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Ten lessons one of Facebook's first employees learned from Mark Zuckerberg... who now has an $80M-per-year business
One of Facebook's first employees has revealed the lessons he learned from working under founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Noah Kagan, who is now the founder and CEO of software platform AppSumo, was the 30th employee hired at Facebook in its early stages.
He joined the company as a product manager in 2005, which was the same year that Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard University to run Facebook full time. The company, now known as Meta, has a net worth of around $1.2 trillion.
While he was fired from the job after just nine months, Kagan has shared the 'non-obvious' management lessons he picked up from working directly under the tech executive in an X post.
Since his stint at Facebook, Kagan has founded AppSumo - a platform for entrepreneurs to buy and sell digital products - which brought in about $80 million in revenue last year.
Noah Kagan shared photos on X of when he worked at Facebook in its early stages
The first lesson Kagan revealed that he had learned from Zuckerberg was to 'focus on one goal.'
'Mark's goal was 1 billion users,' he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
'Every idea we'd bring, he'd ask, "Does this help user growth or not?" If it wasn't driving toward that goal, we didn't do it. You don't grow fast by doing many things, but by doing ONE thing extremely well.'
His second tip was to move fast when it comes to growing a successful business.
He wrote: 'At Facebook, it was normal to work 12+ hours a day. We were constantly pushing out new features and letting our users give feedback. As a startup, your biggest advantage against giant companies is speed.'
Third was making sure you only hire 'A players,' noting that Zuckerberg, who is now worth $163 billion, would only ever hire people he would be happy to work for himself.
'Even our customer support team was filled with Harvard PhDs,' he wrote.
'Facebook employees have gone on to start Asana, Quora, AppSumo, OpenAi, and more. A startup depends on great people much more than a big company.'
The next lesson that Kagan said he learned was to always treat your employees well.
He said that Facebook did a lot of things for its workers which are considered the norm now, including offering free lunches and dry cleaning and paying for apartments or parking tickets.
'Treating your employees well improves work and boosts morale. It doesn't have to be money – people just want to feel acknowledged,' he said.
Noah Kagan, who is now the founder and CEO of software platform AppSumo, was the 30th employee hired at Facebook
One of Facebook's first employees has revealed the lessons he learned from working under founder Mark Zuckerberg
The next on Kagan's list is 'scratch your own itch.'
'I used Facebook to connect with friends and meet girls. Which meant if I saw something wrong, I could fix it myself. Most people start businesses in categories they don't have an interest in. Build selfishly, share selflessly,' he explained.
His fifth tip is to ensure you pay attention to details.
He recalled Zuckerberg once sent him an email at 3am telling him that he had missed a period in a document.
'Mark set a high standard of excellence for us. It was challenging, but also super rewarding,' he wrote.
Another piece of advice Kagan learned from the Meta founder was to 'give ownership to the team.'
He wrote: 'Surprisingly, Mark wasn't super involved in the day-to-day operations. He coded some of the time, but mostly was focused on the macro vision.
'He was great about giving people a goal, some boundaries, and coaching them from the sidelines.'
The first lesson Kagan revealed that he had learned from Zuckerberg was to 'focus on one goal.' 'Mark's goal was 1 billion users,' he wrote on X
Kagan's eighth lesson was that Zuckerberg would 'yell' if employees called people Facebook 'users'.
'"They’re human beings", he'd tell us.' On the other side of that username or email address is a fellow human,' he explained.
The next lesson on his list was to 'hire fast, fire faster.'
Kagan explained that his boss was fired the day he started, his next boss was fired a month later and he himself was fired after just nine months.
He added: 'Mark was intense about keeping A players only.'
The tenth and final 'non-obvious' management lesson that Kagan shared was to have a 'big-ass vision'.
'We were all in our 20s when Mark was offered $1B to sell Facebook. When he said no, he sent a message to all of us and the world. His goal was to connect the ENTIRE world,' he wrote.