Our hero Zuck spent his childhood building stuff for himself, but when he got to college, he made CourseMatch, which showed him what classes his friends wanted to take, and 1000-2000 people put their classes in it in only 2 weeks before the server died (because it was running on a laptop next to a steamy shower). How did Facebook win in schools that already had other systems? Facebook focused on *real* identity. (PG says anonymity has its drawbacks -- have you ever seen the comments on Hacker News?) Met his wife at his kicking-out party over Facemash, but he wasnt kicked out of school. His little sister bet him she would finish college before he did. Did something like Facebook have to start as a system for college students? Didnt have to be. What mistakes should you avoid making when trying to start a company? Dont even try to avoid mistakes. Just try to learn quickly and dont give up. He learned management by trial and error. Hire people youd work for yourself. Teams need to make better decisions than any individual would. He was inspired by platform from Windows back at Harvard to Apple & Google today and Peter Tiel was highly forcused on network effects, and saying heres the 1 thing that matters. Connecting everyone as quickly as possible, enable people to make friend connections. Had lockdowns to react to [FB wont allow me to include the name] which was an exact clone, but started where they werent on the west coast. But did it matter? PG advises startups to ignore competitors. Zuck says you can ignore strategic competitors who are doing something related, but you have to pay attention to exact clones. Internationalize as early as possible, so exact clones are a problem. In Russia, Vkontakte has made such a good clone of Facebook that Facebook hasnt been able to dislodge them. Plus they have illegal file downloads.
Posted on: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 01:32:59 +0000
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