Eric Siu breaks down why Mark Zuckerberg rejected Yahoo's $1 billion offer for Facebook, and what Peter Thiel's role reveals about Zuckerberg's vision for the company. A story about knowing when to walk away from life-changing money.
When Yahoo offered to buy Facebook for $1 billion, Mark Zuckerberg would've gotten $250 million out of that. And one of the investors, Peter Thiel, who, you know, of PayPal fame, said, hey Mark, we should really sit down and talk about this. And when they got in the meeting, first 10 minutes or so, Mark was like, hey, I think we're just going to be able to end this in 10 minutes with Yahoo and just tell them we're not taking the offer. And everyone else was like, no, you should really think about this, Mark. You're going to get $250 million, blah, blah, blah. But then Mark was like, well then what would I do with the $250 million? I don't even know what I would do with it. And you know, if I sold the company, I'd probably go build another social network, and I kind of like what I already have right now, so I figure why don't I just keep going? And that's the type of mindset that I think is worth emulating.
