>> from the heart of where innovation, money and power

collide, in silicon valley and beyond, this is bloomberg technology with emily chang. emily: i'm emily chang in san -- in new york and this is bloomberg technology. coming up in the next hour, the end of the silicon valley era, sheryl sandberg is stepping down after 14 years at facebook and now meta as chief operating officer. i spoke to her in an exclusive interview. sheryl: i made a final decision this weekend and let mark know. emily: we will have more on that decision them of why she's leaving now and what it means for meta's future. and if you want to keep working at tesla, forget about working from home. elon musk sending any mail with the subject line, remote work is

no longer acceptable. first a quick check of the markets and how meta shares moved on news of sheryl sandberg leaving the company after 14 years. bloomberg's ed ludlow here with more. big day for the markets. ed: fantastic reporting on sheryl sandberg and the role that the selloff in meta shares, even though it was the last 20 minutes of the session, had an impact on the broader markets. s&p and nasdaq down, those declines accelerated as we saw meta shares selloff more rapidly in the last 30 minutes trading. the nasdaq 100 really weighing down that index. another day where yields continue to rise. the u.s. 10 year treasury up 2.9%, up around six basis points. all eyes on meta, the parent company of facebook, at one point down for percent. it did pare declines as details came out about sandberg's

replacement, that she will remain on the board despite stepping down as coo. one corner of the market where heavy selling took place was crypto related stocks. we saw bitcoin through most of wednesday's session fall back down toward $30,000 per token. you see some of the names involved in crypto and blockchain related technology seeing heavy declines. there was also broader impact in the cell of -- in the selloff in meta. you saw that instant reaction on meta shares. the ticker is changing to meta. this will have verb rations in the social media landscape because of the role that sandberg was a player in the ad space as well. emily: ed ludlow, thank you. sheryl sandberg leaving meta after 14 years as chief operating officer. i had a chance to speak to her

exclusively along with my colleague kurt wagner about the announcement. she will officially leave the company in the fall. she will stay on meta's board. here is her answer as to why and why not. sheryl: this was a decision i made that i did not come to lightly. it is about how i will spend my time, not how much i believe in the company. i believe in the company as much as i ever did. i really have complete confidence in the team mark and i have built. i think they will do a great job building the future. for a company that is a huge part of my life and huge part of my heart. emily: for more i'm joined by kurt wagner, who covers meta for us, and devika patrick, author of the book "the facebook effect." kurt, since you and i spoke to sheryl exclusively on the phone, we have been preparing for this, but we never thought it would happen. give us more context about why you believe sheryl is making

this decision. kurt: it felt to me like this was a much more personal decision then anything for her. she talked about she is getting married this summer. she will be blending her family with her fiance's family. she is passionate about her philanthropy work. those were the types of things she talked about. when you take a step back, some of her biggest responsys abilities, running -- biggest responsibilities, running policy, that had already been handed off. you look at the trail that led us to here. some of her responsibilities have been started to handed it off to other people, to your point, we have been asking for this for a long time. it was not necessarily shocking. emily: we have been asking this question for a long time, but

the irony is she told us she made the decision over the weekend, told mark over the weekend, and here we are with this announcement today. she talked to us about delivering that news to mark. take a quick listen. sheryl: i made a final decision this weekend and let mark know. there is a rule that once i make a decision, we to not have a lot of time. that is why the timing in this decision is so tight. emily: obviously there are sec disclosure rules that require meta/facebook to tell the public in short order. david kerr patrick, you know sheryl well, you have interviewed her many times. what do you think? david: i was surprised like many else, but i expected this to come quite a bit ago. i think for the last few years it has been easy to imagine sheryl wanting to leave facebook, both because one could

have the sense that she had lost grip on the issues that she was supposed to be responsible for, or she by some analysis was not taking sufficient responsibility for them. mark zuckerberg had been taking responsys abilities away from her in the last year or so. the new york times wroteabout t the split between her and zuckerberg following january 6, saying facebook was not responsible for that. that resonated poorly with some. her history is an astonishing history of a miraculous leader in some ways. the end is a sad one because facebook's reputation has fallen in recent years under her leadership. emily: sheryl sandberg unfortunately became the face of many of the controversies that facebook has weathered, but i

don't think we can overstate her impact on meta and silicon valley culture. she built google's business model as well. facebook is at an inflection point right now. they have to figure out this metaverse thing and a whole new business model. kurt and i asked her if that had anything to do with this, that she has to write a whole new business plan. sheryl: we have our current ask, connecting customers to businesses. i think there is a lot of opportunity there, but over the long run. the metaverse is a much ploeger term business opportunity. -- much longer term business opportunity. i think meta will be a place where consumers and businesses can act. the exact form that takes will be something we have to figure out over a much longer term. emily: now there is a team in place whose job that is to do now, figure out how consumers and businesses will interact in

the metaverse. kurt, talk to us about the new leadership structure. you have nick clegg, who is continuing to run policy and communications. you have the chief product officer and chief technology officer and of course mark zuckerberg. kurt: historically the way facebook has been set up is they kept the product side of the house under mark zuckerberg and the business side of the house under sheryl. what you will see from this image here is a lot of the people there with the exception of nick clegg are from the product side of the house under mark zuckerberg, chris cox, a very good friend. these are people who have worked with and for mark zuckerberg for more than a decade. they are people that he trusts very completely and also people

who are going to listen to what mark says. not that sheryl was at all someone who was saying i'm not going to go that direction, but my point is mark has now surrounded himself with people who he very much trusts and you have worked for him for a long time. when you look at what might be uncertain about this idea of the metaverse, i don't see the company wavering on it because the people that will be talking with him at these important meetings are people he have known for a long time. emily: there are a lot of powerful women at facebook who continue to work there, but david, what do you make of it? sheryl sandberg did a lot to change the world for working women. this has been a key priority of hers in terms of evolving facebook's culture to one that is friendlier to women. david: she served as a symbol of women's success in business.

for most of the last 14 years, certainly the last 10 or 11 years she could've left facebook at any time and become the ceo of any company in the world. i know she was solicited for those kinds of jobs time and time again and did not show interest because she wanted to stay here. i would not be surprised however if she has been feeling not only left out, but quite critical of a lot of the company's moves. i would not even be shocked to learn that she was not in favor of changing the company name and did not believe in the metaverse shift, which i frankly think is still an unproven end highly questionable shift. she is a rational, grounded businessperson. i want to reiterate one thing, she created what was probably the best business in the history of capitalism for most of her time there. the profit per dollar of revenue of facebook's advertising business that she created is greater than the profit margin of any public company you can

name. that has declined in recent years for a variety of reasons. she is an astonishingly effective business leader for whatever other flaws we might want to point to. emily: i heard many times today one of the most influential women in business. she is one of the most influential people in business, full stop. there is this big open question, what is she going to do next? you talk about her philanthropy, her women's advocacy. listen to that portion of the conversation. sheryl: this decision i did not come to lately, but it's been 14 years. i want to make more room to do more philanthropically, to do more with my foundation. i have not been able to do nearly as much as i have wanted to recently. it is an important moment for women. you and i spent a lot of time talking about that.

it feels like an important moment. emily: of course, kurt and i, our immediate next question was, will you ever go back to business? will you ever get into politics? sheryl: i learned a long time ago never make any predictions about the future, but i think a lot of that is pretty unlikely. i think there is a lot hopefully that i can do with my time philanthropically. emily: kurt do you believe, it? is it likely or will we see a reincarnation of sheryl sandberg in business or politics? kurt: i'm going to fall on the side of believing what she said, simply because i'm not sure that going back -- clearly she does not need the money, so going back into business for her own personal wealth or anything is not necessary, it does not make much sense. similar to mark zuckerberg,

similar to a lot of these billionaire tech founders and successful executives, their legacy will be left in otherwise. it's going to be hard for her to do anything outside of facebook that will be more important than what she has arbery done on the business side. -- has already done on the business side. i think now she sees an opportunity to solidify herself as a champion of women's issues. as she pointed out in that interview with us, making that her top priority. if i had issues, i assume that is the direction she goes. emily: she did joke that it was an honor and privilege of a lifetime, but not the most manageable job of a lifetime. kurt wagner, thank you for your reporting. david, do you believe her? is this officially sheryl sandberg moving into philanthropy? david: she is a

multibillionaire, she can do whatever she wants. she will certainly be effective as of for linda best. -- as a philanthropist. it may suit her better. i know she has been interested in politics for a long time. for many years she really had hoped that that would be her eventual direction. my own opinion is the way that the facebook story has evolved in recent years has made it extremely difficult for her to move into democratic party ballistics -- party politics, which is what she would do. facebook is a persona non grata in the democratic party. facebook has been shown to have so many social harms. she is to some extent responsible for not having taken an affection on it. -- taken enough action on it. emily: what about an appointed office? david: sheet has been talked about being a treasury -- she has been talked about being a treasury secretary in the past. she would be a good one. a role like that would be

controversial because of facebook's history. emily: we will be watching. she is transitioning the team over the summer. her direct reports will transition over the summer. she will remain on facebook's board. david: javier is an impressive guy too. emily: he has been running growth and meta is still growing despite all of this. david, thank you. i'm glad you are here today. glad to see you in person in new york. we will have much more on this throughout the show. we will keep talking about women in tech, talk to the female founders fund to get the pulse on vc funding trends for women. and more on sheryl sandberg leaving facebook as well. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: venture capital funding has surged in recent years, but not all founders are tweeted equally. last year companies founded only by women now just over 2% of capital total invested in venture backed startups in the u.s.. still vc funding for female founded companies has been trending up. 2021 saw the gratian of several women led funds and new companies. -- the creation of several women led funds and new companies. joining me is anu duggal. good to see you in person. i have to ask what you make of sheryl sandberg leaving facebook given her impact on the tech industry and the conversation about women, work, and having a seat at the table. anu: it is obviously breaking news. not much to comment other than the fact that she is an

incredibly influential woman in tech and made tremendous impact. excited to see what she does next. emily: in my conversation with her she talked about this being an inflection point for women's advocacy. there has been concern about women backsliding in the pandemic. how do you think that translates to women founders and what they are facing in the venture capital industry? particularly when belts tighten and markets get tumultuous, investors go back to what they know, which is male founders. anu: i think we are in the early stages of what one would call a downturn. looking back to 2021, it was an incredible year for female founders overall. record number of ipo's led by female founders i think in the history of the stock market there have been 20 led by female ipo's and 2021 there were six.

i think we are starting to see interesting momentum. emily: how are you thinking about deploying capital at this time? anu: as a seed investor, the markets have been largely overvalued and we have the opportunity to sit back and really look at valuations coming down, and be patient. in the last year, you at some point had two to three days to get back to an entrepreneur, to a founder. it will be interesting to reset to what is more of the norm in the coming years. emily: what is your advice to founders right now? we have heard slow your burn, you know. anu: i think all of the above. even the best performing companies are going to have a hard time raising capital. if they do, they probably will not get the valuations they

want. in light of that, the advice we've been giving is to your p oint, look at your burn, focus on the path to profitability and try to weather the storm. emily: you started your own fund in 2014. what are lessons you have learned along the way? anu: back when i started the fund, the idea of investing in female founders was quite novel. i think along the way there has been so much development in this space and so much recognition for the fact that it is important to invest in diverse founders and that diversity pays off when it comes to some of the recent exits and ipo's that i mentioned earlier. emily: what do you think the industries of the future are? are you looking for the next facebook? anu: it's a great question. a space we have been seeing a lot of activity in is digital health. that is largely due to what we saw with the pandemic, where a

lot of americans had to deal with health care in a different way. whether it is pediatrics, whether your primary care physician, women's health, all of these categories, we are seeing a lot of interesting disruption and innovation, and quite frankly from female founders. emily: anu duggal, female founders fund. love the name. anu: thanks for having me. emily: coming up, much more on sheryl sandberg's exit from meta . and controversy around elon musk, who would have thought? and workers returning to the office. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: the world's richest man has had it with working from home. elon musk said he wants to make sure certain staff are in a real test office at least 48 hours a

week. joining us to talk about the latest, bloomberg's ed ludlow. ed: two memos to two different trenches of staff. basically for those that want to work from home, they need to be in the office for a minimum of 48 hours a week. he stipulated this is not remote, this has to be a main tesla office. the second memo to a broader number of tesla employees clarified his position. he said there may be tech companies out there that have a hybrid working model, but he did not see any of those companies innovating or doing anything new on their products. he is basically saying he wants to see employees back in the office for a time. raises a lot of questions about twitter. what if elon musk's purchase of twitter goes through? back when jack dorsey was ceo, he issued an indefinite work from home or hybrid policy, even

when twitter's offices reopened. that is a big follow-up to that. he listene -- elon musk is not a big fan of return to the office. emily: jack dorsey was one of the first proponents of working from home. coming up, much more on sheryl sandberg's departure as meta's chief operating officer after 14 years. we will have my conversation with her later in the show. this is bloomberg. ♪

sheryl: this decision i did not come to lately, but it's been 14 years. i want to make more room to do more philanthropically, to do more with my foundation. i have not been able to do as much as i have wanted to recently. it is an important moment for women. you and i have spent a lot of time talking about that over the years. it feels like an important moment. the importance to me personally. i made a final decision this weekend and let mark know. the rules are such that once i make a decision, we do not have a lot of time. that is why the timing is so tight. this is a decision i made that i did not come to lately. it is about how i will spend my time. i believe in the company as much as i ever did and staying on the board.

i have complete confidence in the team mark and i have built. i think they will do a great job building for the future. we have a current business which is our current ask connecting customers to businesses. i think there is a lot of opportunity there right now, but over the long run. the metaverse is a much longer-term business opportunity. it's going to take some form. i believe the metaverse will be a place where businesses and consumers connect. the exact form that takes is something we figure out over the next number of years, much longer-term. emily: welcome back to "bloomberg technology." that was part of my exclusive interview with sheryl sandberg along with my colleague kurt wagner, who announced today she is leaving meta after 14 years as the company's chief operating officer. sandberg, now 52 years old, joined facebook when she was 38 and mark zuckerberg was just 23.

she will officially leave the company in the fall but stay on meta's board. i am joined by bloomberg's sarah frier, who covers technology and social media, along with the author of the book "facebook: the inside story." you heard sheryl's explanation for why now. what is your read on this? >> the surprise is why she stayed so long. a lot of people thought it would have happened earlier. it's not a big surprise that she's going on to something else. no one said she could not have run when facebook ran into troubles because she rode it out . once the company changed its name and focused on the metaverse, you could tell the clock was ticking. emily: what is your take? in that interview she talks about, are we going to see her in politics someday?

she said all of that is very unlikely. she wants to work on her philanthropy and still, never say never, but not something we should expect to see her do. what do you think? sarah: either she wanted to leave facebook in a good place, likely, and it has been a difficult time to leave facebook. it is a company in constant turmoil. they have had multiple scandals, some of them sheryl sandberg contributed to through the company's grow at all costs advertising business, user growth, and solving the problems after the fact. she did try hard to make sure that facebook could change the way the public sees it. regulators could see it differently. this is a company that is such a powerful force that continues to have issues. there was no bright horizon moment for her to leave

facebook, she just had to make the call. what she was saying about the transition to the metaverse, that gives a bit of a clean moment for her to say, listen, i built facebook up to a nearly $120 billion business, it is time for the next era to begin. that is not an era she needs to be part of. emily: let's talk about that next era. sheryl sandberg did, for better or worse, become the face of many of facebook's controversies. i imagine it was difficult to find that good time to leave, and yet she is inarguably one of the most influential people in business today. how would you assess or explain her legacy? steven: it's a complicated one. mark was only 23. she was 38. she built a big business at google. she changed facebook's culture.

when she got there, it was still very much a dorm room flavored, engineering based culture. she knew how to build it out to something more welcoming, a more diverse group of employees. she built up the ad business. you could point a finger at her and say the way she built it up was with personal data and targeted advertising. that was something sheryl nurtured and delivered in spectacular fashion to advertisers. she was also in charge of a policy aspect of facebook. that is where they ran into a lot of trouble. it's interesting, a few months ago, that that part of it was shifted. nick clegg took over that part of the company's role, which previously had been sheryl's domain.

nick reports directly to mark. before that whole washington, d.c. thing, which you think sheryl would be so adept at because she came from the treasury, that went to someone else. one way for her to ease herself out of the company. emily: let's look at the next generation of facebook leaders. the coo role is being somewhat reconstituted. the new coo will not oversee all of the things sheryl did. talk to us about the team that sheryl sandberg leaves behind, a lot of these long time mark zuckerberg lieutenants that have been at the company for years. sarah? looks like we are having some technical difficulties with sarah's shot.

steven, you just wrote a book, you interviewed a lot of these people. steven: i know them all. the one person people might not know very well is javy, who came out of a growth organization. he was with the growth at all costs lieutenant to zuckerberg. he gained trust and has been very quietly one of the top executives at facebook/meta. i think you will learn more about him now. andrew bosworth is someone who has been with the company since 2005 i think. he helped launch the news feed. that is how far back he goes. you did not have any women unfortunately in that line, but naomi is someone in that inner

circle, one of the earliest facebook employees. it's striking, now as meta faces its next challenge with the metaverse, the people behind it have been with mark zuckerberg since almost the very beginning. emily: speaking of women at facebook, a number of powerful women who came up at facebook have left, quite frankly. someone who is now the ceo of instacart. i had a chance to ask her about facebook's future and pivot to the metaverse, her thought on whether this was a good idea. take a listen. >> i personally don't love spending a ton of time in vr. i am incredibly motion sick, which would have been a big problem if i was still at facebook. [laughter] emily: i wonder if sheryl had a moment, like, i have to rewrite

a whole new business plan and how this all is going to work in the metaverse now. that may be part of her did not want to do that. steven: i agree. when i saw the company changed its name, i thought finally sheryl has an exit ramp. i think she wanted to leave originally after the company went public, but that did not go very well. it would have been a bad note to leave on. she said, okay, let me wait until it all comes together. the next horrible thing that happened was her husband died. that wasn't a good time for her personally. she leaned on mark and the company to get her through that. then came the 2016 election and all the troubles then. she was thwarted at every turn. when the senatorial post-came up

in california, people thought that is what sheryl was waiting for. but she was in no position to do that. a lot of people thought the person who took over that seat was in line for that. sheryl has had some pretty bad luck in terms of an exit ramp from facebook, but she really only wanted to stay for five years. that was her original plan. emily: she told me that today, that she thought this was a five-year gig and here she is 14 years later. what is your level of confidence in the team that is left behind, or the team that will have to come up with this business plan for the metaverse and all the products that will make it come to life? sarah: when i think about what facebook has invented over the course of its history, it's this very methodical strategy of growing.

growing in ways that a lot of other companies would not have thought of, like making sure there is no barrier to someone using your products. javier olivan, who is going to be the new coo of facebook, is the person who was spearheading that at facebook for many years. he was in charge of making sure that facebook resonated in new markets. i think the fact that he is in the coo position just means that facebook needs the metaverse to work. that is their next that -- next bet because of the decay of their legacy platform. facebook is stagnating in terms of user growth. instagram is struggling to keep up with tiktok. this is a rough time for facebook to not have a sure bet for its next 10 years. by putting javier in the driver seat of operations, they are

saying we want this to work. emily: it's certainly interesting to think about the pivot to the metaverse as an offramp for sheryl sandberg to leave. i'm sure she has been planning to do it eventually. bloomberg's sarah frier, steven levy, author of "facebook: the inside story." bitcoin down. how risk aversion is weighing down on global markets. crypto report coming up next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: time for our crypto report. bitcoin seemed to be on the right track for a decoupling with u.s. stocks, but that was short-lived as the largest cryptocurrency fell for the first time in five trading sessions. good to see you in person, katie. what happened? >> that correlation with big tech when it comes to bitcoin is back in a big way. that is bad news for bitcoin because the nasdaq 100 dropped for two straight days, down about 1% so far this week. if you look at what this meant for bitcoin, under a lot of pressure, dropped almost 7% on wednesday alone. it is below that $30,000 per coin level. it has not broken out on the low end, but it can't get off the ground. emily: what should we expect to happen tomorrow? katie: i have been looking at a bitcoin strategies etf.

the ratio right now stands at about 1.6, close to a record high. if you pair that with short-term interest, you and that altogether, it tells you that even though bitcoin is down well over 30% so far this year, pretty much preparing for more losses ahead. emily: i have to tie this back to sheryl sandberg somehow because that is the big news of the day. facebook had a big cryptocurrency project, libra, david marcus who came from paypal ended up running that. he's no longer at the company either. katie: it feel slick this company has a tortured relationship when it comes to the crypto ecosystem. it never got off the ground. it took a long time for that to unravel. facebook, now meta, took a hard pivot into the metaverse, that digital world that i have not heard a good definition for yet, but investing a ton of money

there. we heard from zuckerberg late last month, saying it will be a long path to return on investment in the metaverse, that meta will lose significant money in the metaverse for the next three to five years. but facebook needs the metaverse to work, but that could take a while. emily: now there is a whole different team of people that will be in charge of figuring out the business model for that without sheryl sandberg. coming up, what sheryl sandberg 's departure means for women leaders in tech at large. we will talk about that with the girls who code founder next. this is bloomberg. ♪

sheryl: this decision i did not come to lightly, but it's been 14 years. and i want to make more room to

do more philanthropically. i definitely have not been able to do nearly as much as i have wanted to recently. it is a really important moment for women. i know you and i have spent a lot of time talking about that over the years, but it feels like an important time where i think more focused there -- focu s there would be more important to me personally. emily: sheryl sandberg leaving meta. bringing an reshma saujani, ceo of girls who code. obviously sheryl sandberg was part of the conversation that i'm sure got you there. she was a supporter of girls who code. i have to ask for your reaction to this news, that after a long time sheryl sandberg is leaving facebook. reshma: i am excited for her. sheryl was an early supporter of

girls who code. we used to have town halls with hundred of her students and she opened up facebook to this movement. i think she is right, women are in crisis. roe v. wade is about to be overturned any minute now. so we need leadership. we need her leadership. i'm excited to see what she does. emily: what do you make of the controversy around her leadership? not everyone agreed with lean in. reshma: i don't agree with all of lean in, but it was revolutionary at that moment. things have changed. i think she would agree with that, that we need a different type of fight in workplaces. we have to stop trying to fix women and fix the structure. you have to applaud how far she got to and what that means for women. we always say you cannot be what you cannot see. there are so many girls looking at her as the coo of facebook

and saying i can do that too. emily: a high-ranking female executive in silicon valley told me you cannot lean in if the door is nailed shut. is the door still nailed shut for a lot of people, or has it cracked open? reshma: no, it's nailed shut, definitely. look at the state of affairs right now. we are living in a country that is forcing birth in a country that has the highest infant mortality rate, no paid leave, no affordable childcare, our kids are being shot in schools. the number one reason why kids die is guns. so yes, the door is nailed shut. we have to force it open. if there has ever been a moment to call for revolution, to call for thinking about things differently -- we just launched a coalition to make sure childcare is a benefit that every company offers. emily: you and i talked about women backsliding in the

pandemic and the fear that women will come out of this in worse shape than how they entered. elon musk is now saying you can't work from home. i'm curious what your reaction is to his memo, given this thought of hybrid work. there is a thought that it is good for women. reshma: i get it, people want people back in the office, but people can't come back in the office unless they have the support. we did a survey and half of the women left because childcare is unaffordable and unreliable. today half of our daycare centers are still shut down. we still have new variants, instability in schools. most people pay more for their childcare than they pay for their mortgage. if we want people to come back to work, we have to think about new policies to help them come back to work, which means paying for their childcare, which means having paid leave, which means thinking about how you do design a hybrid workplace.

it is not just moms, it's dads t oo. i talked to so many fathers who say i want on -- say i don't want to commute 2.5 hours to work and see my kid for five hours a day. emily: you have a unique view into how girls are being prepared for the future. are they getting new tools to succeed in the world we are in today? reshma: i gave a yale commencement speech. i have been asking people, how do you feel about this moment? do you feel like you want to change the world? kids say in the past two years, it set us back. we are tired. our mental health is trained. we look at the adults in the room and they are not leaving us. so we are not inspired. we do not feel we are ready, so we need to do something different. emily: in 30 seconds, what is

the good news? inspire us. you are out doing this good work. reshma: we are pissed off as hell and this rage will take us to power. emily: how significant do you think it is that sheryl sandberg will not be leading on the business side but might be more influential on the policy side? reshma: i give so much gratitude to melinda bates and mckenzie basis. we need more women, more philanthropists. emily: amen. reshma saujani, girls who code. so good to see. thank you. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology." i will be back here in new york tomorrow. got a great lineup of guests there. that is all for now. stay tuned to bloomberg. ♪