Notes from when I talked to an early employee at Facebook. I don't remember this guy's name (not that I'd publish it), but he was a total douchebag and rather rude.
read moreIn person marking, they flew people to every campus. Banners everywhere covered the school. Repeated over and over again. Didn't leave until everyone signed up. Stayed for two weeks. Dropbox was knocking on doors of every business. Hustle and in person stuff works or at least can't hurt, even if you can't measure it. Suggested paying a student $500 to put poster and flyers up everywhere so every single person can't help but know, and then have them take photos to show they've put up 3,000 flyers. He said it was really all about hustle. That's what makes a difference.
Essentially was like “companies need to decide if they want to be a big successful business, or if you want to hold onto ‘making a better web’ or something. They have to give up their morals"
Facebook's metric was 10 friends. Once they got a user to have 10 friends on the site then they were a lifetime user. They also really relied on importing contact lists. Would just email people every time their friend signed up.
He was the only guy doing messages, and then built it out to 75 people.