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Buying competitors when they are eating your lunch hardly requires shrewd strategy. Those were not big brain decisions and not contrarian at all. As for mainta
by jjeaff 4y ago
Buying competitors when they are eating your lunch hardly requires shrewd strategy. Those were not big brain decisions and not contrarian at all.
As for maintaining control, I would chalk that up more to the fact that for years he had a company growing hand over fist. He didn't really have to give up much or risk much to maintain control, so again, not really a contrarian move.
Where he does seem to differ from many founders is that he appears to not be encumbered by any moral or ethical qualms to speak of. So this robotic ruthlessness has allowed him to wield the power of facebook's data pipeline like a kudgel. Using it to know which competitors to buy or crush and literally selling said data to the highest bidder with very few limits. Be they foreign adversaries to the US or just outright corrupt organizations with malignant intent.
- hyuuu 4y agoinstagram did not eat fb lunch, it's a 13 people startup doing photo sharing in san francisco. He took a bet for 1 billion, for that. So yes, it's very contrarian, it was even ridiculed publicly, I know i did and damn I was wrong. Also, you are saying that as if he's the one who is evil enough to sell data to the highest bidder while Apple is kneecapping the DTC market under the fake banner of "privacy" while they are setting up their own ads exchange (check the leaked emails) and google is doing the same thing, hell they are even the first ad exchange to introduce realtime bidding with google ads. The thing that FB is guilty of is how successful they are in monetizing.
- jjeaff 4y agoInstagram was already valued at $500 million from a recent major funding round by the top VC firms in silicon valley. They were also one of the top apps in the app store and were leagues ahead of Facebook when it came to photos. So again, it was a good investment, but not contrarian by any means.
- reducesuffering 4y agoHN mostly poo-poo’ing the acquisition: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817840 Check the tech headlines around 2012