I agree with you on that for heavy majority of companies (esp. medical or self-driving car ones) "move fast and break things" is not a good idea at all. However, I cannot agree with the absolutist nature of your statement.
>that company is successful in spite of itself
That's a pretty strong opinion. Some would argue that FB is successful because of stuff like that.
A bit of a sidenote, but after all, I remember how badly Zuck was clowned everywhere (including by FB shareholders and people here on HN) immediately after the purchase of Instagram and WhatsApp. People were saying that FB is dying and Zuck is trying to buy companies that are hyped but irrelevant to the core business out of desperation. These days, it is a pretty universal sentiment that those acquisitions were some of the smartest purchase decisions he could have made at the time.
> A bit of a sidenote, but after all, I remember how badly Zuck was clowned everywhere (including by FB shareholders and people here on HN) immediately after the purchase of Instagram and WhatsApp. People were saying that FB is dying and Zuck is trying to buy companies that are hyped but irrelevant to the core business out of desperation.
Most of HN didn't have some insider information which Facebook did. This information was acquired by surreptitious data logging of a VPN "security" app [0]. This is the same app which was controversially packaged as a "research" app and then forced to take down from the App store [1].
How has the WhatsApp acquisition helped the company? I assume they harvest metadata for their social graphs but my Facebook feed is still as irrelevant to me now as it was five years ago.
>that company is successful in spite of itself
That's a pretty strong opinion. Some would argue that FB is successful because of stuff like that.
A bit of a sidenote, but after all, I remember how badly Zuck was clowned everywhere (including by FB shareholders and people here on HN) immediately after the purchase of Instagram and WhatsApp. People were saying that FB is dying and Zuck is trying to buy companies that are hyped but irrelevant to the core business out of desperation. These days, it is a pretty universal sentiment that those acquisitions were some of the smartest purchase decisions he could have made at the time.