Meta Is Making A Massive Bet On The Metaverse
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Meta: From A Few Entrepreneurs In A Dorm Room To The Apollo Program Or Bust
Silicon Valley’s apocryphal founding story is two entrepreneurs in a garage. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built the Apple I out of their garage, selling the product without a monitor, keyboard, or casing in 1976. Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook with a few of his friends out of his college dorm room in 2004. In 2022 that same Mark Zuckerberg, now the CEO of Meta, is employing approximately 17,000 people and is spending more than $15.5 billion annually in a brazen attempt to outflank his Silicon Valley competitors Apple and Google and create the next major computing platform. Over the next ten years Meta is planning on spending as much as the Apollo Program to actualize their vision of the metaverse. This remarkable relationship was noted by Chamath Palihapitiya, the Founder and CEO of Social Capital in episode 102 of the All In Podcast.
Is Meta’s massive bet on the metaverse strategic gamesmanship or a gross misstep? Well, that depends on how imminent and how large the metaverse opportunity is. Last month Meta announced a 13% reduction in force, as they focus on a few high priority projects, including AI, ads, and their metaverse vision. There is a fair chance, though, that Meta and other major technology platforms missed the forerunner to the metaverse that has been hiding in plain sight within the worlds of gaming and gamers.
