It would be amazing to know what the FB board thought at the time, and if zuck had to push hard for the transaction or not .
It's not, and Facebook of all companies knows why. What they have is not some stupendous, irreplaceable technology. What they have is users and their relationships. That's how they killed myspace, not with revenue, not with their employee count, and not with their masses of technology, but with their users and the network effect. And that's how they will be killed.
Then again, nobody wins all the time (cough oculus cough).
However, Oculus is way too early to call as a bad bet.
Oculus could be like late model, pre-touchscreen Blackberry.
Where it is proving potential and demand for a new type of connectivity, but unable to leap forward far enough and fast enough to counter an entrance from Apple.
It could pivot its business model and become the most successful XR platform for Android users, consolidating support from Epic, Snap and others.
If Zuck wrote that email in 2013, he knows the headwinds against this direction and I don’t think he’s reached the Bowling Alley scene of There Will Be Blood quite yet.
I truly believe that VR headsets will become the major computing platform. Not in the next 5 years, and not overnight, but eventually.
I don’t think Zuck foresaw the level of investment he’ll need to make before turning profit.
Oculus (and the “Metaverse”) is a 10-20 year play, betting on people changing their habits and using VR as their primary medium of engagement online. They’re trying to build an iPhone/iOS like integrated hardware and marketplace experience, but it remains to be seen if they’ll be profitable as a business.
[1] https://www.androidcentral.com/despite-quest-2-sales-success...
if the rumors of Apple's device costing $2000 are correct, they're not going to push the Quest out of that market.
Lots of people found smartphones to be a gimick early on too.
It's the exact same reason why Microsoft bought Minecraft for 2B. Not because the game was worth anything near that, but because the community was.
32 of the employees were engineers [1].
[0] https://theconversation.com/whatsapp-bought-for-19-billion-w...
[1] https://india.sequoiacap.com/article/four-numbers-that-expla...
That is giving too much credit to 1% of executives, I am willing to bet 99.999% wouldn't have made that decision.
Although arguably speaking, executives are managerial mindset. Which is very different to entrepreneur.
There are deliberate attempts by politically and monetarily motivated groups to spread objectively false propaganda. FUD/HODL to mislead investors, conspiracy theories to sway public opinion, pseudoscience to peddle ineffective medical treatments... The people doing this effectively aren't individuals disagreeing with mainstream discourse, they know exactly what they're doing.
> I think 99% of executives on earth wouldn't have made that decision.
We conclude, 99% of executives are geniuses. I just feel like the term 'genius' gets thrown around inflationary. Being successful != being a genius. There is more to it (it actually isn't even a requirement) . At least I want to believe that.
You are minimizing the impact of WA….. by a lot. At that time, almost all the smartphone users in India were using WA. The transaction gave FB all of those ~half billion users in just one shot.
It’s notable here that none of the founders of IG and WA are with Meta today - due to ethical differences.
16 billion dollars for a 24(?) person company with no revenue.
I think 99% of executives on earth wouldn't have made that decision. They would have believed their teams that said victory was around the corner, or deluded themselves into thinking success was inevitable, or would have been afraid to demoralize their team, or would have rationalized away why messaging wasn't important after all.
He just acted and won, for what now seems like a bargain.