David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…So I think you foreshadowed this a little bit but like the strategy of Facebook acquiring the preeminent VR company and paying a lot for that, I think it’s great. So far, if we’re at the date of acquisition I’m like, this should be an A. I really feel this makes lots of sense to me, Facebook needs to be here. I think in the last couple of years of where it’s ended up, I’m going to go with a C for this acquisition with as we’ve said before a high level of variance. So when we revisit this acquisition in years to come, very open to changing that and I think it’s very likely it will be change. But like, holy crap, they bought Oculus and then a year later, a far superior piece of technology comes out and it didn’t seem that hard for someone else to pounce on it and especially someone that was so interested in Oculus in its development. Then on top of that all, I really disagree with Facebook integrating VR tighter. I think they’re potentially at risk of not making sure that they understand that Facebook needs to be a horizontal platform that doesn’t prioritize anything on Oculus. People that work at Oculus should view themselves as working on a thing that makes sure Facebook doesn’t get unseated in the future but ultimately Facebook is the business, like they should look at their competition as Snapchat even though they work at Oculus. Totally agree. I think you’ve nailed it on this one. I’m tempted to quote Tom Alberg from our Amazon IPO episode himself quoting Jeff which is such a great line in tech that Jeff Bezos is saying that it’s okay to fail at things; it’s not okay not to try. So I want to give Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg a ton of credit for trying here and seeing the potential in VR as a future medium and pouncing on it early. On the other hand, like he pounced really early and execution has not been great since then. So for the same reasons as you, Ben, I’m going with a C on this one so far. Maybe there’s an abstraction here where we need to say like huh, it turns out if you’re a horizontal that needs to have scale and reach every internet connected user in the world, then maybe you don’t own the hardware platform and like a risk of your business of reaching everyone is that you don’t necessarily own that direct customer relationship. And that just has to be okay, like that just has to be baked into these mega horizontal scale models. Because there’s no way, like could Facebook have its cake and eat it too? Is there a world where the technology behind Oculus was so breakthrough or anything that they acquire is so breakthrough that it is the only hardware platform and then they reach everyone and get to own the hardware? I just don’t see a world where that’s possible.…

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