Kickstarter's not the first thing that pops to mind when you picture Facebook's shopping list, but it's recommended by the family. On Q-and-A site Quora, Arielle Zuckerberg -- Mark's youngest sister -- took a crack at the "what startups should Facebook buy?" question.
Her suggestions, circa mid-2010, included crowdfunding platform Kickstarter and Venmo, a mobile payments startup that lets users to send cash to one another via text. Two years later, those sites are even stronger. Kickstarter has moved from a niche site to a fundraising powerhouse: A recent project raised a stunning $10 million, tripling a record set just two months earlier.
Meanwhile, Venmo is now processing $10 million a month in mobile payments. It's got 20 employees, most of them engineers, and recently (and very quietly) closed a funding round featuring a host of well-known investors -- including Accel, a Facebook backer poised to reap billions from Facebook's upcoming IPO.
Elite wealth managers are helping Facebook's soon-to-be-rich structure their financial affairs.
