Tag Archives: Network

The New Facebook Legacy

Facebook will not only produce new millionaires with its IPO next Thursday; it has already created a new generation of entrepreneurs and start-ups. The New York Times just published an article A Circle of Tech: Collect Payout, Do a Start-Up and a related video Facebook’s Network of Tech Tycoons which illustrates the fact.


A few Facebook alumni entrepreneurs

I had already showed the power of networks when I commented Once you’re lucky, Twice you’re good a book subtitled The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0. You can check again the web of people connected ten years ago or so. I had done the same with the older and now mature EDA industry. This new NYT article shows new connections illustrated by the new figure below:

Let me just quote the article: “The history of Silicon Valley has always been one generation of companies gives birth to great companies that follow”…”This is the story line of Silicon Valley, from Apple to Netscape to PayPal and now, to Facebook.” … and finally, “the social fabric of Silicon Valley is a dense set of overlapping spider webs, meaning everyone is connected.”

In my article on the web2.0, I had also shown the value creation. There had been $800M of VC money invested for a $17B value creation (mostly paper value). The new table below adds another $100M of VC money, and the value creation is now… $113B!!

Google’s First Steps

An interesting interview of the Google founders dated 1998!

googl-pagebizcard.jpg

Quite interesting lessons:

About the network of people: “Sergey: Basically, we talked to our advisers and other faculty whom we knew. And they just pointed us to other people. Pretty soon, we had investors, we had a lawyer, we had everything that we needed.

About risk taking: “Larry: Silicon Valley is a little bit different. There’s not so much risk to us. If you fail in starting your company, you’re actually more fundable. You may have failed for some reason not involving yourself at all, just [due to] some random factors... Sergey: The main risk is really our time. We’re working much, much harder than we would in a normal job. It’s not a 40 hour a week job.”

more…