Meta
Founder control as the precondition for the long-dated platform bets.
Latest filing on file · 2025-12-31
Overview
Business model and origins
A real-identity social graph where people connect using their actual names — the inverse of every prior online community. Thefacebook.com launched at Harvard, spread to other Ivy League colleges, then to all universities, then to everyone.
Origin
Mark Zuckerberg launched Thefacebook at Harvard in February 2004. Within 24 hours 1,200 students had signed up. The key insight was real identity: Facebook was the first online network where your profile was tied to who you actually were. The social graph of real relationships, once seeded, created a network effect that made Facebook indispensable to its members. By summer 2004 Zuckerberg moved to Palo Alto, took $500K from Peter Thiel, and hired Sean Parker as the first president. Facebook hit 1 million users in December 2004, 5.5 million by 2005, and 100 million by 2008. The strategic moat was the same from the dorm room to the IPO: the real-identity social graph was impossible to recreate elsewhere once your friends were already on Facebook.