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I don't like Zuckerberg at all but Instagram and WhatsApp purchases were _very_ good calls

by Kevcmk 2mo ago

edu 2mo ago
Indeed they were. Also, it’s interesting to note that in both cases they where two very lean companies (Instagram had 13 employees and WhatsApp had 55) with pretty a pretty large and engaged user base (30 million for Insta and 450 million for WhatsApp)
- mattoxic 2mo ago
  Yeah, and he threw a huge bunch of cash to acquire them. pretty easy to acquire. Harder to build. He got lucky with facebook because myspace sucked. Good timing.
  - arikrahman 2mo ago
    I always hear reverence around Myspace. Is it really rose-tinted nostalgia? It seemed like a cool core product.
    - AlecSchueler 2mo ago
      MySpace gave users a lot of freedom. That was great in certain scenarios but at it got bigger it meant there was just more noise and the general atmosphere was very messy for lack of a better word. Facebook was very clean by comparison and it felt natural to connect to people who couldn't handle MySpace, people in your family or at work etc. Then eventually it got big enough through that that it just became the place to connect with your cool friends too because "everyone" was there. So yeah, it's kinda mixed. The core product was cool but it wasn't as suitable for as a replacement for the phone book in the way Facebook was.
      - alex1138 2mo ago
        Yes and then Facebook did everything they could to subvert granular privacy controls (Myspace was decent, it had a wall but that was about it) which is of paramount importance for people with real safety issues FB would have been invented. It's just another layer of authentication anyway. Myspace was an interesting experiment for its time ...Comparisons of Tom to Zuck are rife I'm aware but somehow Myspace isn't known for "they trust me, dumb fucks"
    - cookiengineer 2mo ago
      ...but most of all, Samy is my hero!
eloisant 2mo ago
They spied on their mobile users with the Facebook app to detect Instagram and WhatsApp growth early
- apsurd 2mo ago
  corporate espionage at global scale to get ahead of existential threats is some pretty insightful leadership, it’s all a matter of what team you’re rooting for.
- dingaling 2mo ago
  By the time FB bought WhatsApp it had nearly a billion users. No need for technology conspiracy nonsense.
  - 6902bb8a-5cea 2mo ago
    I guess it's hard to say how much them monitoring their (potential) competitors influenced their decisions but it's definitely _not_ conspiracy nonsense and pretty well documented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47281906 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47281906
kombine 2mo ago
As another commenter said that he acquired both with the money made on Facebook, they didn't originate within the company.
bayarearefugee 2mo ago
Sure, they worked out pretty well, but those were 12 and 14 years ago at this point, and aren't the only calls Facebook has made over the years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Meta_Platforms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio... IMO the actual prescient call he made early on is to hang on to 60% of the total voting power of the company. I have to imagine there are several points where he'd have been pushed out quite a while ago if he hadn't have done that.
- earthnail 2mo ago
  But if you take the same perspective as a VC: 95% of your bets can fail if the other 5% are spectacular. He made spectacular bets with Instagram and WhatsApp. Most CEOs don’t make spectacular bets because their business doesn’t allow it, meaning the VC analogy doesn’t hold for them.
  - fsuts 2mo ago
    Hasn’t Meta failed to monetise WhatsApp? So it may be popular but they have ultimately failed commercially so far. They just bought an Indian startup and immediately put the founder in charge of WhatsApp. Only this week they announced WhatsApp would allow usernames rather than rely on phone numbers. All the other competitors apps (signal,telegram etc) did this years ago.
    - owebmaster 2mo ago
      Whatsapp is by far meta biggest potential. If they could turn it into a superApp like WeChat they would make a lot of money but only if that don't destroy the app.
  - fsuts 2mo ago
    Think that means 95% of bets over a small period of time? (A single fund within the VC) as opposed to the whole VC since inception. And so not comparable. VC investing is also a tax write off for rich investors which is offset against their gains elsewhere, wasted company money is a loss for the share buyer.
lenkite 2mo ago
> Instagram and WhatsApp purchases were _very_ good calls Elementary call when you have the data no-one else has thanks to illicit means and explicitly decided on a buy or bury strategy
- pavlov 2mo ago
  A very HN comment... At the time, almost nobody felt spending billions acquiring these companies was "elementary". Instagram was bought so early that spending a billion on a startup was unheard of. And WhatsApp was so expensive that they questioned Zuck's sanity. You mention two strategic enablers that made these unusual acquisitions seem obvious to FB leadership. So were those two not good calls?
  - tchalla 2mo ago
    The parent comment is referring to a “VPN” installed by Facebook on users phone that surreptitiously sent telemetry data to Facebook. No one else had that information.
    - alex1138 2mo ago
      And also even if they never had Onavo you have Zuck furiously backpedaling in an email about I'm not saaaaaaaying we should acquire IG to wipe them out from the landscape of competition, but........ And then you have the WA founder (Acton) famously saying delete facebook Some acquisitions make the product better or are altruistic. Zuck's war chest isn't one of them

I don't like Zuckerberg at all but Instagram and WhatsApp purchases were _very_ good calls

by Kevcmk 2mo ago

I don't like Zuckerberg at all but Instagram and WhatsApp purchases were _very_ good calls

edu 2mo ago

Indeed they were. Also, it’s interesting to note that in both cases they where two very lean companies (Instagram had 13 employees and WhatsApp had 55) with pretty a pretty large and engaged user base (30 million for Insta and 450 million for WhatsApp)

mattoxic 2mo ago
Yeah, and he threw a huge bunch of cash to acquire them. pretty easy to acquire. Harder to build. He got lucky with facebook because myspace sucked. Good timing.
- arikrahman 2mo ago
  I always hear reverence around Myspace. Is it really rose-tinted nostalgia? It seemed like a cool core product.
  - AlecSchueler 2mo ago
    MySpace gave users a lot of freedom. That was great in certain scenarios but at it got bigger it meant there was just more noise and the general atmosphere was very messy for lack of a better word. Facebook was very clean by comparison and it felt natural to connect to people who couldn't handle MySpace, people in your family or at work etc. Then eventually it got big enough through that that it just became the place to connect with your cool friends too because "everyone" was there. So yeah, it's kinda mixed. The core product was cool but it wasn't as suitable for as a replacement for the phone book in the way Facebook was.
    - alex1138 2mo ago
      Yes and then Facebook did everything they could to subvert granular privacy controls (Myspace was decent, it had a wall but that was about it) which is of paramount importance for people with real safety issues FB would have been invented. It's just another layer of authentication anyway. Myspace was an interesting experiment for its time ...Comparisons of Tom to Zuck are rife I'm aware but somehow Myspace isn't known for "they trust me, dumb fucks"
  - cookiengineer 2mo ago
    ...but most of all, Samy is my hero!

eloisant 2mo ago

They spied on their mobile users with the Facebook app to detect Instagram and WhatsApp growth early

apsurd 2mo ago
corporate espionage at global scale to get ahead of existential threats is some pretty insightful leadership, it’s all a matter of what team you’re rooting for.
dingaling 2mo ago
By the time FB bought WhatsApp it had nearly a billion users. No need for technology conspiracy nonsense.
- 6902bb8a-5cea 2mo ago
  I guess it's hard to say how much them monitoring their (potential) competitors influenced their decisions but it's definitely _not_ conspiracy nonsense and pretty well documented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47281906 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47281906

kombine 2mo ago

As another commenter said that he acquired both with the money made on Facebook, they didn't originate within the company.

bayarearefugee 2mo ago

Sure, they worked out pretty well, but those were 12 and 14 years ago at this point, and aren't the only calls Facebook has made over the years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Meta_Platforms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio... IMO the actual prescient call he made early on is to hang on to 60% of the total voting power of the company. I have to imagine there are several points where he'd have been pushed out quite a while ago if he hadn't have done that.

earthnail 2mo ago
But if you take the same perspective as a VC: 95% of your bets can fail if the other 5% are spectacular. He made spectacular bets with Instagram and WhatsApp. Most CEOs don’t make spectacular bets because their business doesn’t allow it, meaning the VC analogy doesn’t hold for them.
- fsuts 2mo ago
  Hasn’t Meta failed to monetise WhatsApp? So it may be popular but they have ultimately failed commercially so far. They just bought an Indian startup and immediately put the founder in charge of WhatsApp. Only this week they announced WhatsApp would allow usernames rather than rely on phone numbers. All the other competitors apps (signal,telegram etc) did this years ago.
  - owebmaster 2mo ago
    Whatsapp is by far meta biggest potential. If they could turn it into a superApp like WeChat they would make a lot of money but only if that don't destroy the app.
- fsuts 2mo ago
  Think that means 95% of bets over a small period of time? (A single fund within the VC) as opposed to the whole VC since inception. And so not comparable. VC investing is also a tax write off for rich investors which is offset against their gains elsewhere, wasted company money is a loss for the share buyer.

lenkite 2mo ago

> Instagram and WhatsApp purchases were _very_ good calls Elementary call when you have the data no-one else has thanks to illicit means and explicitly decided on a buy or bury strategy

pavlov 2mo ago
A very HN comment... At the time, almost nobody felt spending billions acquiring these companies was "elementary". Instagram was bought so early that spending a billion on a startup was unheard of. And WhatsApp was so expensive that they questioned Zuck's sanity. You mention two strategic enablers that made these unusual acquisitions seem obvious to FB leadership. So were those two not good calls?
- tchalla 2mo ago
  The parent comment is referring to a “VPN” installed by Facebook on users phone that surreptitiously sent telemetry data to Facebook. No one else had that information.
  - alex1138 2mo ago
    And also even if they never had Onavo you have Zuck furiously backpedaling in an email about I'm not saaaaaaaying we should acquire IG to wipe them out from the landscape of competition, but........ And then you have the WA founder (Acton) famously saying delete facebook Some acquisitions make the product better or are altruistic. Zuck's war chest isn't one of them