Oxstones Investment Club™We are still at the infancy stage of the Internet transforming into the Social Internet. As investors wait for this company to go public for a chance to invest, I believe the book: The Facebook Effect captures the story as well as any other book. This book makes me believe that a Facebook stock may end up making Google look like a lemonade stand in comparison. People use Google to find a web destination, Facebook is the destination for its users. Google has to try to covertly figure out how to target customers for advertisers while customers give Facebook the needed information. This is an amazing time we live in and can not imagine a scenirio where a Facebook IPO does not double in the first year and is not the most sought after stock for fund managers as Google was in the past.
Here is the book that tells the first chapter of the history of this fascinating company.
Not only do I think this book is a five star book, but it is also one of my favorite books I have read out of the thousand in my personal library.
This book has many dynamics. On the surface it is the story of how Mark Zuckerberg created the company Thefacebook (the original name) at Harvard and how it survived, thrived, and then became a worldwide phenomenon. But that is just he tip of the iceberg.
The story of Mark Zuckerberg is one of the greatest entrepreneurial stories in history, up there with Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett. As history plays out he could go down as a genius at the level of Thomas Edison or Henry Ford. As many of these great men did, he started with only his passion and his intelligence. He created Thefacebook by writing the code mostly himself and renting a $35 server. These are very humble beginnings. He created an online facebook like the hard copy ones that colleges gave out to freshmen each year. However he made it a living one, online, where the pictures could be updated, friends could see each others profiles, and also who had the same classes with them. It was a sensation, he rolled it out to other schools and never quit expanding and growing.
Zuckerberg made great decisions about his business. He took in workaholic partners from the beginning, he controlled the growth so he could keep up with the strain on his network, he did not allow advertisers to interfere with the experience. His motto, growth first, revenue second. He moved his company to Palo Alto, California to be near the technology capital of the world:Silicon Valley and Venture Capital. He hired Sean Parker as the first President of his company who knew the ends and outs of retaining power while raising capital. Parker was the one who changed the company’s name to Facebook and was a mentor to Mark.
Zuckerberg continued on with amazing successes like creating the News Feed so members were able to just watch their friends news unfold in a streamer with out having to click on their profile page. He created commercial pages that brought businesses on to his site. Later he made Facebook like a platform where others could build applications to run on. He opened up facebook to High School students and then the world one step at a time. He grew his company to a $20 billion market valuation in a matter of years.
This book at its core is the story of how a college kid built a web site in his dorm room that changed the world and made him a billionaire. This is what capitalism is all about. The story is also engrossing like a novel with the way he maneuvered around others and won time and time again both personally and in leading his company to many victories over rivals.
Many do not know that Zuckerburg was offered millions for a software program he and his partner designed in high school. He turned it down and went on to college. Through the book you see that it is really not about the money. Like many entrepreneurs it is about creating, following a dream, and making a difference. He just didn’t care about the material things, living in a bare apartment and donning blue jeans,a T shirt and sandals even while he was a billionaire on paper.
Mark Zuckerberg seized the time, the opportunity, and the moment with his knowledge and skills to finally create the social network site users wanted and investors had been searching for since the late 1990’s. Well it is here, the game changer, the site that is more vital to have than a listing in the phone book or an e-mail address. This is the new form of communication where the news is your personal news, the users create the content, and it is a personalized experience for each person.
I predict mark Zuckerberg is this generation’s Bill Gates and Facebook is just beginning its growth as it changes the internet from a place where you search to a place where the information you care about comes to you.
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Tags: big ideas, Bill Gates, capitalism, creating, entrepreneurs, facebook, following dreams, game changer, Google, great business decisions, Great Minds, growth first, history, humble beginnings, intelligence, investments, making a difference, management, Mark Zuckerberg, new businesses, passion, patterns, personal news, personalized experience, revenue second, Sean Parker, silicon valley, social internet, social media, Social Networks, start-ups, Steve Jobs, trends. leadership, user content, Venture Capital, Warren Buffett, workaholic partners