Instagram Originally Asked For $2 Billion
Facebook raised a lot of eyebrows when it bought Instagram for $1 billion last week.
But that's actually a bargain compared with Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom's original asking price of $2 billion. That spectacular number appears in Wall Street Journal, which this evening ran down the details of the intense negotiations between Systrom and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Zuck apparently phoned Systrom on Thursday, April 5, after talking to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and telling her he wanted to buy the company. He reached out directly because he was afraid that going through lawyers, as is normally done with big M&A deals, would have turned Systrom off. Systrom drove from his home in San Francisco to Zuckerberg's house in Palo Alto repeatedly over the next three days, hammering out a deal. Zuck only told the board of directors about it on Sunday, April 8.
