Matt BrittonFounder & CEO powering AI-driven consumer insights

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg Took My Cold Call...

Name: Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg Took My Cold Call...
Uploaded: 2019-02-04T16:50:59Z
Channel: Matt Britton
Description: A first-person anecdote from a YouTube monologue recounting early interactions with Facebook around March 2004. The speaker—who had founded Mr. Youth…

4 Feb 2019

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A first-person anecdote from a YouTube monologue recounting early interactions with Facebook around March 2004. The speaker—who had founded Mr. Youth about two years earlier—wanted to partner with Facebook to mobilize college students for brand promotion. He located Facebook’s WHOIS/domain contact, called a 617 number, and Mark Zuckerberg answered; Zuckerberg and colleagues visited the speaker in New York a few days later.

They were only at 15 colleges at that point. So Facebook at this point was very early on. I think it was March 2004. So it was about two years after I started Mr. Youth. I couldn't get in touch with them, and I wanted to figure out a way where I could work with them because I knew that this kind of having students on campus was only so scalable. And if I could have students really propel brands through the Internet, I just thought there was something there. The way I got in touch with them is I went into the domain registry, I went to registrar.com, i typed Facebook, and back then you could see the who is domain registry information. And there was a 617 number. They just dialed it. And Mark Zuckerberg picked up the phone. And I introduced myself. They had heard of us because we were doing a lot of stuff at spring break, and we were just very deeply embedded in the college market. And they ended up in my office, I'd say, probably three to four days later in New York.