Sean Parker: 'I Probably Underestimated How Big Facebook Was'

First president of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ: FB) and Napster founder, Sean Parker, was on Bloomberg TV Thursday to discuss Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL)'s new service, Apple Music, and whether Facebook has become too big to innovate. Here is what he said.

New Entrants Following Spotify's Lead

On what he thinks about Apple's entry into the music streaming business, Parker said, "The music industry has been historically very resistant to change. It was a difficult process getting licenses done to bring Spotify to the U.S. and globally.

"My sense is that there is a lot of new market entrants that are essentially following Spotify's lead and hopefully Spotify will continue to have a leadership position going forward."

Related Link: Sean Parker Things We May Be In A "Valuation Bubble," But Not A Tech Bubble

Hard To Know The Market Size

According to Parker, investors focus a lot on market size and "market size is often not clear." He revealed, "I fully underestimated just how big Airbnb as a market really was. I probably underestimated how big Facebook was, to be honest."

Zuckerberg Understands The Need For Facebook To Reinvent

Parker was asked if Facebook is too big at this point to be innovative and mobile. He replied, "Facebook is unique in its ability to understand; I think this is really credit to Mark (Zuckerberg) that he understands the need for the company to reinvent itself and the fact that he is not always going to be the first to originate a new idea.

"Sometimes you just going to have to go to the market and buy a company like Instagram...and the amazing thing when you look at the Instagram acquisition or you look at the WhatsApp acquisition, they were essentially free," Parker concluded.

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