Facebook's Plan To Let Companies It Buys Live Independently is Over (techcrunch.com)

Jon Russell, writing for TechCrunch: Mark Zuckerberg was quick to realize that Facebook, the largest social network in the world, doesn't have a monopoly on all users nor can it bank on holding its position as top dog forever. Thus he instituted a policy of buying up promising rivals and integrating them into the Facebook 'group' in a strategy designed to be a win-win for all. But by leaving Facebook in abrupt fashion this week, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger -- the founders of Instagram -- have shown that the social network's vision of letting acquired businesses operate independently simply isn't feasible. [...] The original idea is a best-of-both-worlds approach: a company's finances are infinitely secured and it can grow as needed inside the Facebook 'family,' with access to resources like engineering, marketing, admin, etc. That was also the plan for WhatsApp, but founding pair Jan Koum and Brian Acton managed four and three and a half years, respectively, at Facebook following their $19 billion acquisition in 2014. VR firm Oculus, another billion-dollar purchase, lost co-founders Palmer Lucky (political scandal) and Brendan Iribe (reshuffled) three years after its deal.

Comments

Re:Yep, ridiculous model.

[DontBeAMoran]

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks

Because when I think win-win for all

[rsilvergun]

I think of the dominate player in a space buying up all potential competition with little or no regulatory oversight.

3,000% growth is pretty good for a "failure"

[raymorris]

Buried in the 16th paragraph of the 17-paragraph story:

--
Instagram went from 30 million users pre-acquisition to over one billion today, while WhatsApp has more than 1.5 billion active users up from 450 million at the time of its deal.
--

Growth of over 3,000% and 300%. What a failure.
SIX YEARS later, one of the founders decided to retire.
  The entrepreneurial founder decided they wanted to be entrepeneur again, not run an established company.

The average tenure of a CEO is 8 years, so these leaders stuck around about as long as one would expect in any structure generally.

Having them go on to other things isn't necessarily a bad thing, either. Like these founders, I enjoy starting companies, and I'm starting to not suck at it. I don't enjoy running a company after it's stable, and I'm not good at that. The people who started a company from zero aren't always the best people to be running a stable company later. For one, their appetite for risk and excitement probably isn't a good match.