He immediately understood that I meant Facebook and after chuckling he actually paused thoughtfully.
Fingers-crossed, but I think his current fund is too conservative for that sort of thing.
The author would like to make a similar investment, but make it a short, basically sell, bet that the value of the stock will go down, through an intermediary.
All it takes is a willing accomplice with the right connections.
securitize (i assume) means to make their stock, or some portion of facebook liquid enough for buy/sell on a market. If there aren't people out there willing to buy or sell facebook that last part won't work.
Shorting something (in financial terms) is to bet against the product. For example, in normal publically traded stocks, you could pay someone to borrow their stocks of a company, sell the stocks off, wait a period of time (duration dependent on deal with original owner), expecting the stocks to loose value, then you rebuy the stocks, hopefully at a lower value. You make the difference between what the stocks started at, and what the ended at, minus the fee for borrowing the stocks.
Shorting stocks is tricky, really only works well over short timelines, and has unlimited downside (unlimited loss potential). For example, if you attempted to short google stock, and then the stock went to some astronomical value, you have to shell out the money to re-buy those google stock to give back to the original owner.
Some minor details:
I want to bet that Facebook is worth way less than people think it is, as in the other responses.
The idea I had in mind doesn't require any liquid ownership in Facebook, but rather that people would bet against me. (Derivative/future, not equity)
Which I think they're silly enough to do.