Adversity can present great opportunities for growth. One of the pivotal leadership moments in my career happened in the middle of Facebook’s post-IPO meltdown. Captured in Stephen Levy’s new book Facebook: The Inside Story amazon.com/dp/0735213151/…
The dive in the stock price was affecting morale. Dan Rose decided to give a pep talk at an all-hands. He recounted his experience at Amazon in the dot-com bust. The stock had crashed from $120 a share to something like $6.
Rose’s personal plans to buy a house for his family had been shelved. Some people were leaving the company. But Amazon and its leader, Jeff Bezos, hung in there and now ruled the commerce world. Same deal with Facebook.
The world doesn’t know it, Rose said, but we know what we’re doing. Mobile won’t kill Facebook—it will bring it to new heights. People use Facebook more on mobile. And despite the tiny screens on phones, Facebook will make money from it.
The product is built for mobile, he told his colleagues, We just haven’t built the products yet. Left unspoken was the flip side of the situation. If it didn’t build those products, Facebook would die.
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