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Letters & Theses
Banking & TechnologyFounder letter

Mark Zuckerberg's 2021 founder's letter on becoming Meta

Written by
Mark Zuckerberg
Organisation
Meta Platforms
Published
28 Oct 2021
Sector
Social media and technology

Read the original at about.fb.com (opens in a new tab)

About this letter

Mark Zuckerberg, who started Facebook, published this founder's letter on 28 October 2021, as the company announced that it would now be called Meta. Rather than a report to shareholders, it is a short essay explaining why a company then seen as a social media business was recasting its identity around the metaverse.

Zuckerberg traces how online communication moved from typed text to photos and video, then describes the more immersive internet he expects next and the devices people might use to reach it. He argues the metaverse will not be built by any one company, calls for privacy, safety, open standards and interoperability from the start, and admits the previous five years had been humbling. He sets a hope that within a decade it could reach a billion people, revisits a line from his original founder's letter, and explains that the word meta comes from the Greek for beyond.

Why read it

A case study in a founder rebranding a giant company around an unproven long-term bet; read it beside later results to judge strategy and capital allocation.

What to notice

  1. 1

    Zuckerberg presents the metaverse as the platform after mobile, defined by a sense of being present with others.

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Companies discussed

  • Meta Platforms (META)

Topics

  • strategy
  • technology shifts
  • founder control
  • business model
Read the original at about.fb.com (opens in a new tab)

L3VLUP does not host this document. It belongs to Meta Platforms; the notes above are L3VLUP’s reading of it.

The same argument, elsewhere