Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg: 'We're in the business of small business'

Yahoo Finance’s Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer sat down with Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO, to discuss how the tech giant is supporting small businesses with grant funding and online training.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: I want to say good morning now to our Editor in Chief, Andy Serwer. Andy, we know that small businesses have really been taking the brunt of the damage caused by the coronavirus. And a number of larger companies, Facebook included, are trying to do their part to help lessen that pain. I know you recently spoke to their COO Sheryl Sandberg. What is the company doing exactly to assist these small businesses?

ANDY SERWER: Well, that's right, Alexis, I spoke to Sheryl Sandberg actually last evening from my home to her home, just to give you an indication of how all of us are working during this crisis. And you know, there's a lot of demands on Facebook, a lot of asks. And yes, you're right, small and medium businesses is something they've been focusing on-- also, the news media. And here's what Sheryl Sandberg had to say about those two things

SHERYL SANDBERG: We're in the business of small business. The majority of our customers are small businesses. So we're very close to them. We're not only providing this grant funding, but we're providing a lot of free tools, online training. A lot of businesses have to close, but some businesses are trying to stay open and/or shifting business online. So you can set up a free web/mobile page by using a Facebook page. We're training people in how to use our tools and others, so that they can migrate their businesses online, and try to keep the lights on, keep businesses up and running through this period. So that was an obvious touchpoint for us.

So is the news. People consume news. We have deep relationships with news agencies. We've announced a $300 million commitment before to help news organizations. So again, it's part of the regular responsibility and I think partnerships we have. We've been long focused on local news because we know with the challenges news organizations are facing, a lot of the hardest hit ones are the local news organizations. So that's been a big focus for us before this and a special focus for us during this time.

ANDY SERWER: So it's a lot of money, you guys, that Facebook is looking to spread around, if you will. I mean, there's the $300 million she was talking about for news before, an additional $100 million now, then $100 million for small and medium sized businesses. And you can see, companies are trying to balance their bottom lines with doing the right thing. A company like Facebook, which is actually seeing an increase in their business right now is, of course, better positioned to be able to do that. But other companies are, obviously, just looking to survive at this point.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Andy, to bounce off that, so many people now homebound, going to these social media sites. But there's a lot of misinformation there as well. Did Sheryl talk to you at all about what she sees their responsibility as being and how they're handling that?

ANDY SERWER: Oh, yeah, she was so excited to talk to me about that, Alexis, because, obviously, misinformation is something that the company's really been focused on, of course, with the elections, and we talked about the election coming up. Also, with regard to the census, today is census day, the day that we accentuate the fact that the census is going on, April 1st. And they're actually-- they've been focusing keenly on that in trying to prevent misinformation.

And then, yes, of course, with regard to COVID-19, there's been misinformation. And public health officials and government officials have been very concerned about that. And she talked about working with them, searching for key words and phrases, removing that, extenuating information that was positive and accurate. And so she was very ready to answer that question.

BRIAN SOZZI: Andy, any sense from talking to Sandberg that the $100 million they're putting into, or they're offering up, for newsrooms is just a downpayment?

ANDY SERWER: Yeah, it's interesting, so there's two components to that Brian. I mean, $25 million of it is actually going directly, in terms of grants, through the Lend Fest Organization-- Foundation, I should say, which is out of Philadelphia. And that is actually things like a couple hundred thousand dollars for a local newspaper to pursue their course of business. $75 million of the $100 million goes to actually marketing dollars to help fill the gap that has been created from advertisers pulling their advertising back from the media right now, because they don't want their ads adjacent to coronavirus coverage.

You know, this has been this paradox that you've seen a huge spike in the consumption of news, but advertisers are wary of putting their ads next to it because it's kind of yucky, to use a technical term, to do that. But Facebook is looking to do this. And of course, yeah, sure, it's a situation where they've taken a lot of the ad dollars out of the business, and they've been criticized heavily for doing so, so it's kind of doing the right thing and looking good at the same time, Brian.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: All right, Andy Serwer, thanks so much. Also folks, if you want to catch the entire interview that Andy had with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, you can check it out tomorrow on "Influencers" starting at 5:00 PM Eastern. It'll be up on our website, as well as the Yahoo Finance app. Andy, thanks so much.