2012-2018 Planting the Seeds
Excluding Netflix, from 2012 when Facebook went public to 2014 when it acquired Oculus for $2 billion, Facebook was the FAANG giant with the largest and fastest market value growth in these three years, with an increase of over 110%. However, Zuckerberg remained the most anxious CEO among the tech giants. The reliance on advertising revenue structure, the diminishing effectiveness of free games, and the dependence on the iOS and Android ecosystems all contributed to Zuckerberg's unprecedented obsession with "entry points". With mobile advertising starting to grow rapidly in 2013, using cash on hand to buy computing entry points became a necessity. In retrospect, the $2 billion might have been a placebo for Zuckerberg's anxiety, but at the time, it was the most valuable painkiller for Facebook as a whole.
Over the years, despite Quest being criticized for its high price leading to poor shipments and a weak developer ecosystem affecting active users, this couldn't shake Zuckerberg's persistence in entry points. Behind the parasitic business was the art of managing shareholder expectations. On one side was the Oculus department constantly monitoring internal deployment data, and on the other was the M&A department always ready to acquire external products. Revitalizing the advertising business could continue to fund the unprofitable hardware business. The high growth in stock price came partly from the 61% compound annual growth rate of mobile advertising over six years, and partly from the patience in anticipating the arrival of the hardware entry point singularity.
