Mpho Cornelius-Molema’s Post

I was employee #30 at Facebook. Then I got fired. Now I’m the CEO of a $100 million company. 10 non-obvious lessons I learned from working directly under Mark Zuckerberg: 10) Focus on ONE goal Mark’s goal was 1 billion users. Every idea we’d bring, he’d ask, “Does this help user growth or not?” If it wasn’t driving toward that goal, we didn’t do it. You don’t 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. • Free lunches • Free dry cleaning • Paid for our apartments • Paid for our parking tickets Treating your employees well improves work and boosts morale. It doesn’t have to be money – 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 don’t 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 period in one of our documents. A period (!!) Mark set a high standard of excellence for us. It was challenging, but also super rewarding. 4) Give ownership to the team Surprisingly, Mark wasn’t 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) “People” not “Users” Mark would yell at us if we said “users”. “They’re human beings”, he’d 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. At AppSumo, we run paid trials with potential teammates before bringing them on full-time. 1) Have a big-ass 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 the shit out of us. Follow Noah Kagan for more content like this! 💚

I was employee #30 at Facebook. Then I got fired. Now I’m the CEO of a $100 million company. 10 non-obvious lessons I learned from working directly under Mark Zuckerberg: 10) Focus on ONE goal Mark’s goal was 1 billion users. Every idea we’d bring, he’d ask, “Does this help user growth or not?” If it wasn’t driving toward that goal, we didn’t do it. You don’t 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. • Free lunches • Free dry cleaning • Paid for our apartments • Paid for our parking tickets Treating your employees well improves work and boosts morale. It doesn’t have to be money – 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 don’t 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 period in one of our documents. A period (!!) Mark set a high standard of excellence for us. It was challenging, but also super rewarding. 4) Give ownership to the team Surprisingly, Mark wasn’t 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) “People” not “Users” Mark would yell at us if we said “users”. “They’re human beings”, he’d 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. At AppSumo, we run paid trials with potential teammates before bringing them on full-time. 1) Have a big-ass 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 the shit out of us. Follow Noah Kagan for more content like this! 💚

I was employee #30 at Facebook. Then I got fired. Now I’m the CEO of a $100 million company. 10 non-obvious lessons I learned from working directly under Mark Zuckerberg: 10) Focus on ONE goal Mark’s goal was 1 billion users. Every idea we’d bring, he’d ask, “Does this help user growth or not?” If it wasn’t driving toward that goal, we didn’t do it. You don’t 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. • Free lunches • Free dry cleaning • Paid for our apartments • Paid for our parking tickets Treating your employees well improves work and boosts morale. It doesn’t have to be money – 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 don’t 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 period in one of our documents. A period (!!) Mark set a high standard of excellence for us. It was challenging, but also super rewarding. 4) Give ownership to the team Surprisingly, Mark wasn’t 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) “People” not “Users” Mark would yell at us if we said “users”. “They’re human beings”, he’d 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. At AppSumo, we run paid trials with potential teammates before bringing them on full-time. 1) Have a big-ass 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 the shit out of us. Follow Noah Kagan for more content like this! 💚

I was employee #30 at Facebook. Then I got fired. Now I’m the CEO of a $100 million company. 10 non-obvious lessons I learned from working directly under Mark Zuckerberg: 10) Focus on ONE goal Mark’s goal was 1 billion users. Every idea we’d bring, he’d ask, “Does this help user growth or not?” If it wasn’t driving toward that goal, we didn’t do it. You don’t 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. • Free lunches • Free dry cleaning • Paid for our apartments • Paid for our parking tickets Treating your employees well improves work and boosts morale. It doesn’t have to be money – 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 don’t 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 period in one of our documents. A period (!!) Mark set a high standard of excellence for us. It was challenging, but also super rewarding. 4) Give ownership to the team Surprisingly, Mark wasn’t 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) “People” not “Users” Mark would yell at us if we said “users”. “They’re human beings”, he’d 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. At AppSumo, we run paid trials with potential teammates before bringing them on full-time. 1) Have a big-ass 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 the shit out of us. Follow Noah Kagan for more content like this! 💚

I was employee #30 at Facebook. Then I got fired. For a long time, I was bitter that they let me go. But the lessons I learned from Mark and Facebook helped me build a $100 million/year company. 10 lessons I learned from working directly under Mark Zuckerberg: == 1) Focus on ONE goal “Mark, we’re not profitable. Let’s try selling tickets inside Facebook events,” I pleaded. He said no. Then he took a dry-erase marker and wrote on the board: GROWTH. Mark’s goal was 1 billion users. Every idea we’d bring, he’d ask, “Does this help growth or not?” If it wasn’t driving toward that goal, we didn’t do it. You don’t grow fast by doing many things, but by doing ONE thing extremely well. == 2) Move fast At Facebook, it was normal to work 12+ hours a day. Mark constantly pushed us to have a sense of urgency. One of his internal mantras was “Move fast and break things”. “Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.” he’d say. We shipped several updates to the site every day. In comparison, companies like Microsoft would take months to write out product details, discuss them in a lot of meetings, and finally build them. As a startup, your biggest advantage against giant companies is speed. == 3) Only hire A PLUS players Mark would only hire people he would be happy to work for. Even our customer support team was filled with Harvard PhD’s. The people from Facebook have gone on to help found Asana, Quora, AppSumo 😉, OpenAI, and more. When you’re in a startup, the first ten people you hire are the most critical. Each makes up 10% of the company. If three are not great, that’s 30% of your company! A startup depends on great people much more than a big company. == 4) Treat your employees well Mark recognized that having a work environment you want to work in would appeal to potential employees... And make the existing ones proud to be there (and stay later at night). Facebook did a lot of things that are the norm now: 1. A fancy office in one of the most expensive neighborhoods of Silicon Valley 2. Hyper competitive salaries 3. $1000 office chairs for everyone 4. Comped PowerBook and BlackBerry 5. Delicious breakfast, lunch, and dinner catered 6. Fridge stocked with any drink you can imagine 7. All expenses paid company trips to Las Vegas 8. Free happy hours every Friday 9. Free laundry/dry cleaning service 10. Subsidized housing. $600/month if you lived within 1 mile of the office. 11. Summer housing/Winter Cabin that anyone could use == 5) Scratch your own itch Many people start businesses in a category they don’t know much about or have an interest in because they’re told it’s “hot” or “trending”. At the start, Mark never intended to build a company. He was just trying to help connect people at college. Build selfishly, share selflessly. == Whoops... looks like I hit the character limit. Read the rest here: 👇👇 https://lnkd.in/e_6F_9hs

I was employee #30 at Facebook. Then I got fired. For a long time, I was bitter that they let me go. But the lessons I learned from Mark and Facebook helped me build a $100 million/year company. 10 lessons I learned from working directly under Mark Zuckerberg: == 1) Focus on ONE goal “Mark, we’re not profitable. Let’s try selling tickets inside Facebook events,” I pleaded. He said no. Then he took a dry-erase marker and wrote on the board: GROWTH. Mark’s goal was 1 billion users. Every idea we’d bring, he’d ask, “Does this help growth or not?” If it wasn’t driving toward that goal, we didn’t do it. You don’t grow fast by doing many things, but by doing ONE thing extremely well. == 2) Move fast At Facebook, it was normal to work 12+ hours a day. Mark constantly pushed us to have a sense of urgency. One of his internal mantras was “Move fast and break things”. “Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.” he’d say. We shipped several updates to the site every day. In comparison, companies like Microsoft would take months to write out product details, discuss them in a lot of meetings, and finally build them. As a startup, your biggest advantage against giant companies is speed. == 3) Only hire A PLUS players Mark would only hire people he would be happy to work for. Even our customer support team was filled with Harvard PhD’s. The people from Facebook have gone on to help found Asana, Quora, AppSumo 😉, OpenAI, and more. When you’re in a startup, the first ten people you hire are the most critical. Each makes up 10% of the company. If three are not great, that’s 30% of your company! A startup depends on great people much more than a big company. == 4) Treat your employees well Mark recognized that having a work environment you want to work in would appeal to potential employees... And make the existing ones proud to be there (and stay later at night). Facebook did a lot of things that are the norm now: 1. A fancy office in one of the most expensive neighborhoods of Silicon Valley 2. Hyper competitive salaries 3. $1000 office chairs for everyone 4. Comped PowerBook and BlackBerry 5. Delicious breakfast, lunch, and dinner catered 6. Fridge stocked with any drink you can imagine 7. All expenses paid company trips to Las Vegas 8. Free happy hours every Friday 9. Free laundry/dry cleaning service 10. Subsidized housing. $600/month if you lived within 1 mile of the office. 11. Summer housing/Winter Cabin that anyone could use == 5) Scratch your own itch Many people start businesses in a category they don’t know much about or have an interest in because they’re told it’s “hot” or “trending”. At the start, Mark never intended to build a company. He was just trying to help connect people at college. Build selfishly, share selflessly. == Whoops... looks like I hit the character limit. Read the rest here: 👇👇 https://lnkd.in/e_6F_9hs

I was employee #30 at Facebook. Then I got fired. For a long time, I was bitter that they let me go. But the lessons I learned from Mark and Facebook helped me build a $100 million/year company. 10 lessons I learned from working directly under Mark Zuckerberg: == 1) Focus on ONE goal “Mark, we’re not profitable. Let’s try selling tickets inside Facebook events,” I pleaded. He said no. Then he took a dry-erase marker and wrote on the board: GROWTH. Mark’s goal was 1 billion users. Every idea we’d bring, he’d ask, “Does this help growth or not?” If it wasn’t driving toward that goal, we didn’t do it. You don’t grow fast by doing many things, but by doing ONE thing extremely well. == 2) Move fast At Facebook, it was normal to work 12+ hours a day. Mark constantly pushed us to have a sense of urgency. One of his internal mantras was “Move fast and break things”. “Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.” he’d say. We shipped several updates to the site every day. In comparison, companies like Microsoft would take months to write out product details, discuss them in a lot of meetings, and finally build them. As a startup, your biggest advantage against giant companies is speed. == 3) Only hire A PLUS players Mark would only hire people he would be happy to work for. Even our customer support team was filled with Harvard PhD’s. The people from Facebook have gone on to help found Asana, Quora, AppSumo 😉, OpenAI, and more. When you’re in a startup, the first ten people you hire are the most critical. Each makes up 10% of the company. If three are not great, that’s 30% of your company! A startup depends on great people much more than a big company. == 4) Treat your employees well Mark recognized that having a work environment you want to work in would appeal to potential employees... And make the existing ones proud to be there (and stay later at night). Facebook did a lot of things that are the norm now: 1. A fancy office in one of the most expensive neighborhoods of Silicon Valley 2. Hyper competitive salaries 3. $1000 office chairs for everyone 4. Comped PowerBook and BlackBerry 5. Delicious breakfast, lunch, and dinner catered 6. Fridge stocked with any drink you can imagine 7. All expenses paid company trips to Las Vegas 8. Free happy hours every Friday 9. Free laundry/dry cleaning service 10. Subsidized housing. $600/month if you lived within 1 mile of the office. 11. Summer housing/Winter Cabin that anyone could use == 5) Scratch your own itch Many people start businesses in a category they don’t know much about or have an interest in because they’re told it’s “hot” or “trending”. At the start, Mark never intended to build a company. He was just trying to help connect people at college. Build selfishly, share selflessly. == Whoops... looks like I hit the character limit. Read the rest here: 👇👇 https://lnkd.in/e_6F_9hs