How you can find Your startup dream
To be in your own wildly successful startup, you either need to
build it, or find the right one in its infancy.
Finding one, the right startup, requires judgement and luck.
Obviously I had luck since Facebook contacted me, but luck favors
the prepared, as I was a heavy user of LinkedIn. The judgement
part was easy for me, since Facebook was hot at so many
colleges, it was obvious that it would win at all colleges. May you
have it so easy.
Here are some key ideas:
• Everyone at Facebook before me knew Zuck well. So, stick with
your brilliant friends, and encourage them to succeed!
• Since you can only attend to a finite number of brilliant friends,
choose wisely. If someone you know has what looks to you like
a powerful idea, figure out how you can help drive it forward, in
whatever amount of time and energy you can contribute.
• Once you are engaged and things are looking good, become
indispensable. The founder most needs completely trustworthy,
effective implementers, who can read his mind from knowing
him so well. So much work needs doing to push out a new
22 Inside Facebook
Copyright, Karel Baloun, 2006. All rights reserved.
company, whichever of the founders’ thoughts you can do well
is precious. Your own thoughts about what the company should
do are probably just a distraction.
• Be flexible, become good at whatever it is that needs doing
most. Young people are absolutely best at this; it could be your
unique advantage.19 Dustin was Zuck’s most trusted right-hand
man from the first dorm room days, and he grew the site to all
colleges, learning everything necessary to scale the site as he
went along, learning programming and technology from scratch.
• Do. It. Don’t talk or question. Do. A startup needs too much
done too fast, in whatever way.
So which one of the hundreds of ideas your dozens of friends
generate is the next billion dollar company? The first test is
passion. Your friend will become convinced that this is big, and
will be putting all of their life energy into it, or related parts of it.
Zuck actually came to Palo Alto to breathe big life into his
wirehog, a network file sharing system, but was still intensely
passionate about Facebook, so even if you had tagged along for
wirehog, you’d still end up on a winning product.
Karel Baloun 23
I’ve found something to put here. Your turn.
19 we old guys are screwed. seriously, only ones eager to adapt will get back in.
perhaps this makes us more likely to choose the “build it” rather than “join it”
option, but i haven’t seen evidence that we are more likely to succeed at building
it. if anything, i’d guess that success is correlated to the number of well
attempted failures, and even 30-somethings who’ve lived in a corporations for
many, many years may not have attempted any. Paul Graham, quotes Zod Nazem,
in charge of yahoo engineering, who says he’d rather hire someone who’s tried
their own startup and failed than a corporate engineering worker bee.
The second test is big vision in a few small steps: an idea has to
become a big deal, without very much time or work. Even complex
ideas must start as a single, simple project, which can easily be
understood and finished. It is a good sign if the “idea ladder”
from the simple idea to the big vision is well worked out. It is a
bad sign if the leader isn’t clear on what to finish first, or what
“finished” means20.
The third test is the immediate and energetic support of others
who are involved. While some artists are never understood in
their own time, popular websites are usually successful early, and
at least a core of supporters really can understand and share the
vision, like with digg.com or reddit.com. Habitual nay-sayers and
other losers are present everywhere to criticize and tear down
creative ideas, so they can be filtered out and ignored, but
respectable voices who believe in the idea should be involved,
enough to participate in some way. The idea leader may have
trouble involving others (everyone is busy) but if you are to be the
very first one partner on an idea, remember that you are probably
not the first person who’s heard the pitch, so think why everyone
else wasn’t excited. Facebook was so popular at Harvard right
from the first day, its success was evident immediately - it was
providing information available nowhere else, and would never be
on google or wikipedia. Some successful sites such as Ebay need
24 Inside Facebook
Copyright, Karel Baloun, 2006. All rights reserved.
20 Noah: I disagree. If you created Google, could you explain it from the beginning
before searching became the norm? I think the idea is more about creating
something that is truly unique and immediately useful.
time or product changes to get big, but you can usually wait until
immediately after that corner is turned to pour in your energy.
The fourth test is low user churn and increasing usage per
user: whether users of the site tend to become more involved and
more attached to the site over time, or whether they drift off. If
existing users love the site, then it is likely that if money or
energy are spent in telling other to use the site, it will work.
Facebook has about two-thirds of its members returning every
day, a startling statistic which was true from inception.
Findarticles.com, a useful content site where millions of
subscription magazine articles are available for free, seems like an
amazing idea, but it immediately leaks away a vast majority of its
search engine referred users. If you consider participating on a
site with high churn, figure out how to solve that problem first, or
keep active on other ideas until it is solved.
Some other factors you can more or less ignore. Facebook was
financially stable already when I arrived, but whether the site is
making money or not only matters relative to how long the site
can continue to exist at its current level of spending. So if you
want to join a startup, go to a place where there are a lot of them,
and get to know - and know well - the people who are making
them, while looking for the big winner, or while making your own
Karel Baloun 25
I’ve found something to put here. Your turn.
on the side. Strategic thinking like this will increase your chances
of finding the next Facebook size opportunity21.
To be in your own wildly successful startup, you either need to
build it, or find the right one in its infancy.
Finding one, the right startup, requires judgement and luck.
Obviously I had luck since Facebook contacted me, but luck favors
the prepared, as I was a heavy user of LinkedIn. The judgement
part was easy for me, since Facebook was hot at so many
colleges, it was obvious that it would win at all colleges. May you
have it so easy.
Here are some key ideas:
• Everyone at Facebook before me knew Zuck well. So, stick with
your brilliant friends, and encourage them to succeed!
• Since you can only attend to a finite number of brilliant friends,
choose wisely. If someone you know has what looks to you like
a powerful idea, figure out how you can help drive it forward, in
whatever amount of time and energy you can contribute.
• Once you are engaged and things are looking good, become
indispensable. The founder most needs completely trustworthy,
effective implementers, who can read his mind from knowing
him so well. So much work needs doing to push out a new
22 Inside Facebook
Copyright, Karel Baloun, 2006. All rights reserved.
company, whichever of the founders’ thoughts you can do well
is precious. Your own thoughts about what the company should
do are probably just a distraction.
• Be flexible, become good at whatever it is that needs doing
most. Young people are absolutely best at this; it could be your
unique advantage.19 Dustin was Zuck’s most trusted right-hand
man from the first dorm room days, and he grew the site to all
colleges, learning everything necessary to scale the site as he
went along, learning programming and technology from scratch.
• Do. It. Don’t talk or question. Do. A startup needs too much
done too fast, in whatever way.
So which one of the hundreds of ideas your dozens of friends
generate is the next billion dollar company? The first test is
passion. Your friend will become convinced that this is big, and
will be putting all of their life energy into it, or related parts of it.
Zuck actually came to Palo Alto to breathe big life into his
wirehog, a network file sharing system, but was still intensely
passionate about Facebook, so even if you had tagged along for
wirehog, you’d still end up on a winning product.
Karel Baloun 23
I’ve found something to put here. Your turn.
19 we old guys are screwed. seriously, only ones eager to adapt will get back in.
perhaps this makes us more likely to choose the “build it” rather than “join it”
option, but i haven’t seen evidence that we are more likely to succeed at building
it. if anything, i’d guess that success is correlated to the number of well
attempted failures, and even 30-somethings who’ve lived in a corporations for
many, many years may not have attempted any. Paul Graham, quotes Zod Nazem,
in charge of yahoo engineering, who says he’d rather hire someone who’s tried
their own startup and failed than a corporate engineering worker bee.
The second test is big vision in a few small steps: an idea has to
become a big deal, without very much time or work. Even complex
ideas must start as a single, simple project, which can easily be
understood and finished. It is a good sign if the “idea ladder”
from the simple idea to the big vision is well worked out. It is a
bad sign if the leader isn’t clear on what to finish first, or what
“finished” means20.
The third test is the immediate and energetic support of others
who are involved. While some artists are never understood in
their own time, popular websites are usually successful early, and
at least a core of supporters really can understand and share the
vision, like with digg.com or reddit.com. Habitual nay-sayers and
other losers are present everywhere to criticize and tear down
creative ideas, so they can be filtered out and ignored, but
respectable voices who believe in the idea should be involved,
enough to participate in some way. The idea leader may have
trouble involving others (everyone is busy) but if you are to be the
very first one partner on an idea, remember that you are probably
not the first person who’s heard the pitch, so think why everyone
else wasn’t excited. Facebook was so popular at Harvard right
from the first day, its success was evident immediately - it was
providing information available nowhere else, and would never be
on google or wikipedia. Some successful sites such as Ebay need
24 Inside Facebook
Copyright, Karel Baloun, 2006. All rights reserved.
20 Noah: I disagree. If you created Google, could you explain it from the beginning
before searching became the norm? I think the idea is more about creating
something that is truly unique and immediately useful.
time or product changes to get big, but you can usually wait until
immediately after that corner is turned to pour in your energy.
The fourth test is low user churn and increasing usage per
user: whether users of the site tend to become more involved and
more attached to the site over time, or whether they drift off. If
existing users love the site, then it is likely that if money or
energy are spent in telling other to use the site, it will work.
Facebook has about two-thirds of its members returning every
day, a startling statistic which was true from inception.
Findarticles.com, a useful content site where millions of
subscription magazine articles are available for free, seems like an
amazing idea, but it immediately leaks away a vast majority of its
search engine referred users. If you consider participating on a
site with high churn, figure out how to solve that problem first, or
keep active on other ideas until it is solved.
Some other factors you can more or less ignore. Facebook was
financially stable already when I arrived, but whether the site is
making money or not only matters relative to how long the site
can continue to exist at its current level of spending. So if you
want to join a startup, go to a place where there are a lot of them,
and get to know - and know well - the people who are making
them, while looking for the big winner, or while making your own
Karel Baloun 25
I’ve found something to put here. Your turn.
on the side. Strategic thinking like this will increase your chances
of finding the next Facebook size opportunity21.
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