David Rosenthal: prediction

Transcript context

…But it’s a 1% tax. It’s generous to frame it off of market cap. You probably should frame it off of revenue. But still a 1% tax off of your entire enterprise value every year? Nah. I think there is also potentially a third way to frame it. It is funny, I think you put it in the emotional lens. I actually think less emotional but more upside-oriented of Facebook did have the taste of being a platform for those couple of years there from 2007 to (call it) 2010–2011. If they own the next platform, not only will they do everything that you’re just talking about of like, oh they’ll have an iPhone-sized business because if it turns in to be glasses and Reality Labs, they’re going to be selling the hardware and maybe they can make that profitable like the iPhone is profitable, et cetera. Then there’s also your point number two, which is this is a defensive play. Our core business right now is at risk because it’s built on somebody else’s platform, and Mark made the comment on stage with us that they’ve run the analysis. They think they could be twice as profitable in their core media products if they were on their own platform. Sure, great. But then, there’s the big, big play is the third part of, well what if we actually built a platform again where we have millions of developers who are developing on us, and we are participating in their business in the way that we used to participate when they were developing on us in the past? That’s an even bigger play. And to underscore your point, David, just a few weeks before we recorded this episode, Meta held a multi-hour keynote at Connect in September 2024. Of those multiple hours, zero minutes were dedicated to their core products of social media apps, their $100 billion business of selling advertisements on these social media products. At least with developers, it’s not about any of that at all. Literally the entire keynote.…

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