Ego clash as Insta founder says Zuck was little help

#312: A billionaire dickfest was on full show as the two founders' recollections clashed over the landmark deal that shifted social forever...

Silicon Valley’s billionaire egos went on show yesterday as Instagram’s founder Kevin Systrom tweaked Meta suggesting it would be nothing without his ingenuity.

He said Meta’s $1 billion acquisition was the deal of the century, and armies of Meta staff would seek him out to tell him that Facebook was lost without it.

Valley lore is that Mark Zuckerberg was a visionary to do the deal, and his giant brain scaled it past a billion users.

Systrom shared a different view in court yesterday.

Meta starved him of resources and Insta’s far superior product saved Facebook - which was failing - from irrelevance, tearing at Zuck’ soul.

Systrom stayed six years with Meta after the sale, and he told the court he witnessed Zuck becoming emotionally torn by Insta’s growth as Facebook plateaued.

“My experience of him is that he was always very happy to have Instagram in the family,” Systrom testified.

“But also, I think as the founder of Facebook, he felt a lot of emotion around which one was better. There were real human emotional things going on there.

“Depending on the temperature of that feeling, we would get more investment or less.”

Let’s get to it...