META > $253B

Jonathan Poland
2 min readNov 2, 2022

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VR and AR are going to be here to stay in the next decade. The metaverse will likely replace interaction IRL. I don’t like the idea, it’s just going to be happening.

166 million people own corrective eyewear, which means that contacts and glasses will be embedded with the technology to augment reality or plunge you deep into another world. Facebook and Apple will be the top of mind market leaders.

Financially speaking, Meta (thanks to Facebook) generates $28 billion of net income on $118 billion in revenue. Still. They’ve spent a ton of money on the next generation technology and earnings have taken a short term hit because of it. So what?! The company can spend over 30% of gross profit on research and development and still book $28 billion net net. Com’on.

Mark Zuckerberg controls Meta. That’s a good thing because it takes that kind of fully committed mindset to make the next great thing. Whether the metaverse is the next great thing or just the next myspace, only time will tell. At this point, two billion people use Facebook and Instagram every day. Are those people worth $100 or $200 a year in a decade? Highly likely.

That means, the bottom line could see $50 billion to $100 billion by 2032. Is that worth 20x, I don’t know. If it is, the value would be $1 to $2 trillion, which used to seem outrageous until you realize the amount of US Dollars there are and where they’re currently being directed.

So yeah, $253 billion (before taking out cash) seems like a bargain.

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Jonathan Poland

20+ years advising business leaders. Posts on business, finance, and notes from the journey. More @ jonathanpoland.com.