The meta has a lot to the rate in the current FTC lawsuit against this. Theoretically, a negative verdict can cause the company’s breakdown. But the general director of Mark Zuckerberg once met an even greater existential threat. In 2006, his investors, and even his employees, pressed him for the sale of their two -year startup for a quick payment. Facebook was still a social network, and several companies were interested in buying it. The most earnest offer comes from Yahoo, which offered a stunning $ 1 billion. Zuckerberg, however, believed that he could develop the company in something much more. The pressure was huge and blinked, agreeing to sell. But immediately afterwards, the decrease in Yahoo’s action led his leader, Terry Semel to ask for prices. Zuckerberg used the possibility of closing negotiations; Facebook will remain in his hands.
“It was by far the most stressful time in my life,” Zuckerberg told me later. Therefore, it is irony to observe, through the testimony of this process, how he treated two other sets of founders in very similar situations to him – but which he successfully bought.
Nub of the current FTC process seems to depend on how the US District Judge James Boasberg will define the meta market – whether it is constrained to social media, or, as Meta claims, this is a wider field of “entertainment”. But a significant part of the early testimonies was exhumed by the details of the successful Zuckerberg Striving for Instagram and WhatsApp – two companies that, according to the government, are currently part of the illegal monopolistic embrace of the meta meta in social media. (The trial also referred to the case of SNAP, which was based on the Zuckerberg offer of $ 6 billion and had to deal with Facebook copying its products.) The appropriate rights, the way these companies were raised by the Zuckerberg offer, did the first few days of this dramatic case and an instructive examination of acquisition dynamics between petite and huge business.
Although almost all these narratives were discussed in detail over the years – I documented them quite accurately on my 2020 account Facebook: The Inside Story– It was striking to see how the directors testified under oath what happened. Hey, my sources were quite good, but I couldn’t swear them!
In his testimonies Star Witnesses Zuckerberg and co -founder on Instagram Kevin Systrom agreed to facts, but their interpretations were Mars and Venus. In 2012, Instagram was about to finish an investment round worth USD 500 million, when a petite company suddenly found itself in the game, with Facebook in Scorching Pursuit. In E -Mail CFO Facebook asked Zuckerberg if his goal was to “neutralize a potential competitor.” The answer was affirmative. This is not the way Systrom and co -founder Mike Krieger threw him. Zuckerberg promised co -founders that they would control Instagram and could develop it. They would have the best of both worlds – independence and huge Facebook resources. Oh, and Facebook’s offer in the amount of $ 1 billion was twice as high as the company in the financing round, which was to be closed.
Everything worked great for several years, but then Zuckerberg began to refuse resources to Instagram, which his co -founders built into the Yuggernaut. Systrom testified that Zuckerberg seemed jealous of Instagram’s success and cultural currency, Saying this His boss “believed that we were hurting Facebook.” Snubs Zuckerberg finally led the founders of Instagram to leave in 2018. Until then, Instagram was probably worth 100 times the purchase price of Zuckerberg. Systrom and Krieger, although significant, did not reflect the fantastic value they built for Facebook.