Zuck: White Adds ‘Backbone’ To Meta

Zuckerberg is looking to push back against pressure being put on Meta by governments, and he believes White is the perfect man to advise him through that process.

Mark Zuckerberg shocked the sporting world last week when he announced the addition of UFC CEO Dana White to the Meta board of directors. While the job pays peanuts — $50,000, which is less than a hand of blackjack to White — you can’t argue it’s a symbolic power position that lifts White from the business circles of Power Slap and Nitro Circus into the very top of the tech industry.

So how did White land this gig? Cynical people will point to Donald Trump’s election and Zuckerberg’s recent trips to Mar-A-Lago as proof this is all part of a political pivot to get in good with the incoming administration. That ignores the friendship we know Mark and Dana have had, with the two bonding over a private Mackenzie Dern fight night in 2022 and Zuck being front row at UFC 300 last year.

In a new interview on the Joe Rogan Experience, Zuckerberg discussed his MMA training, his continued interest in a professional fight, and adding White to the board of Meta.

“Oh, he’s awesome, I’ve been talking to him for a while about that,” Zuckerberg said. “Talk about an amazing entrepreneur. Who are the people I want [on the board]? I just want the best entrepreneurs and people who have created different things.”

“Dana’s like this guy who basically took the sport from being viewed as this pretty marginal thing when he got started,” Zuck continued. “John McCain was trying to outlaw it, and now I think it and F-1 are the fastest growing sports in the world. It’s got hundreds of millions of people viewing it. What Dana’s done with the UFC is like one of the most legendary business stories, and the brand is beloved.”

Zuckerberg spent a good portion of his interview with Rogan describing the amount of strong-arming he got from the Biden administration and Europe over how to run his business — not surprising given Meta owns a massive percentage of the social media tools the world uses to communicate. He says he largely bowed to demands from governments before, but now he’s looking to strike a different posture.

Zuck now believes the business world has been taken over by ‘feminine energy,’ and he’s looking to rebalance things in his own company with a big dose of DFW.

“[Dana is] a world-class entrepreneur and he’s got a strong backbone,” Zuckerberg said. “Part of the conversation I had with him around joining our board was, ‘OK, we have a lot of governments and folks around the world putting a lot of pressure on our company, and we need some strong people who are going to basically help advise us on how to handle some of these situations.’”

“Running this company is not for the faint of heart. There’s definitely a lot of pressure from all these different governments.”