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And in the last 4.5y it's up 70% while the S&P500 is up 51% in the same time period, not quite as exciting eh?
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Beating the index by 40% after 2 decades as a company? Yeah, still good.
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Well we just went from "6x" to "40%" and "good" so, yeah... not quite as exciting.
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Some people in tech want companies to innovate and take risks by spending on R&D instead of just funneling it back to investors or safer existing markets, others will complain that they took those risks and failed despite still running profitable businesses.
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meta is spending an absolute boat load on R&D and taking massive risks. It seems like your actual position is “company bad”
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I'm in the former group where I personally support Meta taking risks on big ideas while still being profitable. Just like SpaceX and others. I don't blame Mark for getting excited about AR which is very likely a big market in the future, the gamble on the tech being affordable enough was just far too early for the scale of investment. Their investments there might still pay off as it gets cheaper.
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Astonishingly. I just find it funny that one person can be responsible for wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and still keep their job.
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Because he made many more billions... Not sure why this is difficult to understand though. It's a simple subtraction.
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Easy: be responsible at the same time for tens of billions in upside.

Post VR it is not like investors don’t know what this is. Meta bets and bets big.

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I hate the guy personally, but still understand that at that scale, if the leader is so conservative that s/he never risks losing, they are already losing. Like airline manufacturers never investing in jets because early ones weren't safe.

MSFT's bumbling idiot Ballmer Threw away at least a billion on one of the failed early versions of the Surface, but it went on to be profitable (or at least successful with customers) later. They also burned billion(s) acquiring skype, only to switch to Teams. Say what you want about their terrible products, but somehow they are still successful businesses.

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