Ben Thompson: belief

Transcript context

…I think Meta is actually doing a fair number of things that they should now. The Apple changes were very devastating. They're structurally devastating, so they deserved a significant haircut on their valuation because of that, But I also think they were moat enhancing in the long run, where I question whether any other company is ever going to build a top of the funnel advertising product that will be competitive with Meta, assuming they can keep their audience. It appears that they've done a good job limiting the TikTok threat. TikTok's growth has flattened out over the last few years. I think they're actually in good shape. What I do worry about is this is a company that's always been growing. It's really hard for those companies to shift to more of a scarcity mindset. They laid off 11,000 people, which only brings them back like 9 months. They probably needed a lot smaller, but it's also very disruptive to company culture and morale. Do they still have the people that they need to pull that off? Those are probably some of the bigger questions. Obviously, any aggregator is dependent on having that audience, but I do think that the network effects of their products are still underrated. Everyone has in their head that they're shrinking. Actually, every product they have is still growing, which I think is under-appreciated. (1) I think they're probably on the right track. (2) I would acquire Shopify, and I would have the FTC just throw it to court when they sue to stop it. I think they need to close the loop on ecommerce and advertising. Again, I think that'd probably be bad, generally, but I think it'd be very good for Meta, so I would do that. As far as the metaverse stuff, I think it's a bad idea. It's very hard to talk about metaverse, because it's like, what are the prospects versus is it XYZ? I do think that it's not just a bad idea because it's taking so many resources and attention from Mark Zuckerberg. But also, I just don't think innovation is necessarily born of mass expenditures in large companies. We skipped over a period of experimentation and ecosystem-building that in the long run, perhaps, would be consolidated into a couple of companies, but instead of just one monolith trying to brute force this bit. The reality is Facebook is a services company. It's a social network, and everything about their strategy works against that. To succeed, they not only need to sell headsets, they need to sell headsets at sufficient scale and into friend networks such that people can social network on the headsets. Their place of winning is even further away than I think people think. I don't think strategically, it's the best thing for them to be doing. I've been pretty anti them from day one. They bought Oculus, I said it was bad. Again, it's very hard to distinguish between, well, what are the prospects of this versus zooming out? Or should they even be doing this? anti them from day one. They bought Oculus, I said it was bad. Again, it's very hard to distinguish between, well, what are the prospects of this versus zooming out? Or should they even be doing this? But I think the market is overly down in Meta, in part, because the branding was too successful. This is still a powerhouse in social media and advertising. The amount of money they're spending on the metaverse is all things considered not that much. You'll have a $5 billion profit a quarter. Yeah, I would double down on what they are. I would consolidate Meta, acquire Shopify, and spend three years fighting out in court, because I think the payoff would be worth it. All right. The second one, rather than going with another big American tech company, I want to go with one that's an Acquired fan favorite and one that's very close to home for you, TSMC. Any change to what TSMC is doing now if you became CEO tomorrow?…

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