"Following your dreams is perhaps the most important thing to do in life.
I came to Silicon Valley in 2003 as a small town Montana guy, and recent college grad, with the big dream of becoming part of the technology community and one day starting a technology company. I had grown to love technology and entrepreneurship while making things for the Internet and running my own small company in college. I knew that before I could do this, I would have to learn and work alongside those that came before me. At the time, I was lucky enough to join Apple and have the opportunity to learn product and marketing at one of the best places in the world to learn those things.
At Apple, we were one of Facebook’s early partners and were looking to build community amongst college students using the power of social. Along the way, I became fascinated with the idea of a social operating system.
That summer, I had a few conversations with founders Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz and with founding president Sean Parker and decided to join Facebook as a part of the newly forming team which would become the Facebook Platform team.
I joined Facebook in late 2006. At the time, Facebook had just welcomed the 10 millionth user to the site and was one of the most entrepreneurial places in the world. We hoped to enable entrepreneurs and developers worldwide to think differently about building for the Internet. We hoped to create a new kind of platform, one where identity and social context was king.
We always believed that the Internet was never just about information, but that it was ultimately about connecting people. And, that pushing the web to become a more social place, with real identity and privacy, and less anonymity, was the most important work that could be done to push the Internet forward.
In the over 3 years since, I’ve had the unbelievably fortunate opportunity to work alongside some of the most talented people in the world towards building Facebook Platform, Facebook Connect, and the resulting ecosystem. I’ve also had the opportunity to get an incredible depth and breadth of experience in strategy, product, marketing, and management.
We have worked hard to make the vision of a more social web a reality. Today, over 1 million developers and entrepreneurs have built over 350,000 applications for Facebook, over 80,000 sites have integrated Facebook Connect. Over 70% of Facebook users have interacted with at least 1 application, and over 60 million users have used Facebook Connect. We also count developers and entrepreneurs in over 180 countries. The community is truly a worldwide one.
It goes without saying, the experience in having a small hand in helping to build the Facebook Platform ecosystem was a deeply meaningful and enlightening one. I consider the people here to be some of the most world class people I have ever had the opportunity to work with and know. Beyond the people, Facebook is truly one of the best places to work in the world. If you want to learn how to build great things on the Internet, and how to be a great entrepreneur, Facebook is the place to go.
Today I am making a choice to continue following the dream.
I have decided to leave Facebook and partner with my long time friend Shawn Fanning to build a new company and to become part of the Facebook Connect community on the other side. We’ll be exploring a few ideas and hope to come back to you with something interesting soon. Until then, we’ll be in a stealth’ish mode.
Those of you that have had a chance to work directly with me over the last few years also know that I enjoy nothing more than empowering people with big ideas to chase their entrepreneurial dreams. So, I will continue to also advise and angel invest in companies doing interesting things as I always have.
Facebook Platform and Facebook Connect have never been in better hands than those that will continue to lead them into the future — people like Bret Taylor, Mike Vernal, and Ethan Beard. Under the leadership of the entire Facebook management team, Facebook is on track to become a company that enables the entire world to be more open and connected. This was an incredibly hard decision to make, but because of these things, one that I can now make in confidence.
I will be around Facebook for another couple of weeks. I want to thank everyone at Facebook that has been so supportive of me as I have made this decision and I look forward to the future."
(Man, you should see the places he's visited and how he proposed to his girlfriend.)
I have no interest or desire to start something in this field but it's inspiring no? At least motivating.
If I make a mark it'll definitely be in the retail environment...(Blue Bird? :D Coming soon? Next 5 years?)
Man...What do you do when your "dreams" conflict? I really really want to go to B-School eventually. I always wanted to go early (average age is 27 which seemed too late) but now that I think about it, if i go, that's probably when it'll be. I haven't done enough to apply just yet. Plus I would've liked to go to grad school out here but that for sure is not happening cause other "dream" requires living in LA. Esp. since father's offer of him supporting my grad school education requires participating in the night school program while working. WE SHALL SEE!!!!
Till then....looking forward to my girls coming to visit and Vegas after. WAHOOOOOOOO!!!
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