How to Create the Next Facebook: Seeing Your Startup Through, from Idea to IPO

The Mission

The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.

—Che Guevara

If you go to Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page, you’ll see that it says: “I’m trying to make the world a more open place.”¹ It’s a grand mission for any person. But, of course, it is essentially the mission of his company. In Zuckerberg’s letter to shareholders in Facebook’s initial public offering (IPO) prospectus, he says: “Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission—to make the world more open and connected.”² This is not the kind of mission you often associate with a company, but ...