Build or buy? It's the age-old business question, but when the buy added up to billions of dollars, it was, perhaps, the question for Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg.
The social network founder and CEO revealed this week that Facebook would probably have preferred to build its own virtual reality solution than spend $2 billion in 2014 on virtual reality startup Oculus VR.
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In an interview this week with Y Combinator President Sam Altman, Zuckerberg talked about how Facebook makes some of its very big or "crazy" moves. Zuckerberg immediately pointed to the Oculus acquisition and cast it in a light we haven't seen before.
"We bought the Oculus team for a lot of money," Zuckerberg said. "I actually view that as, you know, um, if we'd done a better job of building up some of the expertise to do some of that stuff internally, then maybe we wouldn't have had to do that."
Zuckerberg goes on to say that that, as a company, it wasn't prepared to tackle virtual reality.
"You know, the Oculus team is by far the most talented team working on that problem, so it just made sense to go make this big move," he added.
The blame for this lack of expertise, though, rests with Zuckerberg.
"As a CEO, it's your job to not get into a position where you need to be doing these crazy things...Of course, it's inevitable, you can't be ahead of everything," he said.
Facebook's $2 billion bet on Oculus VR, though, looks as if it's paying off. The company helped Oculus fast-track the development and consumer launch of its Oculus Rift virtual reality set. Samsung, with its Gear VR headset, is now a major Oculus partner. And Facebook is baking the concept of VR into the future of its vast social network.
Zuckerberg's long-term strategy, however, is likely to make fewer of these multi-billion dollar bets and instead build the expertise on the inside. The company recently opened a new R+D Lab and continues work on Aquila, its giant, solar-powered, internet-delivering drone.
There are other tidbits in the brief interview, like the time Facebook's entire management team lost confidence in the company and walked out. Bet they feel silly now.
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