Meta Performance Reviews, VR Update, Mark Rallies for Sam Lessin

Ahoy Metamates! 🚢 🏴‍☠️

🆕 Meta Performance Reviews Are Upon Us. Here’s what I’ve heard:

• High pressure for managers to downgrade this cycle

• PMs most vulnerable to cuts, especially post Google saga last week

• Reviews being treated like a slow layoff

• Managers who don’t aggressively calibrate may be on the chopping block themselves

TLDR: We’re back to pre-COVID Meta. Nature is healing 🍃🍃🍃.

In other news…

Not sure how your week went - but Mark Zukerberg & co had a last minute push to get Sam Lessin elected to the Harvard Board of Overseers. With 3000 votes needed to secure a nomination and basically just 3 days to go, all hands were on deck, including a personal appeal from Mark and Priscilla themselves:

If you happen to be a Harvard alum, I genuinely think Sam is worth voting for - more info here:https://www.samforoverseer.com/

The Virtual Reality Update

Look, I game like a beast - there’s no one more invested than me in making VR mainstream because, frankly, I’d shred. But as an investment thesis? It’s been left for dead by analysts. In fact, FRL spend remains the key downside risk to META stock.

In this issue:

• Is Apple going to end the VR winter?

• Meta’s AR/VR is mostly meh right now

• Let’s pour one out for Snapchat

• Headsets vs consoles - the future of gaming

• Bytedance’s purchase of Pico - Meta’s mini me

• Quest sales are up and to the right - but the buyer is your mom

• AR Glasses haven’t worked - here’s why

• Can mixed reality push Meta’s stock > $500? Maybe

VR/AR will change commerce forever if we can get over the somewhat tedious barrier for entry. Will Apple finally tilt the scales?

It’s Still A Minuscule Market - That Meta Owns

Cutting to the chase - as of 2022:

• 28M VR headsets in use worldwide ( vs 6.5B smartphones)

• 71.5% of those are sold by Meta (source: Barclays)

• 66% increase in activated devices expected by end of ‘24 (s:Newegg)

• Meta FRL spend to date: $60B

Essentially, while there might be a ton of talk around HTC, Magic Leap, Snap Glasses (whatever they were called), etc - everyone is a bit player compared to Meta when it comes to mixed reality. Mark owns this town. And while the market is small, it’s growing consistently.

The problem with this market: it has no clear use case. It’s easy to imagine how this would monetize if it worked. It’s hard to make it actually work.

Enter- Apple.

Want to see META cross $500? Pray Apple shreds

Meta gets instant validation from Apple rolling out a competing product. And, if everything goes well, it’s also a chance to turbo boost META stock and unlock spend on FRL, if it’s evident there’s real competition.

The flip side? An Apple fail could kill FRL forever.

Here’s why this is crucial for the stock:

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