Everyone thinks Facebook won because it was first.

It wasn't.

Friendster had over 115 million users. MySpace had 100 million.

Facebook launched 2 years later into a growing social network scene.

Here's how Mark Zuckerberg still beat them all:

In a Harvard dorm room in February 2004, a 19-year-old kid is about to change how 3 billion people connect.

He didn't have funding. Didn't have a team. Just a laptop and an idea everyone thought was stupid.

Here's exactly how Mark Zuckerberg built Facebook from a college dorm:

It started with rejection.

Mark created Facemash in October 2003. A site that let Harvard students vote on who was more attractive.

Harvard shut it down in hours. Almost got him expelled.

Most people would've stopped there. Mark saw something different.

He noticed students were obsessed with comparing themselves to each other. That was the insight.

The real problem wasn't rating faces. It was that Harvard had no online directory.

Students wanted to know who was in their classes. Who lived in their dorm. Who was dating who.

Mark didn't invent social networking. Friendster and MySpace already existed.

But he did something smarter. He made it exclusive.

TheFacebook launched on February 4, 2004. Harvard students only.

Within 24 hours, 1,200 people signed up. Within a month, half of Harvard was on it.

Here's what most people miss about that dorm room:

Mark wasn't alone. Eduardo Saverin put in $15,000 for servers.

Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes helped code and manage operations.

The myth is one genius in a hoodie. The reality was a scrappy team pulling all-nighters.

They expanded to Columbia, Stanford, and Yale next. Still exclusive. Still invite-only.

This drove people crazy. Everyone wanted in because they couldn't get in.

By June 2004, they moved to Palo Alto. Still basically a dorm setup.

Mattresses on floors. Code sessions until 4am.

Sean Parker showed up that summer. The Napster guy.

He didn't just bring connections. He brought one piece of advice that changed everything.

Drop the "The" from TheFacebook.

Sounds small. But it showed Mark how to think bigger. Cleaner. More ambitious.

Peter Thiel wrote a $500,000 check in August 2004. First real funding.

The valuation? $4.9 million.

Today Facebook is worth over $1.54 trillion.

Here's what you can actually learn from this:

Mark didn't wait until he had everything figured out.

Facemash was messy. TheFacebook was basic. He shipped fast and fixed later.

He found a real problem first. Not "I want to build a social network." But "Harvard students can't find each other online."

He used constraints as advantages. Being Harvard-only wasn't a limitation. It was the entire strategy.

And he surrounded himself with people who filled his gaps.

Eduardo handled money. Dustin handled code. Sean handled vision.

That dorm room in Kirkland House is probably worth more per square foot in startup history than anywhere else on earth.

Not because of what was built there. But because of how it was built.

Fast. Scrappy. Obsessed with one specific user problem.

That's the playbook that still works today.

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