09/05/2024
So I stumbled into this amazing post by a former employee of Mark Zuckerberg, and I found it worthy to share to my ladies here.
We're all are learning to build our empires right?
Let's learn from the best.
He said, "I was an employee at Facebook. Then I got fired.
Now Iโm the CEO of a $100 million company.
These are 10 non-obvious lessons I learned from working directly under Mark Zuckerberg:
10) Focus on ONE goal
Markโs goal was 1 billion users.
Every idea weโd bring, heโd ask, โDoes this help user growth or not?โ
If it wasnโt driving toward that goal, we didnโt do it.
You donโt grow fast by doing many things, but by doing ONE thing extremely well.
9) Move fast
At Facebook, it was normal to work 12+ hours a day.
We were constantly pushing out new features and letting our users give feedback.
As a startup, your biggest advantage against giant companies is speed.
8) Only hire A players
Mark would only hire people he would be happy to work for.
Even our customer support team was filled with Harvard Ph.D.s.
The people from Facebook have gone on to found Asana, Quora, AppSumo, OpenAi, and more.
A startup depends on great people much more than a big company.
7) Treat your employees well
Facebook did a lot of things that are the norm now.
โข Free lunches
โข Free dry cleaning
โข Paid for our apartments
โข Paid for our parking tickets
Treating your employees well improves work and boosts morale.
It doesnโt have to be money โ people just want to feel acknowledged.
6) Scratch your own itch
I used Facebook to connect with friends and meet girls.
Which meant if I saw something wrong, I could fix it myself.
Most people start businesses in categories they donโt have an interest in.
Build selfishly, share selflessly.
5) Pay attention to details
I remember Mark sent me an email at 3 am telling me that I missed a fullstop in one of our documents. A fullstop(!!)
Mark set a high standard of excellence for us.
It was challenging, but also super rewarding.
4) Give ownership to the team
Surprisingly, Mark wasnโt super involved in the day-to-day operations. He coded some of the time, but mostly was focused on the macro vision.
He was great about giving people a goal, some boundaries, and coaching them from the sidelines.
3) โPeopleโ not โUsersโ
Mark would yell at us if we said โusersโ.
โTheyโre human beingsโ, heโd tell us.
On the other side of that username or email address is a fellow human.
2) Hire fast, fire fast
I got fired in 9 months. My boss was fired the day I started. My next boss was fired a month later.
Mark was intense about keeping A players only.
1) Have a big-sized vision
We were all in our 20s when Mark was offered $1B to sell Facebook.
When he said no, he sent a message to all of us and the world.
His goal was to connect the ENTIRE world. That inspired us.
Written by Noah Kagan
๐ท META AI
