Mark Zuckerberg's Midlife Crisis
New name, new look from the Facebook founder.
The midlife crisis happens to people. After almost two decades, things begin to get predictable. Successful, but also stale. Maybe a bit boring.
So the time comes to spice it up. If it were you, you might buy a fancy car, go crazy for a new designer, or take the leap with a bold startup (that writes professional resumes for free).
When you’re Mark Zuckerberg, running the world’s 7th most valuable company, you think on a bigger scale.
Since Facebook touched a $1 trillion valuation this summer, he’s shown the warning signs of the midlife crisis: an itch for adventure and change that needs to be scratched.
Now he’s gone and done it. Changed his company’s name to Meta. New logo, new look, new colors. It’s all about the metaverse now.
As any parent during this pandemic will tell you, kids are already living in the metaverse. During lockdowns and social distancing, kids have been hanging out together in the infinite online worlds of Roblox and Minecraft, and having a ball. So there is some reality to his plans for virtual universes.
It sure beats the boring parts of the job: the congressional hearings, the steady abuse, being the punching bag and the punchline for everyone’s jokes. So he’s trying to relive the fun of his college days - the magic of creating FaceMash in his Harvard dorm room, playing opposite Justin Timberlake in that movie, and scheming to get out from under the Winklevoss twins. That was a lot more fun, and he’s recapturing some of his youth with this corporate equivalent of the news sports car and flashy new clothes.
Facebook’s founder isn’t the only one tired of his trillions. The Google guys got bored, too. Their grad-school algorithm turned out to be the most successful business model in the history of the world. The business is so good, in fact, that it has survived a number of bonehead moves that would’ve killed lesser companies, such as getting rid of managers, or never really understanding the need to field a sales team.
Rich, bored men who hit a certain age become rich, bored and dangerous.
And that’s how the 17-year itch strikes. Google, founded in 1998, was renamed Alphabet in 2015 (Facebook, started in 2004, was renamed this year.) The Google guys even included a little inside joke in the new name announcement that referenced a popular HBO comedy about Silicon Valley.
The itch continues. The Google founders squander a lot of cash. It’s jaw-dropping, really. They’ve got their money-making businesses, mostly in advertising, and then a collection of expensive hobbies that bring in just $800 million in revenue per year, and which collectively lose $5 billion per year.
Google’s clever CFO, Ruth Porat, imposed some discipline on the guys when she joined in 2015 and now breaks out this stuff as ‘Other Bets.’ If you’ve never heard of a business having a division called ‘Other’ or ‘Bets’, that’s because you’re not the type of trillionaire who can afford to lose $5 billion per year.
Having had their mid-life lark, we don’t hear much from the Google guys anymore. They’re too busy sneaking into New Zealand or sunbathing in Europe.
Which brings us back to Zuckerberg and his mid-life crisis. Things are good at Facebook. Too good, I guess. Annual revenues have zoomed past $100 billion for the first time, and profitability approaches $50 billion for a single year.
But in contrast to the Google guys, Mark Zuckerberg has pulled off some of the best business moves in history. Buying Instagram for $1 billion a decade ago - we all laughed at him for that one. What fool would spend a billion dollars on a company with twelve employees?
WhatsApp was pricier at $17 billion. Zuckerberg even suffered through criticism from the very gents he made filthy rich - just a few years after they’d been laid off. “Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him.”
Zuckerberg has the business vision, and the genius, and yet we find he’s in the same boat as the Google guys. Bored with improbable success, and tampering with it. Recapturing his youth with an ambition to be not just the greatest businessman of his time, but of all time.
Listening to wise men one day, Alexander the Great wept, asking, "Isn’t it sad that the number of worlds is infinite, and I have not yet conquered a single one?"
Seeking a dramatic new challenge in the infinite worlds of the metaverse, will Mark Zuckerberg conquer them all?
Follow me on twitter: @cenedella
Your latest article’s point? Seek more when you reach the mid-life crises in pursuit of greater financial riches? True, if you agree that trading-in your soul, losing your morality, and becoming ethically bankrupt for billions is a measure of success.
I’m 53, have two children, my loving wife, and work tirelessly as a healthcare provider during the pandemic. In 20+ years I have yet to hear a single dying patient wish they had made more money or conquered new financial thresholds. They all wish they had more time. Time with their kids, time with their spouses, time with friends and family.
I go home at night and sleep well because I know I make a difference on a personal level without bearing personal profit in mind. I measure success by how many lives I’ve saved, how many people get to go home and hug their loved ones, or how much more time we give back to people to make their own positive difference for the people around them.
How about you Marc? Do you sleep well at night?
Zuckerberg is clearly on the spectrum, so his journey to create a world of his own makes perfect sense. Elon claims to be on the spectrum, but I think he is much too funny and interesting for that claim to be true. In ten years, the entire Internet system will be augmented with a completely decentralized and far superior structure ...a place where Google has to rebuild from the ground up and where their value may be limited to research on the "old" Internet. No more .com, .net, .org, ,xyz. The HNS system creates an individual root for each name, eliminating the need for the what will soon to be thought of as a silly ICANN controlled extension to the right of the dot. A name like Nashville/ can be used as it's own domain name without an extension, but can also move itself to the right of the dot and create unlimited subdomains to the left of the dot. No need for Google to tell you where to find the best food in Nashville... go to restaurants.nashville, thaifood.nashville, fastfood.nashville, italian.nashville, in-n-out.nashville (one could only hope for that!), etc.. A complete internet can be built for every word in every language, emoji, or other recognized symbol. I guess MY midlife crisis has me fascinated with #HNS.