Anyone looking for a quick exit from Facebook will probably be disappointed. Somehow I overlooked an interview with Peter Thiel a few days ago in which he said that the earliest Facebook would go public is 2009. This sounds like a similar story to Google who went public years after already being profitable. Going public was simply an exit strategy for the early employees as well as a way to build a cash supply to acquire other companies. Here is an excerpt of the interview that was published by The Deal:

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.”

After the Parakey acquisition on Thursday, it is pretty apparent that Facebook has some pretty lofty goals that extend outside of basic social networking.