alt Hacker NewsI've always felt that Mark Zuckerberg got lucky with Facebook and that he has no real lasting talent as a technologist or visionary. He seems to attempt to chase the latest "it" thing and has very few original ideas that actual stick long-term. He's quite the charlatan.
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He built a hell of a machine for buying political/cultural influence or filling your sales funnel, no matter the dubiousness of your product, with pinpoint precision. Doing that takes vision and talent, and extremely flexible ethics.
I've never seen him saying anything particularly smart or insightful. My impression is that he has moderately above average intelligence and entrepreneurship. If he wasn't at the right place at the right time, he would be yet another founder of a random startup.
That becomes more clear by the day.
Zuck has no insight. His sole ambition is to be rich and taken seriously.
I dunno he made a few very wise purchases (Instagram, WhatsApp). But yeah he hasn't had a single first party hit apart from Facebook, and the Metaverse is 100% emperor's new clothes. Even worse than Alexa's "people will buy things through a janky voice interface right"?
In what way has he claimed special expertise to deceive others for financial gain, as befitting the word charlatan? He is the CEO of Facebook and we're told to not like Facebook, but when has he claimed special expertise to deceive others for financial gain? He's one of the richest people in the world and has been using that money to do things he wants to do. I don't think he's ever claimed to eg be a PhD AI researcher and for people to give him money because of a made up claim like that. People give Facebook money and it ends up in his pockets and he does things with that.
Thought the same thing even before I saw your comment!
Same for Elon and Paypal
This is basically the case with most of the tech billionaires. They have one, maybe two real successes and it's mostly inertia after that.
While I know criticizing Meta is popular, I'm not sure I'd agree with above.
Social networks didn't really exist before The Facebook. Understanding the potential market that could be created and turning down a $1B acquisition from Yahoo 20-years ago, at the time, seemed insane.
Also making the shift to mobile, when people thought that would be the death of FB is a remarkable story.
Identifying to acquire WhatsApp & Instagram, both laughed at when bought for the acquisition price at that time, now massive businesses for Meta (and their market cap value).
Meta AI glasses are surprisingly popular and growing. And more...
Note: I have no affiliation with Meta (not now or in the past)
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EDIT: Many people I see underestimate what it takes to build a business. It is the classic “I could have built that in a weekend” critique. Maybe, but the product is only like 10% of the problem. 90% of the work (and hard part) is execution.