Meta has a lot at stake in the current FTC trial against him. In theory, a negative verdict could lead to a rupture of a business. But CEO Mark Zuckerberg faced an even greater existential threat. In 2006, his investors and even his employees put him pressure to sell his two -year startup for a quick gain. Facebook was always a college social network and several companies were interested in buying it. The most serious offer came from Yahoo, which offered a superb billion dollars. Zuckerberg, however, thought he could make the business something that was worth much more. The pressure was enormous, and at some point, he was blinking, being in principle to sell. But immediately after that, a drop in Yahoo stock led its leader at the time, Terry Semel, to request a price adjustment. Zuckerberg took the opportunity to close the negotiations; Facebook would stay in his hands.
“It was by far the most stressful period of my life,” said Zuckerberg for years later. It is therefore ironic to observe, through the testimony of this trial, how he treated two other sets of founders in situations very similar to him – but which he managed to buy.
The NUB of the current FTC trial seems to depend on the way in which the judge of the American district court James Boasberg will define the Meta market – whether limited to social media or, as Meta the fact, the broader “entertainment”. But a large part of early testimony has exhumed the details of the successful pursuit of Zuckerberg of Instagram and WhatsApp – two companies which, according to the government, are now part of the illegal monopolistic hold of Meta on social networks. (The trial also invoked the case of SNAP, which resisted the $ 6 billion offer in Zuckerberg and had to face Facebook’s copy.) Aside from legality, the way these companies were upset by a Zuckerberg offer made the first days of this case a dramatic and instructive study of the dynamics of acquisition between small and large companies.
Although almost all of these stories have been covered for a long time over the years, I have documented them quite deep in my own 2020 account Facebook: interior history– It was striking to see the directors of leaders testifying under the oath of what happened. Hey, my sources were pretty good, but I couldn’t swear them!
In their testimony, the stars Zuckerberg and the Instagram co -founder Kevin Systerom agreed on facts, but their interpretations were Mars and Venus. In 2012, Instagram was about to close an investment round of $ 500 million, while suddenly the small business ended up in game, with Facebook in Hot Pursuit. In an email at the time, the Facebook financial director asked Zuckerberg if his goal was to “neutralize a potential competitor”. The answer was affirmative. It was not the way he launched him to Systrom and to the co -founder Mike Krieger. Zuckerberg has promised the co -founders that they would control Instagram and could make it grow. They would have the best of both worlds – independence and huge Facebook resources. Oh, the 1 billion Facebook dollars offer was double the company’s assessment in the financing round that it was about to close.
Everything worked very well for a few years, but Zuckerberg began to deny the resources on Instagram, which his co -founders had integrated into a mastodon. Systerom testified that Zuckerberg seemed envious of the success and the cultural currency of Instagram, say that His boss “believed that we were harmful to Facebook’s growth”. The Zuckerberg Snubs finally led the founders of Instagram to leave in 2018. At that time, Instagram was probably worth 100 times the purchase price of Zuckerberg. The loot of Systrom and Krieger, although considerable, did not reflect the fantastic value they had built for Facebook.
