Billionaire Zuckerberg says it’s not about money, but he is a consummate capitalist
A few years ago a very clever young man created a platform that changed the art of communication forever. Its impact is still reverberating, its democratisation of information leading to revolutions and toppling world leaders.
Its creator was a maverick and – like most mavericks – he was not immune to controversy. The beginnings of his empire were played out across the courts, with his financial backer questioning the very provenance of the venture.
That maverick was, of course, Johannes Gutenberg, who in 1439 invented the printing press, forever inking his name into the history books. The financial backer was Johann Fust, who invested 8,000 guilders in the project – a vast sum at the time. Not many people remember Fust today – after all, all he did was pay for the thing.
Almost 600 years later, Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg says he is on the cusp of a similar revolution.
“We often talk about inventions like the printing press”, he said in Facebook’s IPO filing. “They led to a complete transformation of many important parts of society. They gave more people a voice. They encouraged progress. They changed the way society was organized. They brought us closer together. Today, our society has reached another tipping point.”
The $5bn (£3.16bn) Facebook will (comfortably) raise in its IPO gives it a significant monetary advantage over Gutenberg’s enterprise. But that hasn’t stopped Zuckerberg adopting a similar attitude to his would-be investors.
When he was starting out at Facebook, Zuckerberg’s business cards read: “I’m the CEO, bitch”. It was a two fingered salute to the business world – he was a visionary, a digital pioneer, a programmer with a mind immeasurably superior to theirs, working on the cutting edge of communication. He was creating a new printing press, for God’s sake. He worked with businessmen – sometimes brilliantly – but only because he had to.
Yesterday Zuckerberg went one better. Standing atop his mountainous $28bn personal fortune – which will be crystalised by the flotation – he said money isn’t Facebook’s motivation. Two fingers up.
“We don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services. And we think this is a good way to build something. These days I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits.”
That’s a bit like splashing about in your own personal swimming pool filled with trifle and saying people should stop worrying about starvation. To say that profit isn’t a primary motivation for Facebook is more than a tad disingenuous. This is a company that has ruthlessly expanded, crushing native rivals like an invading weed choking the fragile native flora. Remember Bebo? MySpace? Now Facebook is reaping the rewards of that growth.
Zuckerberg isn’t just a petulant kid who made it big – nobody makes it to ninth place on the Forbes Rich List (based on his projected post-flotation wealth) without the goods to back it up. This is a 27-year-old who recently sat at the side of the President of the United States. In just eight years he has built Facebook from his Harvard dorm room to a company with 845m users making $1bn a year.
He shares a mindset with Apple founder Steve Jobs; another maverick who also swore by following the product, knowing the money would eventually find him. It’s now the biggest company in the world.
Moreover, the open letter is a statement of intent. Zuckerberg’s 28.4 per cent stake in Facebook gives him more than 50 per cent of voting rights. If he wants to pursue projects that might not initially appear to be in the interests of his fellow shareholders, that’s exactly what he’s going to do. He’s the CEO, bitch.
It’s also a pretty shrewd warning that Facebook won’t put its long term profitability on the line for a short term gain. The pressure to more aggressively exploit the gold-mine of personal information Facebook has gathered will be intense, with shareholders clamouring for a return on their investment. Zuckerberg, though, has been burnt over privacy in the past – he’s too smart to make the same mistakes twice.
Despite his apparent disdain for the business world, Zuckerberg is a great businessman. He is the envy of not only Silicon Valley but Wall Street. He is a sharp operator, barely putting a foot wrong in Facebook’s astonishing ascendancy. He is an inspiration for entrepreneurs. But to succeed, you have to play the game, just like Zuckerberg did. Then, one day, you might make enough profit to claim to be above it all.
Francis Bacon said Gutenberg’s printing press “changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world”. But without people like Johann Fust supplying the cash, Gutenberg wouldn’t even have been an afterthought in history’s blotting pad. Zuckerberg should always remember that.
Steve Dinneen is Deputy Lifestyle editor at Morning Wire and writer of the weekly Geek Speak column.