To be clear though: he has created this situation. If he lost a reasonable amount of money, none of these questions would be asked. Anything north of $10bn is just madness, $5bn is bad, $2-3 is probably about right. It is all sustainable within the current situation, he just has no-one telling him how bad this all looks (what it looks like now is the opposite of the final scenario: man who is worth hundreds of billions rinses public shareholders for his fever dream VR fantasy).
Innovator's dilemma is all operational, so it should be separate from FB. Capital allocation choices are distinct from all this (the innovator's dilemma exists because CEOs are usually terrible investors/capital allocators, there are maybe 20 CEOs who have ever run a public company who can allocate capital well, Zuck actually had a decent rep before this because of his acquisitions but he is torching it with VR, which is clearly very far from commercial revenue).
This is how literally ALL the technology you use was developed. Huge, multi-decade spending on R&D until it works. Literally any technology you can think of.
I can't think of any technology that required multi-decade spending on this scale before revenue, fusion? If something needs multi-decade spending, it is either a scam or uninvestable.
I wonder if Meta would be going all-in on a VR system that nobody seems to want if Sheryl Sandberg were still around. She seemed like the only one who could say no to MZ. Granted, there are lots of other factors (TikTok, recession, Apple's privacy changes), but it is an interesting coincidence.
Actually, it happens all the time. The business press had been full of these sorts of characters for centuries.
Currently, even within the HN bubble, there's Mr. Musk, and several others.
In no other company would a CEO be allowed to essentially go rogue like this. All companies with dual-class shares will eventually trade at a discount, this is FB's time.
I don't even think the Metaverse is a bad idea, but applying the SV mentality of: we just need to lose more money than anyone else won't work, that isn't how the real world works unless you have someone even dumber to pay you off (i.e. stupider VC fund, IPO)...FB is top of the food chain, no-one else is coming in on this.
They either need to slow the cash burn (the numbers are just ludicrous) or spin the company (not possible).
This kind of thing happens and the discount can last literally decades. With dual-class share, there is no way to close it and most investors know this so they are just selling.
I will say it again: dual-share class isn't smart, the market isn't dumb, investors aren't stupid, it will go wrong eventually and everyone else is paying the price for Zuckerberg's own desire for self-aggrandizement.