In my Monday email column, I wrote the following while waiting for Facebook to file IPO papers:
Twitter, you’re on the clock. Last year at this time, we regularly discussed how the secondary private markets were being boosted by the exit prospects of three companies: LinkedIn, Groupon, Zynga, Facebook and Twitter. The first three are already public. Facebook is filing. That means Twitter is all that’s left. Will it be the private survivor, or cave to peer pressure in 2012?
Bill Gurley, a partner with Twitter investor Benchmark Capital, today addressed the issue during an interview on CNBC. He began by saying that the company is “not thinking about” an IPO right now, and that it instead focused on building out its advertising platform. But he followed by saying: “Over time, I think that all the same factors that led to Google (GOOG) and Facebook going public will eventually lead [Twitter] to do the same.”
In other words, Twitter will eventually cave to investor and employee pressure and/or bump up against the 500-shareholder rule (if it isn’t legislatively neutered first). Here’s the video:
[cnnmoney-cnbc vid=http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000071318]