Ask PG: Would Facebook have been invited for a YC interview? | Hacker News Reader

Ask PG: Would Facebook have been invited for a YC interview?

9 points6thSigma8 comments

Assuming Facebook was just in the idea stage, would you have invited Mark Zuckerberg in for an interview?

His prior experience was pretty impressive (Harvard, Facemash, Synapse) but I assume he would've applied as a single founder. Without a demo, would a social network for college students in the days of Friendster and Myspace have been invited for an interview?

Are there any other big companies you can think of that you would have probably passed on assuming you didn't have a working demo to look at?

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As you noted Zuckerberg's experience would have been impressive, but I think his answers for all questions likely would have been impressive.

For example, "What do you understand that your competitors do not?" or the (chicken/egg question) "How will you get users at first?". Obviously Zuckerberg would have acknowledged the competition and how FB would distinguish itself as the college social network by limiting registered users to users with .edu email accounts and scaling growth from campus to campus, thereby generating untold interest among non-college email account holders around the World setting the stage for a flood of non-college users.

I am not saying that Zuckerberg's "growth strategy" was by any means a guarantee, but I think PG and team would have seen the wheels are turning with this kid and despite taking on the social network establishment of the time (myspace and Friendster)- who by no means had any intent of losing their market share - he devised a strategy to take a monumental task and turn it into "bite-size" pieces. Finally, as you mentioned he had experience/track-record to back-up his ability to not just think big but execute as well.

Why would he have applied by himself? He was already working with his roommate Dustin on the programming end and had Eduardo on the business end. 2 technical founders + 1 non-technical founder seems like a solid base.

Given "theFacebook"'s traction was extremely high in the opening days/weeks of launch, AND all three founders had impressive backgrounds and were friends, my guess would be that they would have at least been invited for a YC interview.

This hypothetical scenario is in the idea stage. According to wiki, it appears Mark Zuckerberg wrote Facebook himself and the other co-founders joined later.

Yes, he wrote Facebook himself but only after consulting with Eduardo; not to mention, Eduardo funded the initial servers and such.

So I guess the most realistic hypothetical question would be whether or not Mark and Eduardo would have both been invited for an interview. I'd still say yes. Given their main competition was myspace, their concept of exclusivity was an innovative and clear edge. In essence, at the time, I imagine their goal was to essentially make Myspace irrelevant by making Facebook a friends-only environment.

To address whether or not Mark would have been invited for interview if he had applied by himself: I also think yes to this, purely because YC seems to care about the people more than anything. Mark's track record before Facebook is extremely impressive so I would say AS LONG AS Mark expressed a desire to add members to the team (in the written application) before coming to YC, he would have been accepted.

Zuckerberg probably wouldn't have applied. Judging from his Startup School responses last year, I don't think he considered facebook as being viable as a company until it was already quite successful.

As I recall, Zuckerberg did seek investment. And he went looking for terms a little more generous. For 15 to 20 grand, some advice, and a friendly introduction to other investors, Zuckerberg wouldn't be willing to trade them a stick of gum. Much less 5% or more of his company. Ditto Bill Gates.

Is this a personal complaint related to "single cofounder"?

Edit: I think a single founder has a lot of disadvantages. I am simply curious of PG's response to this hypothetical situation.

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