“Brave decisions pay you off, if not immediately, but eventually.”
Mark Zuckerberg is one of those few lucky young entrepreneurs who have put in hard work and have enjoyed tremendous results every single time. Right from starting a social media website for Harward community in 2003-04 to acquiring Whatsapp in 2014, he has made some of the most brilliant decisions one can ever imagine. Here are a few of them:
Facematch -> Facebook:
The social media network named Facematch that he initially started as Harward network, was later renamed as Facebook. Nobody had thought then that one day it would become the biggest social media giant worth more than $200 billion. Today it ranks among the top five most valued tech companies of the world.
Whatsapp:
After getting rejected by companies like Facebook and Twitter, Brian Acton and Jan Koum decided to find a solution that could save the money that people had to pay for sending chat messages to their contacts. They ended up creating Whatsapp, the most preferred instant messaging app of today’s time. Mark Zuckerberg had once committed the mistake of giving thumbs down to one of the co-founders of Whatsapp in a job interview, he didn’t want to commit the same mistake again; therefore, he offered a huge sum of $19 billion for acquiring Whatsapp, which both the founders accepted.
Instagram:
There was a time when people thought no one could overtake Twitter in terms of users, Instagram proved them wrong. Last week the photo-sharing app announced that it had surpassed Twitter with 300 million users. Two years back, when the Facebook founder bought Instagram in $1 billion, nobody would have thought that the net worth of Instagram would touch $35 billion within the two years. Even though Instagram’s overall financial contribution to Facebook is very small, but it is believed that it has the potential to make tons of money in the future by monetizing its data assets and audience.
Instagram is gaining the popularity among advertisers and will start contributing at least $2.7 billion annually with the current user engagement level, provided the monetization is done efficiently. Most of the analysts predict that the Zuckerberg’s revenue from his new acquisitions i.e. Whatsapp and Instagram will result in a significant upliftment in the year 2015.
As soon as Instagram initiated advertising in the United States in the second half of 2013, it was able to bring on board few high profile clients such as Adidas, Burberry, Ben & Jerry’s, General Electric, Lexus, Levi’s, Macy’s, PayPal, Michael Kors, and Starwood immediately. In 2014, Instagram launched its advertising products in other locations like U.K, Canada, and Australia as well.
With improved market analytic tools and customer reach, the year 2015 is expected to be one of the best years for tech-based companies, Instagram in particular. And if it happens, Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to acquire Instagram will become the greatest business deal in history.
Bhupendra Sharma
Image Source: [Google]