Biography Example Zuckerberg PDF

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Introduction Initiated in his dorm room at Harvard University, the programmer genius and entrepreneur1 Mark Zuckerberg had managed to build a social network empire famously known as Facebook. Background Edward Zuckerberg – Mark’s father – nurtured his son’s passion of programing at a young age. He gave his son some basic programming lessons on the family’s Atari (Popper, 2011). At the age of 12, Mark managed to develop his first program, ZuckerNet (Telegraph, 2012). The program objective was to alarm his father – a dentist – when there was a patient in the waiting room. In high school, Mark developed Synapse Music Player, a program that analyzes users’ taste of music by tracking their music selections, and in response, it recommends new songs that may match their interest (Titcomb, 2015). After receiving wide recognition, corporations as Microsoft and AOL attempted to acquire the application, but their offers were turned down. (Titcomb, 2015). Harvard After graduating from high school, Mark decided to attend Harvard University, majoring in computer science and psychology (Telegraph, 2012). He decided to live in the college dorms, where he got to meet his roommates and later to be his co-founders of Facebook. Prior to Facebook, Mark launched Facemash.com, a website that displays and compares pictures of two Harvard students of the same sex, and allows users to vote on who is more attractive. In hours, the website spread rapidly among students, receiving 450 visits and 22,000 photo votes (O'Brien, 2010). Mark got access to the photos by hacking into Harvard house website. Despite of the website’s rapid popularity among students, it briefly got shutdown due to 1

An entrepreneur is an individual who spot an opportunity and builds a business to chase it (Wise, Bygrave, & Zacharkis, 2015).

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alleged violation of personal privacy. The Harvard administration board was close to forcing Mark to withdraw because of his intrusions into their security system (O'Brien, 2010). Mark did not view the Facemash experience as a failure, but rather as an opportunity2 for moving on to something that would turn out to be much better – 10x rule3. In contrast to the voting platform of Facemash, he thought that there was an unmet need4 for an online platform, where Harvard’s students can voluntarily share personal information as photos and status with their friends. From this need, the idea of Facebook was originated. Mark reached out to his roommates with the idea of Facebook and they instantly recognized the potential in it, triggering work on its execution. Soon after, on February 4, 2004, Mark and his roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Andrew McCollum cofounded ‘thefacebook.com,’ known today as Facebook (Carlson, 2012). Eduardo Saverin provided the business acumen5 to the start-up. Start-up is a concept that defines a company that has been in business, but has not sold their product or service in scalable way (Wise, 2015). Zuckerberg chose Eduardo because he was the head of the investment society at Harvard. Besides, he came from a rich family. Eduardo funded Mark $15,000 to make the website servers go live (Carlson, 2012). Later, Sean Parker joined the team, and was placed as president, adding domain knowledge6 to the start-up, as he was the founder of Napster (Holson, 2011). Napster is a peer-to-peer Internet server, where users were able to share files, such as music. 2

An opportunity is an approving set of circumstances that provide the entrepreneur with potential attractive margins and initial return rates (Wise, 2015). 3 In order for the new product or service be successful, it should be 10 times better than the existing ones – this is mainly because of the high switching costs (Wise, 2015). 4 Unmet need occurs when the available products or services do not fulfill consumers’ demand. 5 Business acumen refers to the set of skills required for running a high-growth organization. (Wise, 2015) 6 Domain knowledge refers to the expertise in a particular industry (Wise, 2015).

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At first, Facebook was restricted to Harvard students. Within 24 hours of launch, 1,200 students joined the social network (Phillips, 2007). Weeks later, students with valid university emails from the Ivy League colleges—as Columbia, Stanford, and Yale—were able to sign up, and eventually, all the national universities (Phillips, 2007). In September 2005, the website extended to high schools as well as international institutions (Phillips, 2007). In September 2006, the network became available to the public (Phillips, 2007). Silicon Valley In the summer of his sophomore year, in 2004, Zuckerberg along with his co-founders moved to Silicon Valley to meet venture capitalists7 who have heard about the start-up success. The team realized that their website has become a success, and leverage was necessary for expansion. Silicon Valley is known as the capital of technology corporations and venture capitals. After raising half a million dollars in funds during that summer, Zuckerberg decided to drop out of Harvard and settle in the Valley (Fingerman, 2014). After the continued success of Facebook, Yahoo made a significant bid to acquire the start-up with an initial offer of $1billion; however, the deal got rejected by Zuckerberg (Fingerman, 2014). In an interview with TIME magazine he defended his rejection by stating that “as a company we're very focused on what we're building and not as focused on the exit. We just believe that we're adding a certain amount of value to people's lives if we build a very good product” (Locke, 2007). In 2007, Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, received another astronomical offer of acquisition from Microsoft. The offer was 15 times greater than Yahoo’s. Yet again, the entrepreneur refused to sell claiming “I do not want to sell the company unless I keep control” (Warman, 2010). His rejection of Microsoft’s offer took the Silicon Valley by

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Venture capitalists are investors in start-ups with strong growth potential.

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storm. Steve Jobs commented on Zuckerberg’s decision by saying that “I only know him a little bit, but I admire him for not selling out, for wanting to make a company” (Yarow, 2011). Going Public On May 12th, 2012, Facebook decided to go public, releasing shares at $38, making it the third largest initial public offering (IPO) in history (Geron, 2012). Soon after the IPO, Zuckerberg’s net worth rose to $17 billion, making him one of the wealthiest people in the world (Geron, 2012). Today, Facebook is mass adopted, with almost one billion active users around the world. Approximately 85% of its daily active users are outside the United States (Facebook, 2015). Not a start-up anymore, Facebook has never stopped growing since, and as of today, it has 48 domestic and international offices with 12,000 employees (Facebook, 2015). Although the company struggled with making profits in its beginning years despite its wide success, as Zuckerberg, the CEO, was against introducing advertisements before gaining customer trust, in 2014 the company generated $12.5 billion in revenues (Williams, 2015). Industry Mark Zuckerberg is an agent of change in the field of virtual social networking. When Facebook first initiated, it was in point 1 of the S curve8, as it is considered one of the innovators of the industry. At point 1, consumer demands surpass the market supply, and therefore the market enters into a high-growth phase (Wise, 2015). Currently, the industry is considered one of the fastest growing industries with 1.8 billion users (Statista, 2015). Facebook undeniably has direct competitors, such as Twitter, Path, Flickr, and Snapchat. Instagram, a mobile photo sharing app had the potential to become direct threat to Facebook as well, but the latter managed to acquire it for $1billion dollars in 2012 (Stern, 2012). The social network industry is scalable in 8

The S-curve is a concept that highlights the diffusion of a product adoption over time (Wise, 2015).

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nature, which means the business can accept higher volumes without affecting its contribution margin (Wise, 2015). For example, new members do not increase Facebook variable costs, but they are worth plenty in revenues. Lessons Learned from Zuckerberg Zuckerberg had a vision of virtual communication and making the world more connected. His rejection of multiple million/billion dollar offers has proved that he has a high level of risk tolerance. Having internal locus of control9, he has successfully realized when was the right time to quit from school. Before launching his social network, he recognized that his idea was timely, durable, attractive, and able to create value for the users10. Zuckerberg received accusations and lawsuits from three fellow Harvard students claiming that he stole their idea. Nevertheless, he was still determined and focused on the project, showing his high adversity quotient11. Mark is also a social entrepreneur12. For instance, he started a campaign (internet.org) to make the Internet accessible to every individual around the world in the near future. Also, he plans to provide Internet to United Nations (UN) refugee camps, as he said “Connectivity will help refugees better access support from the aid community and maintain links to family and loved ones” (BBC, 2015). To sum up, Zuckerberg has given us many life and entrepreneurial lessons. Based on his journey, we draw that having a vision and following your passion are two fundamental keys for success. In addition, Zuckerberg has taught us that money should not be treated as the main

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Internal locus of control is a mutual trait among entrepreneurs, which is the belief that events are guided by personal decisions and efforts (Wise, 2015). 10 Timeliness, durability, attractiveness, and customer centrism are the main four characteristics of an opportunity (Wise, 2015). 11 Adversity quotient refers to ability to deal with devastating/discouraging events (Wise, 2015). 12 Social entrepreneurs build their companies with the ambition of solving social problems. Profits are not their main incentive. (Wise, 2015)

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incentive, but rather as a reward. Entrepreneurs can find business opportunities by listening to people complains, observing their pain, and spotting suboptimal solutions13. Lastly, releasing the service or product in the right place and time can increase the likelihood of success, consequently leading to creative destruction14, which has precisely been the case with Facebook.

References Carlson, N. (2012, May 15). EXCLUSIVE: How Mark Zuckerberg booted his co-founder out of the company. Business Insider. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/how-markzuckerberg-booted-his-co-founder-out-of-the-company-2012-5 13 14

Suboptimal solution occurs when the available products are inefficient (Wise, 2015)

Creative destruction occurs when a new product puts an end to the existing one, resulting in a drastic change in market shares (Wise, 2015)

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Facebook. (2015). Company info. Retrieved from Facebook Newsroom: http://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/ Fingerman, S. (2014, February 4). 'It was just the dumbest luck' — Facebook's first employees look back. Mashable. Retrieved fromhttp://mashable.com/2014/02/04/facebook-earlyemployees/#MVvQiC66Lkkk Geron, T. (2012, May 17). Facebook prices third-largest IPO ever, valued at $104 billion. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/05/17/facebookprices-ipo-at-38-per-share/ Holson, L. M. (2011, December 2011). Friending the New York cene. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/fashion/sean-parker-brings-facebookstyle-skills-to-new-york-social-scene.html?_r=0 Locke, L. (2007, July 17). The future of Facebook. TIME. Retrieved from http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1644040,00.html O'Brien, R. D. (2010, 08 09). The truth behind 'The social network'. The Daily Beast. Retrieved from http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/09/08/mark-zuckerberg-at-harvard-thetruth-behind-the-social-network.html Phillips, S. (2007, July 25). A brief history of Facebook. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/jul/25/media.newmedia Popper, N. (2011, 30 14). Meet Edward Zuckerberg, tech-savvy dentist (and Mark's father). Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/30/business/la-fizuckerberg-father-20110330 Telegraph, T. (2012, Feb 01). Facebook IPO: Mark Zuckerberg's journey from coder to billionaire Silicon Valley tycoon by the age of 27. The Telegraph. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/mark-zuckerberg/9053396/Facebook-IPO-MarkZuckerbergs-journey-from-coder-to-billionaire-Silicon-Valley-tycoon-by-the-age-of27.html Titcomb, J. (2015, July 10). Facebook music: Social network may rival Spotify and Apple with its own streaming service. The Telegraph. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/11728422/Facebook-Music-Socialnetwork-may-rival-Spotify-and-Apple-with-its-own-streaming-service.html Warman, M. (2010, December 10). Facebook rejected Microsoft offer. The Telegraph. Retrieved from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/8193860/Facebook-rejectedMicrosoft-offer.html

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Williams, R. (2015, January 30). Apple, Facebook and Microsoft: Q4 results 2014. Telegraph. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/11377068/Apple-Facebookand-Microsoft-Q4-results-2014.html Wise, S., Bygrave, W. D., & Zacharkis, A. (2015). ENTREPRENEURSHIP. Toronto, ON, Canada: Wiley. Yarow, J. (2011, October 23). Steve Jobs on Mark Zuckerberg: 'I admire him for not selling out.' Business Insider. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-on-markzuckerberg-2011-10...