The court has wrapped for the day after it was briefly closed to play some sealed testimony from one of the video depositions. Instagram co-founder and former CEO Kevin Systrom is expected to testify for most, if not all, of the day tomorrow.
Amin Zoufonoun, a former Meta corporate development executive, testifies in a video deposition about “spirited debates” over whether mobile messaging could threaten Facebook’s flagship app, though he doesn’t specifically recall colleagues seeing it as a threat. He remembers colleagues wondering, for example, if messaging apps could “use that as a Trojan horse wedge to get into the social networking space.”
Botha says that, if he had suggested a $1 billion valuation for Instagram at the time, he probably wouldn’t have gotten support from his partners. It wasn’t clear it’d be worth that much, he says.
Botha recalls expressing to Instagram’s founders that if they wanted to get their “payday” from Meta, that’s their prerogative. But, he recalls saying, “if your ambition is to build an independent company, then you should partner with people like us.”
Botha says he was “giddy” to get the chance to invest in the app in 2012. He recalls it was less than a year old and already had millions of daily users. Sequoia didn’t get to invest as much as it wanted because so many other investors wanted a piece of the startup. He compares it to how he felt investing in YouTube: “This felt like one of these companies.”
We’re watching pre-recorded video testimony from Sequoia’s Roelof Botha, who spoke with attorneys in this case in January 2023 about his firm’s investment in Instagram in 2012, just before Meta acquired it. Botha describes the app’s rapid growth and resonance with users at the time, stating that Sequoia likely would have been able to help Instagram obtain the resources it needed to scale had Meta not intervened.
Arora says that WhatsApp’s founders were “very clear. They were not going to do it.” Meta’s attorney is getting him to pour cold water on the FTC expert’s testimony that WhatsApp would have likely ended up selling ads despite the founders’ wishes. “I would have said it’s not likely,” Arora testifies.
Arora says it was pretty customary to get such paperwork for an acquisition to ensure exclusive talks for a set period of time. After reviewing emails from the time, he testifies that Meta requested the agreement after they agreed to a deal price, but that WhatsApp did not sign it.
Neeraj Arora, who worked on an acquisition offer for WhatsApp at Google in the early 2010s before later joining the startup, is now testifying for the FTC. He’s discussing a 2010 Google presentation outlining the company’s strategic rationale for attempting to acquire the app. One of the goals listed was to “supercharge our mobile social initiatives.”
Meta’s attorney presents Rim with translated posts from his personal blog, originally written in Korean. In a November 2024 post about the Justice Department’s remedies proposals for Google’s search business, Rim wrote (according to a certified FTC translation), “admittedly, it can be difficult to imagine we are victims of Big Tech, who have made our lives so much easier.” Rim disagrees with the translation of “admittedly,” while Meta’s attorney assures him he has other certified translations.