Live data from Hacker News

The Maturation of Mark Zuckerberg

nymag.com

21–30 of 78 posts

Re: The Maturation of Mark Zuckerberg

#21
post #12

The crazy thing to me is how well suited people of Zuck's age group are to running companies suited to web technology. A more "mature" CEO would not have the right mindset to steer something as pliable as a web app into a product that keeps up with the non-stop competition for users' attention. If something cooler comes around the corner and enough people latch onto it, you're fucked. Zuck gets this because he probab…

> So the question then becomes: What happens when Zuck is too mature to see what's coming next? He can buy/hire people who are good at that.

But will he listen to them? What if "they" can't even agree amongst themselves? How would he decide?

Re: The Maturation of Mark Zuckerberg

#22
post #3

"It is a huge sum, even in context. Zuckerberg’s impending fortune is more money than Wal-Mart’s 10,000-plus stores made last year." This line is a little disingenuous. It's more money than Wal-Mart "earned" last year, not "made". Wal-Mart earned ~$15B on revenues of $447B in 2011. Still, sort of surprising given the company has annual revenues higher than many countries' GDPs...

Considering the author of the story is permanently banned from Wall Street for fraud, it does not surprise me he is loose with the numbers. I would also question the rest of the analysis as well.

Interesting. Context via Wikipedia:

>>Henry Blodget (born 1966) is an American former equity research analyst, currently banned from the securities industry, who was senior Internet analyst for CIBC Oppenheimer during the dot-com bubble and the head of the global Internet research team at Merrill Lynch. Blodget is now the editor and CEO of The Business Insider, a business news and analysis site, and a host of Yahoo Daily Ticker, a finance show on Yahoo.

>>Blodget received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University and began his career as a freelance journalist and was a proofreader for Harper's Magazine. In 1994, Blodget joined the corporate finance training program at Prudential Securities, and, two years later, moved to Oppenheimer & Co. in equity research. In October 1998, he predicted that Amazon.com's stock price would hit a pre-split price of $400 (which it did a month later, gaining 128%).

>>This call received significant media attention, and, two months later, he accepted a position at Merrill Lynch. In early 2000, days before the dot-com bubble burst, Blodget personally invested $700,000 in tech stocks, only to lose most of it in the years that followed. In 2001, he accepted a buyout offer from Merrill Lynch and left the firm.

>>In 2002, then New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, published Merrill Lynch e-mails in which Blodget gave assessments about stocks which conflicted with what was publicly published. In 2003, he was charged with civil securities fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He agreed to a permanent ban from the securities industry and paid a $2 million fine plus a $2 million disgorgement."

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Blodget

Re: The Maturation of Mark Zuckerberg

#23
post #12

The crazy thing to me is how well suited people of Zuck's age group are to running companies suited to web technology. A more "mature" CEO would not have the right mindset to steer something as pliable as a web app into a product that keeps up with the non-stop competition for users' attention. If something cooler comes around the corner and enough people latch onto it, you're fucked. Zuck gets this because he probab…

> So the question then becomes: What happens when Zuck is too mature to see what's coming next? He can buy/hire people who are good at that.

[deleted]

Re: The Maturation of Mark Zuckerberg

#24
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not at all worried about Facebook failing. I'm worried about them succeeding beyond all expectations.

You shouldn't be worried about either. Smoke and mirrors are always in stock.

Not the stock I'm concerned with. It's the fact that 1 in 8 people in the world now use Facebook monthly. When that becomes 1/3 or 1/2, what happens? A successful IPO can make that happen.

Re: The Maturation of Mark Zuckerberg

#25

The crazy thing to me is how well suited people of Zuck's age group are to running companies suited to web technology. A more "mature" CEO would not have the right mindset to steer something as pliable as a web app into a product that keeps up with the non-stop competition for users' attention. If something cooler comes around the corner and enough people latch onto it, you're fucked. Zuck gets this because he probab…

Age group is not the determining factor there.

Re: The Maturation of Mark Zuckerberg

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the author of the story is permanently banned from Wall Street for fraud, it does not surprise me he is loose with the numbers. I would also question the rest of the analysis as well.

Interesting. Context via Wikipedia: >>Henry Blodget (born 1966) is an American former equity research analyst, currently banned from the securities industry, who was senior Internet analyst for CIBC Oppenheimer during the dot-com bubble and the head of the global Internet research team at Merrill Lynch. Blodget is now the editor and CEO of The Business Insider, a business news and analysis site, and a host of Yahoo D…

This is what made me spit out my drink at the top of page 2

  But that crash was a product of investors’ and analysts’ overexuberance (sorry!), 
  not evidence of a fundamental flaw in the tech industry’s start-up ecosystem.

Re: The Maturation of Mark Zuckerberg

#27
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the question then becomes: What happens when Zuck is too mature to see what's coming next? He can buy/hire people who are good at that.

But will he listen to them? What if "they" can't even agree amongst themselves? How would he decide?

A heavy theme of the article is how good Zuck is at building a suitable management team. He'll have to pick a Tim Cook someday.

Re: The Maturation of Mark Zuckerberg

#28
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the question then becomes: What happens when Zuck is too mature to see what's coming next? He can buy/hire people who are good at that.

But will he listen to them? What if "they" can't even agree amongst themselves? How would he decide?

[deleted]
Post reply on HN