Facebook Founder:What Nigerians Should Learn from him!

By Segun Ojo, Lagos
It was once said that everyday is a class,everybody is a teacher and every experience is a lesson.From here I take my move to look into the life of the world youngest billionaire and his success secretes at age 32.

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born May 14, 1984 in White Plains, New York.He is the son of dentist Edward Zuckerberg and psychiatrist Karen Kempner.He and his three sisters, Randi, Donna, and Arielle, were brought up in Dobbs Ferry, New York.On May 19, 2012, Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, got married and blessed with a daughter, Maxima Chan Zukerberg.

Zukerberg is an American computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur. He is best known as one of five co-founders of the social networking site Facebook. Zuckerberg is the chairman and chief executive of Facebook, Inc.

He took up writing software programs as a hobby in middle school, beginning with BASIC, with help from his father and a tutor (who called him a “prodigy”). In high school, he excelled in classic literature and fencing while studying at Phillips Exeter Academy.

He later attended Harvard University,to study computer science and psychology. In his early year, he wrote a program called Facemash as a “fun” project, letting students on the college’s network vote on other students’ photo attractiveness.Harvard administration was not amused, and Zuckerberg faced subsequent disciplinary action.  As a result of this and many others he was dropped out of school in 2004.Less than two months later, he launched Facebook from his dormitory room on February 4, 2004 with roommates Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes from New York who took Facebook to other campuses.

Zuckerberg is responsible for setting the overall direction and product strategy for the company. He leads the design of Facebook’s service and development of its core technology and infrastructure. He later moved the company to Palo Alto, California with Moskovitz and some friends, they leased a small house that served as an office. Over the summer, Zuckerberg met Peter Thiel who invested in the company.

The current net worth of Mark Zukerberg is $54.7 Billion,the youngest world billionaire; sixth on the list of world richest men; the third world richest man in Technology etc.Then,what can you learn from all these?

Follow me as i share with you lessons I derived from the early years of Mark Zuckerberg; when he had nothing but a dream. I think it’s worthwhile you have a look at his success secretes and learn from it.

1. Have a Big Dream

Most people think that Mark Zuckerberg emerged from the blues to become a billionaire; they think he built Facebook with just a snap of fingers. The truth is they are wrong. Mark Zuckerberg was not an overnight success. His journey to fame and fortune began as a dream; a desire he was willing to sacrifice all for. So if you want to replicate the success of Mark Zuckerberg; if you want to become rich and famous like him, it starts with your desire. What do you want from this life? Where do you want to be in the next ten years?Think about it…

2. Put Your Thinking Faculty Into Action By Aiming High Every Now and Then

Facebook was a project on Mark Zuckerberg’s computer and he would have opted to sell it off back then but he refused. Why? He refused to sell it off because he wasn’t looking for a payoff; he wasn’t interested in a paid job, he was more interested in changing the world. Facebook was a small project but Mark Zuckerberg’s dream wasn’t a small one.

3. Embrace The Trends of Technology Advancement

Facebook never would have happened without a society increasingly reliant on the internet and an accompanying flexibility towards its evolution. Zuckerberg’s project succeeded only because of its emphasis on community and connectivity, but because it understood the potential inherent in emerging and developing technologies and did its best to take advantage of them. As a result, its openness towards utilizing everything the internet and all its myriad codes and protocols and programs had to offer led it to become one of the cornerstones of the so-called Web 2.0 movement. Social networking and greater interconnectivity with more sophisticated characterized this era of internet history.

4. Do It Yourself Is One Of The Secretes.
When Zuckerberg first conceived of Facebook, he collaborated with other Harvard computer science students – Chris Hughes, Eduardo Saverin, and Dustin Moskovitz – to draw up the source code and collaborate on a design. The team never needed to outsource. At the time, all the skills the team needed to start were right there amongst themselves. Self-reliance is the best way to ensure a quality product and never have to compromise based on someone else’s preferences and limitations.

5. Stick With What You Know How To Do Best

According to a philosophy by a scholar, it is also a good idea to stay within known abilities. Never try and push something that does not fit. Zuckerberg and his small band of cohorts succeeded because they started from a solid, comfortable, and knowledgeable base means the difference between offering a reliable product that people want and a questionable one that may elicit skepticism. Exceptions do exist, of course, but generally staying with known talents and resources yields more financial fruit.

6. Learn To Take Risk

No entrepreneur ever became successful without undertaking an atom of risk. Mark Zuckerberg also had his fair share of risk. When Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college to focus on building Facebook; he took risk. By confronting Google; he took risk. Facebook itself was a risky venture that paid off immensely. Entrepreneurship is all about risk taking. Without risk, the world will remain stagnant.

7.Strive Towards Building Communities, Not Profits.

Facebook started out as a directory to help Harvard students recognize and better connect with one another. It was never launched as the surprisingly lucrative money-making venture it eventually became. This ties in with keeping an open mind regarding demographics and making an honest effort to engage an audience by acknowledging trends without fully relying on them. People love it when the emphasis lay on them and their needs as opposed to making money, and they ate up Facebook because that is how it advertises itself. There is no shame in thinking and caring about money, of course, as it is a legitimate concern necessary to sustain living. But profits flood in if the main focus lay less with finances and more with nurturing the health of families and friends.In the end, Mark Zuckerberg never really did anything too complex to rake in his fortune. Simplicity and community dictated the route he eventually took towards billionaire status, and these relatively straightforward goals have plenty to offer anyone aspiring to create their own businesses and services.