My 2 cents on the Zuck-Metaverse bet: I would think many times before betting against Zuck. Even with his iffy moral compass, he is one of the great founders of our generation.

Having said that, history tells us that truly disruptive innovation rarely comes out of big corps. Most big companies operate under the classic Innovators Dilemma. Creating absolutely new markets requires entrepreneurial passion, backed by a different set of incentives. Big corp. teams are typically not set up for it.

Of course, we have the whole Steve Jobs-iPod/iPhone counter-example, but that was driven by a cathartic chapter in his life (getting kicked out of Apple, restarting from scratch with NeXT & Pixar). In a way, that fueled Jobs with the hunger & passion of a noob founder.

Am not seeing those Jobs 2.0-type motivations & incentives with Zuck. His bet seems driven by a commercial need to pivot the company into the next post-FB/ post-IG era. Combine that with all the big corp baggage & public markets pressure, and it’s hard to build in a truly startup way.

Personally, like with all new technologies & markets (eg. Web 3), I believe there is definitely a kernel of truth (& opportunity) in Metaverse. I would bet a ‘2004-Zuck’ like 0-to-1 founder is more likely to crack it than a Big Tech like Meta. In my mind, the Eigen Question for this whole episode is – can Zuck pull off a Jobs 2.0 act with Metaverse? It has been done only once before in Consumer Internet (as far as I can remember). Would you bet on it?