Many things about it are remarkable, but I’d like to focus on only one: how Facebook was able to raise so much money when its actual usage was so small.1 By all accounts, what impressed investors the most were two facts about Facebook’s early growth. The first fact was the raw amount of time Facebook’s active users spent on the site. More than half of the users came back to the site every single day.2 This is an example of how a company can validate its value hypothesis—that customers find the product valuable. The second impressive thing about Facebook’s early traction was the rate at which
...more
