

Facebook does not need to raise a significant amount of money; its investors are patient, and it isn't close to triggering SEC rules that require companies to go public once they reach a certain size, said Thiel. Observers have "read too much" into a recent job listing on Facebook's site for a stock administration manager to manage its options program, he said, adding that this did not signal the company was on track to go public.

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

For more of Peter Thiel on Facebook and the company's impending 'revenue initiatives', see:
The Deal (password req'd)

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