I was in San Francisco when this deal was announced, and I still remember all my supposedly "tech startup savvy" friends mocking Zuckerberg for buying a company

I was in San Francisco when this deal was announced, and I still remember all my supposedly "tech startup savvy" friends mocking Zuckerberg for buying a company with no revenue for a billion dollars. And yes, this group even included a Harvard MBA grad pursuing a career in entrepreneurship. It's no coincidence that this was the same group of people who also mocked Facebook's IPO valuation of ~$70B as proof that we were in a bubble. If there's one thing I learned from that experience, it's that people have no idea how to appraise high-growth high-potential ventures.