Earlier today, I asked on twitter which of the big tech is most likely to have lower market cap in 10 years than it is today.
Perhaps predictably, ~54% people voted for FB.
Is the crowd exhibiting wisdom or too much first-order thinking?
2/ Let me make a case for both.
$FB's business model probably fails the Lindy test.
In 2012, it had zero revenue from mobile ads. IG was acquired in 2012 which also had zero revenue.
Of ~$80 Bn 2020 revenue of $FB, >90% comes from mobile ads. IG alone contributes ~$15 Bn.
3/ Think about the velocity of change for a second. The two things that make FB part of today's big tech club made zero revenue just 8 years back.
Here's the problem though. If the velocity of change remains true today, FB might have an issue.
4/ Thanks to regulatory scrutiny, today's or tomorrow's "IG" cannot be acquired.
What about the big blue?
$FB bulls get offended when someone says big blue might die soon since the data depicts a very different picture.
Big blue might not die anytime soon, but there's a but.
5/ Here's a simple question for you.
In 10 years, will the aggregate amount of time on big blue by North American consumers (whose ARPU is >5x than the rest of the world) be higher or lower than today?
There's a very good chance it will be lower.
6/ If big blue fails at some point, the same questions will haunt IG as well. It will be a vicious cycle looming over $FB if they fail to protect big blue.
If you want to get a high terminal multiple, you cannot have big questions looming large in the background.
7/ On top of it, think about the possibility of 8 years of Dems controlled House, Senate, and White House.
Needless to say, Zuck doesn't have too many friends in either side of the aisle, but that's emphatically true for Dems camp.
8/ So yes, I can see how the next decade can pose some seriously existential questions to $FB.
I am a $FB shareholder, so obviously I do find the other side of the coin more compelling.
Zuck knows the bear case inside out. He has chips on his shoulders.
9/ There's a reason AR/VR/Hardware has 6k employees at $FB vs 1k at IG.
There's a reason Zuck is pushing to go deep into IG Shopping, payments etc.
For all its success, $FB remains a very much work-in-progress when it comes to extending the S-curve.
10/ Zuck has to be tremendously focused to uproot the obsolescence risk.
This is why Zuck probably doesn't want to buyback shares even though $FB has >$50 Bn cash lying around.
Nobody's batting average is 100%. If he misses a major transition, he needs it to reinvent the co.
End/ Under no circumstances, Zuck will want to stop building.
If $FB continues to exist and Zuck is at the helm in 2040 or 2050, I won't be surprised if it becomes the largest market cap company in the world.
But before it gets there, Zuck needs to kill the bear.
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Circa 1920, my grandpa was born in rural Bangladesh. Of course, there was no Bangladesh back then. It was still part of the British Empire.
~30 years later, the land he was born became part of Pakistan. Two and half decades later, it became Bangladesh.
2/ Even though the tumultuous history of the land evolved, my illiterate farmer grandpa never moved from his village. He toiled long and hard throughout his life.
He died peacefully in 2000 in the very village he was born.
3/ I too was born in rural Bangladesh, but moved with my parents in the nearby city when I was still a toddler.
During my late-teens, I came to Dhaka, the Capital of Bangladesh. As a first gen college grad, Dhaka seemed somewhat foreign in the first few months.
If you are not American, chances are extremely high you probably yawn when a political leader who lost the election allege and claim the election was rigged.
2/ If Trump claiming election as fraud and inspiring supporters to protest lead to permanent ban on Twitter, what will happen to all those opposition leaders in all those countries?
And yes, those claims do lead to protest, to violence, and to many unfortunate deaths.
3/ Many such protests were indeed organized with the help of social media.
In many cases, those opposition claims are real as the incumbent autocratic may end up getting 80%+ votes by organizing a staged election.
Survivorship bias is real, but it is always humbling to look back and see how different revolutionary tech was perceived when they first came to the scene.
Let's look at telephones, cars, and social media.
2/ When Edison was working on the idea of telephone, he was trying to work out a way so that telegraph operators could talk to each other.
As telegraph operators were scattered all over the world, a telephone would be a great help for operators to coordinate with each other.
3/ What about ordinary people talking to each other?
"What are you smoking, Monsieur? Why would people from faraway places talk to each other? And do you know what it would cost you?"