They opened the show with an interview of the kid from Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. This conference has a way of making me feel old, and boy did they cut to the chase this year with Zuckerberg, who’s closer in age (and appearance) to my high-school freshman son than he is to me.
Notes and impressions:
- Wow, he’s young. But he’s pretty poised. Almost arrogant. But quite articulate. Very calm and measured. Handles a press interview very well. Knows how to answer questions and more importantly how to not answer them. (I suspect he’s got a very good PR person working with him.)
- “An IPO is definitely years out.”
- “Facebook has always run on a near breakeven basis from the days when it was in my dorm (at Harvard) costing $85/month till today when revenues are … quite a bit larger.”
- “We have 300 people … and expect to end the year with 700 people.”
- They have 45M users.
- 20% of the crowd raised their handed in response to the question: do you build Facebook apps? Frankly, I have trouble believing it because a large percentage of the crowd are bankers, VCs, journalists and other forms of hangers-on that don’t actually build and run companies. So if this were true, it would suggest that about 1/2 of the operating companies present were building Facebook apps.
- When you raise money, will you need to bring in a grown-up, a la how Larry and Sergey brought in Eric? “[No]. Our focus is on building a strong team.”
See my prior post on Facebook, entitled Go Check Out Facebook, Now for more.
