Hockey Stick Growth Charts
Facebook: Stage-By-Stage: How They Did It
Tinkering/Pre-Start (Pre-2004)
- Mark Zuckerberg creates “Facemash,” a site asking the user to choose which face is more attractive between two options; Zuckerberg gains Harvard notoriety
- Zuckerberg works on a project for Harvard students and alumni to connect, HarvardConnection, that later becomes ConnectU
- Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Chris Hughes, and Dustin Moskovitz launch their dorm room project on February 4, 2004 (Zuckerberg is a 19-year-old Harvard sophomore)
- Site launches as “thefacebook.com”
The Blade Years (2004-2006)
- February 2004: Harvard seniors accuse Zuckerberg of stealing their idea to create HarvardConnection; turns into a lawsuit
- September 2004: PayPal CEO, Peter Thiel, invests $500,000 at a $5 million valuation
- December 2004: Over 1 million people are registered for Facebook
- August 2005: Site officially becomes Facebook.com; purchases address for $200,000
- September 2006: Anyone with an email address can register for Facebook
The Growth Inflection Point (2006)
- Year 3 growth inflection point: $46,568,879 revenue (grew 417 percent from 2005)
- Seven million users between high schools and universities (80 percent of the student social networking market)
- Turns down $1 billion acquisition offer from Yahoo
Surging Growth (2007-2010)
- 2007: Judge rules that Zuckerberg is not guilty of stealing the HarvardConnection idea
- August 2009: Facebook acquires FriendFeed, a real-time news aggregator
- 2010: Changes privacy settings; survives the threats of people quitting Facebook
- 2010: Introduces “Like” button
- 2010: Movie The Social Network debuts
- 2010: Grows to 400 million users visiting the site per month
The Hockey Stick Principles: The 4 Key Stages to Entrepreneurial Success
For anyone toying with the idea of founding their own company or launching a new product, this accessible guide will teach you what to expect when you first start out—from the tinkering phase, to the blade years, the crucial growth inflection point, and onward to surging growth.
