Are You Sure? Weekly Update

Written on July 22, 2010 – 12:22 pm | by Michael Harris

n what could have been one of the biggest business blunders of all time, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg admits that he’s “quite sure” that he didn’t sign away part ownership of the social megalith seven years ago in a development contract for an unrelated website.

Of course Zuckerberg could never have known that Facebook would ever obtain over 500,000,000 users, he could never have anticipated that he would have ever created something with such huge potential earnings revenues, but it’s so easy to have 20:20 hindsight. As entrepreneurs it’s important to think carefully how much of your equity you’re happy to exchange for the funding you need. If you’re the next Facebook, make sure you don’t even leave yourself open to questions that you’ve given away 85% of your equity in return for funding or services. Although it could be worth it as it looks like he’ll be appearing in an episode of The Simpsons. Very cool!

We’re sure that Bill and the team over in south east Asia will be giving advice which Facebook could have needed as they take part in the Pitching School and SpeedFunding event in Singapore on Tuesday – that’s if they make it out of Hong Kong and the typhoon that’s been battering the region recently.

And for those of you who’d prefer to brave the British weather, we have Funding Clinics in Scotland and London over the next couple of months – before we start SpeedFunding again in Scotland on 26th August and London on 9th September.

Hopefully we ‘get’ social media. Although we like to make the odd (hopefully) humorous comment about Dragon’s Den, we do at least respond to criticism and comments online. Malcolm Coles believes that #dragonsden should be doing more to engage views via Twitter. And why should they get it right? Take a look at this interesting slideshare presentation (it’s more interesting than you may think:

What the F**k is Social Media NOW? View more presentations from Marta Kagan. Download as a pdf

Perfect Business!