The biggest story currently surrounding Facebook"s impending IPO isn"t the fact that it could garner an astounding (and record-setting) $100 billion market valuation, but the fact that Mark Zuckerberg likes to wear hoodies. Who knew? Well, besides everyone that knows anything about Zuckerberg or anyone who saw The Social Network.
Zuckerberg, Facebook"s founder and CEO, showed up for a meeting with potential investors donning his trademark attire, including the aforementioned hoodie. This led Michael Pachter, an analyst for Wedbush Securities, to tell Bloomberg that Zuckerberg"s attire is a "mark of immaturity." Pachter went on to say that Zuckerberg is "well-suited to be the chief product officer, the chief user-experience officer, to manage the design of the user interface, [and] to decide every feature that goes in," implying that the analyst doesn"t think Zuckerberg is fit to be Facebook"s chief executive.
Pachter chastises Zuckerberg for the fact that "he’s going to be [himself]," but isn"t that the point? Why would investors want Facebook"s stock if Zuckerberg was going to be anything less than the genius that founded the company and realizes what consumers want, sometimes even before they realize it themselves?
While Pachter still recommends buying Facebook"s stock when it"s publicly available, the fact that he thinks Zuckerberg shouldn"t be the chief executive is odd. Zuckerberg has surrounded himself with people who excel in areas he doesn"t, such as COO Sheryl Sandberg, who implemented Facebook"s monetization strategy (a strategy that many social networks have emulated). So even if Zuckerberg may not be in a situation to handle everything regarding Facebook"s business, he clearly knows his weaknesses and is willing to cede power to those who know more about particular business areas, which is one of the primary tasks of a chief executive.