In his first interview since Facebook’s dreadful IPO, Mark
Zuckerberg offers a new, mobile-heavy vision. Daily Beast’s Alex Klein reports: Mark Zuckerberg took the stage Tuesday afternoon at
TechCrunch Disrupt, San Francisco’s annual and much-buzzed digital pow-wow, to
give his first interview since his company’s disastrous IPO. With Facebook now
trading at about half its IPO price, the young CEO had a lot to answer for. But
Zuck looked good: chuckling, energetic, and (dare we say it) a little buffer
than usual. In a particularly metaphorical moment, TechCrunch CEO Michael
Arrington (an old friend) asked the world’s richest 28-year-old if he still
codes—and if his code ever breaks. “Everything I do breaks,” joked Zuckerberg.
“But we fix it quickly.” The audience burst into applause.
When asked flat-out if the company’s market woes were
dashing employee morale, Zuckerberg was more circumspect. “It doesn’t help,” he
said. “But what really motivates people at Facebook is building stuff that
they’re proud of.” He was also quick to point out that Facebook compensates its
employees by translating a fixed cash value into shares. That means, “if the
shares are undervalued, you get more,” he said. “I think it’s a great time for
people to join. And stay, and double down.” Nodding, and gesturing to the
audience, Arrington said, “They liked that answer.”
Whether the markets will, when they open tomorrow morning,
remains to be seen....
No comments:
Post a Comment