Introduction
Present day organizations are more complex in terms of managing them. Globalization and intense competition in almost all the segments have made lives difficult for the leaders of the organizations. Great leaders can take organizations into unreachable heights. Mark Zuckerberg is one of the great leaders of the present day world. He became the youngest billionaire in the history through the successful launch and operation of his company, Facebook. This essay will provide a brief background of Facebook, discuss the rise of Mark Zuckerberg, problems faced by Zuckerberg in his early days and how he handled those problems.
Background of Facebook
Facebook, headquartered in Menlo Park, California, is an online social networking company that helps people all around the world connect on a common platform. Facebook was launched on 4th February, 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, then a Harvard student, and his fellow batch mates at Harvard, Andrew McCollum, Eduardo Saverin, Chris Hughes, and Dustin Moskovitz (Phillips, 2007). Originally named 'The Facebook', it was initially accessible to only Harvard students. Later it got expanded to the Ivy League colleges. Gradually, Facebook expanded to corporate networks, and finally, it was made available to the general public in 2006 (Phillips, 2007). As the number of people using the internet grew over time, the size and the number of members using Facebook grew in humongous proportion. As recorded in December, 2013, the number of users of Facebook is 1.23 billion (Bloomsberg, 2014). The mission of Facebook is to "give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected" (Facebook, 2014). With this mission in mind, the company provides a set of development tools and application programs that enable developers to create mobile and Web applications.
The Leader
Source: (Ingram, 2012)
The leader discussed in this assignment is Mark Zuckerberg. Born in 1984 in New York, his father is a dentist named Edward Zuckerberg and mother, a psychiatrist. He, along with his three sisters, Donna, Randi and Arielle were raised in a small town in New York, about 10 miles north of the NY City. Zuckerberg studied at Ardsley High School, and later shifted to Phillips Exeter Academy (Vargas, 2010). He won many prizes in science, astronomy, physics, and maths. He started writing computer programs in middle school. He was a genius in computer programming. His tutor David Newman called him a 'prodigy' in software programming. His father operated the dental practice from their home only. Their house and the dental office were full of computers. While still in high school in 1996, Mark developed a software program for his father called ZuckNet that enabled all the computers in the house as well as the dental office to send messages to each other. It was a primordial version of AOL Instant Messenger that got released the following year (Vargas, 2010). He also created software called Synapse along with his friend for his project at Exeter. Synapse was like an earlier version of Pandora, which uses artificial intelligence to learn the listening habits of the users. AOL and Microsoft wanted to buy Synapse and hire the teenager who invented it, but Mark turned down the offers. By the time he took admission in Harvard, he earned a reputation as 'programming prodigy' (Vargas, 2010).
The Problem
Mark Zuckerberg is the founder as well as the CEO of Facebook, and hence, all the problems faced by him were more than what is encountered by a typical business leader of an organization. Firstly, when he started Facebook in Harvard along with his friends, he faced a huge criticism from the Harvard community because of his website having the personal information of the members published. Secondly, immediately after launching the company from Palo Alto, California, he got himself drawn into a lawsuit from other Harvard batch mates like Cameron Winklevoss who complained that he stole their idea (Business Insider, 2014). Finally, when Facebook started growing, he came under the pressure of selling the company, launching an IPO, bringing continuous innovation and increasing the profitability quickly from all corners of the industry.
Short Term Solution
Mark Zuckerberg had the initial problems coming from his fellow batch mates at Harvard. After a few years at Harvard, Zuckerberg understood that it will be difficult for him to bring his dreams to fruition within the boundaries of college, and so he left Harvard and fully dedicated himself in the pursuit of his dream and never went back to college to finish his studies (Ingram, 2012).
Great leaders not only take decisions better than others, they also can identify people who can make a difference. In the initial years of Facebook, he was intelligent enough to bring in key people with experience from different industries, and simultaneously, retain the people who had the modern ideas. Harvard batch mates including Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes helped him in building the website’s basic foundation using the upcoming technologies, and Napster founder, Sean Parker, guided him with the initial marketing and growth strategies of the company. His ability to identify key people like Sean Parker, Stephen Venuto, Matt Cohler and Peter Thiel and bring them in Facebook was instrumental in the success of the company (Business Insider, 2014).
Another big decision in his early years was not to sell the company to Yahoo for a little less than a billion dollar. He understood that Facebook has the potential to become very big in the future.
Long Term Solution
The recipe for the long term success is different from that of short term success. Social media is a segment that grew rapidly in the last few years, and Facebook started facing increased competition from the likes of Google +, classmates.com, Flickr and many others (Ingram, 2012). Zuckerberg understood that in order to stand out amidst the competition, it is important to come up with newer features and functions. He, along with his innovation team, always kept Facebook one step ahead of the competition in terms of innovation and features.
Strategic alliance was also important to grow in the long term. Zuckerberg understood that, and made alliance with other companies for growth. He also bought key companies to enrich the Facebook user experience. From being only a photo sharing and social networking site, Zuckerberg has now made Facebook a platform for providing a more wholesome experience to the users. Currently, the product portfolio of Facebook includes Facebook mobile application and Website that help people connect, share, and communicate with each other on personal computers and mobile devices; Messenger, which is a mobile-to-mobile application available on Android phones, Windows Phone, and iOS; and Instagram, a mobile app and Website through which people can take photos and videos, add filter effects to them and share with friends and family directly or in a photo feed (Bloomsberg, 2014). Recently in February this year, Zuckerberg bought WhatsApp, one of the most popular messaging applications for smartphones, paying the price of $19 billion and thus, made another impressive addition to its rich product portfolio (Facebook, 2014).
In the matter of leadership, Mark Zuckerberg’s vision and business smartness are exemplary, because traditionally, when a company begins to grow, the young founder of the company usually brings an experienced executive to run the company, believing that the executive has the necessary skills to operate the company successfully and provide good leadership. Companies like LinkedIn, Google, and eBay all followed the same path by recruiting Jeff Weiner, Eric Schmidt, and Meg Whitman to take the hold as CEOs. However, Zuckerberg adopted a different style. Firstly, he built a strategic partnership with the company’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg, who with her experience and professional expertise helps execute Zuckerberg’s mission and strategic goals operationally (Walter, 2013). Secondly, he instituted a dual-class share structure in his company, due to which the class B shares, which are controlled by him, carry ten times more voting power than class A shares. Therefore, though only 18% of the company is owned by him, he has more than 50% of the voting power (Bigman, 2012). Thus, he keeps his company under his maximum control so that he does not meet the same fate that Steve Jobs faced from his own company during the 1980s.
Conclusion
Mark Zuckerberg is often criticized by many for taking amateurish decisions. However, he, over the years, has shown that the decisions he took has silenced all his critics. His decision to bring key people in his organization, delaying the IPO of his company, keeping the maximum control of his company in his hands, and expanding through strategic purchases shows his leadership skill and vision. He is a leader not only extremely successful, but also an inspiration for the new generation of leaders.
References
Facebook. (2014). Products. Retrieved on 14th October 2014 from <http://newsroom.fb.com/products/>
Phillips, S. (2007). A brief history of Facebook. The Guardian. Retrieved on 14th October 2014 from <http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/jul/25/media.newmedia>
Bloomsberg. (2014). Company Overview of Facebook. Retrieved on 14th October 2014 from <http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=20765463>
Walter, E. (2013). Think Like Zuck: The Five Business Secrets of Facebook's Improbably Brilliant CEO Mark Zuckerberg. McGraw-Hill. First edition.
Bigman, D. (2012). Facebook Ownership Structure Should Scare Investors More Than Botched IPO. Forbes. Retrieved on 14th October 2014 from <http://www.forbes.com/sites/danbigman/2012/05/23/facebook-ownership-structure-should-scare-investors-more-than-botched-ipo/>
Ingram, M. (2012). Mark Zuckerberg and the Founder-as-CEO Problem. Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved on 14th October 2014 from <http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-31/mark-zuckerberg-and-the-founder-as-ceo-problem>
Business Insider. (2014). At Last -- The Full Story Of How Facebook Was Founded. Retrieved on 14th October 2014 from <http://www.businessinsider.com/how-facebook-was-founded-2010-3?op=1#ixzz3GAVbVVhH>
David, A. (2010). 'The Social Network's' Reluctant Star. The Daily Beast. Retrieved on 14th October 2014 from < http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/09/26/the-social-networks-jesse-eisenberg-interviewed.html>
Vargas, J. A. (2010). The Face of Facebook. The New Yorker. Retrieved on 14th October 2014 from <http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/09/20/the-face-of-facebook>
