Think big. Start small. You should always think of the bigger picture (i.e. Facebook for everyone in the world), because you want to make sure that you enable yourself to grow towards that point. Using Steve Jobs' analogy, it's about anticipating where the dots will be. Or as Wayne Gretzky puts ...
They met a need for lots of people. Their values lead to long term success, but their short term growth was due to meeting a need in the marketplace and doing really well.
Everything you do (in life and as an entrepreneur) should start with an underlying passion. If you aren't pursuing the things you're most passionate about, you're doing it wrong (or just for the wrong reasons). IMHO. So in that regard, I'd highly recommend reading Simon Sinek's "Start With Why"....
Read the book What Would Google Do?! Their business models peaked at the right times and their brand is sticky because the technologies work. They make the complicated world of information on internet simple to navigate. Like the Apple products, it is a tool that anyone can use and feel good...
Without an insider's perspective, my guess is that Facebook did a Series A because it made the most sense for the business at the time. In 2005 a Series A was very different than one now, and you could make the argument that today it would be called another seed round. That said, Facebook at th...
The core underlying factor for this is that platforms and behaviors took hold which did two crucial things for commerce, communication, and entertainment driven companies. The first was provide a graph to leverage for quick scale, Zynga on Facebook being the best example. Many others were able to...
Mine. :-) Seriously: The two mistakes I see with people and blogs is (a) spending too much time reading instead of doing, and (b) reading blogs which don't align with their own business, and therefore the advice therein isn't necessarily good FOR THEM (even if awesome for others!), and theref...
You have to offer something different, and specialization is a great way to build mass. Friendster and MySpace were open to anyone from the start. It's harder to manage growth of a community in that way. Facebook, by restricting its use to college students first, then to graduates with alumni em...
I originally answered this question in Quora. Here's my interpretation: Very tough to sleep most nights of the week. Weekends don't mean anything to you anymore. Closing a round of financing is not a relief. It means more people are depending on you to turn their investment into 20 times wha...
Any time I've done work in a resort area, our success has always depended upon string relationships with the actual resorts. Have you begun any sort of grass roots work at this point? Started to form relationships with those resorts without significant food and beverage outlets? Feel free to ...