Its a powerplay. If he succeeds, he can solidify himself as a product genius, but in reality its just his money at play. Its easier to use money to take over something than to use money to invent something new.
How is that different from FB 1.0 or apple under jobs for that matter ?.
Money is always needed, but money alone is not enough. Every funded startup has some money, many have raised a ton of money only to fail badly.
Also it is not his money i.e. he is not selling/leveraging his
FB stock to invest personally. FB is investing shareholder money of which he only owns 16.7% .
Two very different companies and scenarios. Jobs as famous for cutting down >10 products product offerings down to 1-2 to refocus the company. His skillset was very much product strategy. He used money mostly for marketing and design. Two things Apple is very much well known for.
Facebook is known for copy, acquire, kill. They offer tons of money to try to acquire competitors. If they say no, then they hire tons to engineers to clone your product, then they kill your product.
Money is required by both, but arguably how both companies spend money is vastly different. Facebook very much uses money as a powerplay than Apple under Jobs.
> Money is always needed, but money alone is not enough. Every funded startup has some money, many have raised a ton of money only to fail badly.
This is such a generalized statement. It's not even worth commenting. Water is wet and the sky is blue.
> FB is investing shareholder money of which he only owns 16.7%
No. Its company assets. Although he owns 16.7% equity, he has >50% of the voting power. Meaning he has absolute authority to dictate how that money is spent. The other 80% can only sell their equity and this doesn't mean they get to take away 80% of the company assets.
Control doesn't make it his money. His money is only small fraction of the money being spent.
You made two statements that he is spending his money and spending money makes it not an achievement if it successful.
Neither of it is true , bootstrapping your way to success may make it even more impressive achievement, but success with or without money is difficult achievement that shouldn't be belittled.
Do read up on minority shareholder rights. Controlling Voting shares is not as the same hash rate in crypto, owning 51% doesn't give you effective control to do anything you want. There are restrictions on what you can and cannot do .
Minority shareholder rights arose because of past abuses, but the advantage is still very much to the majority shareholder. Your odds of winning a case against a majority shareholder is slim to none and would takes years to resolve in court. So my argument stands firmly. You have a overly simplistic and idealistic view of how equity works.
This argument is getting boring so I am going to stop here. If you still think you are right, then I wish you all the best in the real world.
