MGMT2998 Business Strategy: Entrepreneurial Approach Interview Report

This report analyzes the entrepreneurial strategies of Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and David Karp (Tumblr). The study begins with an introduction to entrepreneurship, emphasizing risk-taking and innovation. The background section provides context on Facebook and Tumblr, highlighting their founders, business models, and market success. The report summarizes interviews with Zuckerberg and Karp, exploring their strategic decision-making processes, including marketing, public relations, and operational processes. The analysis covers key influences, performance evaluation methods, and continuous improvement strategies employed by both companies. The self-reflection section provides insights gained from the interviews. The report concludes by assessing the impact of confidence and clarity in entrepreneurial success. The provided references support the analysis.

Business strategy
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note
Introduction
Entrepreneurship is an approach in business that involves setting up a new business or businesses
taking the financial risks that are associated with the business in order to gain a competitive
advantage. Entrepreneurship can therefore involve designing, launching and operating a new
business from square one and putting through to success. In order to be a good entrepreneur
individuals must have the ambition to achieve success, should have the wisdom to understand
best approaches, achieve them, should have the willingness to learn and constantly grow, should

have creativity and innovation to creates more suitable solutions, should have the courage to take
risks should have perseverance to set backs and resilience to failures (Alemany et.al., 2016)
The aim of the study is to understand some of the key elements of successful entrepreneurs that
have allowed them to achieve growth of their businesses in the market.
Background
Entrepreneurship is a multifaceted and diverse approach of management that involves various
aptitudes, competencies and resources to be successful. For the purpose of this study, two of the
most successful entrepreneurs in our modern market have been selected for an interview to
understand the strategies, processes, influences, performance evaluation approaches and
continuous improvement strategies utilized within these two organizations. The two companies
selected for the purpose and their entrepreneurs are Mark Zukerberg, the CEO of Facebook and
David Karp, CEO of Tumblr (Cakmak and Like, 2017)
Facebook is a social media networking company based in USA and is sling the big four
technology businesses in the world along with Google, Apple and Amazon. The organization
was founded in 2004 and since then it has grown it's use base to 2.3 billion monthly users in the
the platform and generates a revenue of 55.9 billion USD. This makes Facebook one if the
biggest market players and the most successful in entrepreneurship venture in the world (Ciruela-
Lorenzo and Padilla-Melendez, 2016)
Tumblr is a micro blogging as will as social networking site that was founded in 2007. The
company is owned by Verizon Media and provides a platform for users to post multi media
content as well as other media content on the blogs. The platform has a dashboard interface and
can be used to host individual and independent pages of the users who can use it for their
business and professional purposes. The company hosts more than 465 million blogs and has
more than 500 million monthly visitors. The blogs provides additional features apart from the
dashboard such as HTML editing, tags and queue. Additionally, it Laos has mobile interface
along with messaging and inbox services. Tumblr is one of the fastest growing micro blogging
platform that has gained significant success since it’s foundation thereby making it in of the
leading entrepreneurial businesses in the world (Esen and Iscioglu, 2017).
Both these companies have achieved great success in the market in their entrepreneurship ideas
with Facebook being the first of it’s kind to provide social media platform for it’s users to share
their personal thoughts, opinion, pictures etc.on a common platform and Tumblr being the first
company to develop the micro blogging platform where uses can create independent pages for
their personal, professional or business use (Gonzalez et.al., 2016).
Interview content
From the interview with Mark Zukerberg it could be understood that the performance if
Facebook as an entrepreneur venture was made successful through the joint effort of the people
who started and planned the business for it’s future. This was significantly influenced by the
important strategies that were the foundations of Facebook’s strategic decision. These strategies
included an approach of direct marketing towards it’s users and business partners through which

they were able to directly market their products and services to the users. Facebook depended a
strong public relation approach by which it ensured that it had effective relations with the
public and the users. Innovation and creativity was another important strategy that helped
Facebook to continually improve it’s interface, it ‘security setting and it’s cross functionality
accessibility and improve user experience. This also helped in the implementation of a user
centric design that created interfaces based on the feedbacks from the users (Marganingsih and
Pelipa, 2018). The operational processes of Facebook were based on the importance of
increasing the budget in innovative practices to support innovation in the operation using strong
research approaches for understanding the maket and using strong programs for engaging the
employees and developing their talents. As the key influences Facebook has been influenced
significantly by various social media leaders such as Orkut, Hi5 which were similar social media
sites that were existent before Facebook was launched. Moreover, a significant amount of
Facebook policies and CSR activities are based on the principle of supporting the global as well
as the local economies in which the organization operates. For the evaluation no organizational
purposes, the measures that are used to access whether the organization is successful in the
market or not and also to measure organizational growth and progress includes the profit scores,
Alexa score and the number if subscribers for the platform (Saidah and Handajani, 2018).
From the interview with David Karp, the CEO and founder of Tumblr, the strategies that were
used by b the company to s achieve success could be identified that used approaches of direct
marketing to reach out to the customer base, social media marketing for easier access to larger
crowds and providing personalized services in the form of micro blogging to suit the individual
needs of the customers. The operational process of Tumblr of the organization had been based on
the values of developing the competencies of the employees to enhance performance ,focusing
on the expectations and needs of the users to guide product designs and develop an agile
workforce and operational system to eliminate unnecessary expenses and optimize profitability.
The main influences that drove the growth and success of the organization included it’s focus on
helping startups through it’s platform and provide better blogging performance for the
customers. Evaluation of the organizational performance has been made on several criteria such
as the number of visits online, number of blogging sites for the organization, Alexa score and the
profit margin (Alemany et.al., 2016).
For continuous improvement, continuous development program, certification, internship, training
program and skills development programs are used by both the companies to improve
organizational performance.
Self reflection
From the interview with Mark Zukerberg it could be understood that the success of the
organization was integrally associated with the high level of confidence that allowed Mr
Zukerberg to achieve better decisions and support organizational success. The clarity and
honesty in his approach further helped to maintain a positive culture within the organization and
ensure that the organizational expectations are well understood by the people. This helped
Facebook to deliver high quality products and services for it’s users.

With the interview with the CEO of Tumblr, it could be understood that the importance no a
clear framework is necessary that can guide the process of the interview . Moreover the keen
insight of Mr Karp in the micro blogging platform helped Tumblr to carve out it’s place in the
market.
Conclusion
The reflection on my own skills and competencies helped me to understand that more practice is
necessary for me to further development my competency and aptitudes while the usage of
effective audio visual support can improve my presentation skills.

References
Alemany Díaz, M. D. M., Cuenca, L., Boza, A., Fernández-Diego, M., Ruiz Font, L., Alarcón
Valero, F., & Gordo Monzó, M. L. (2016). Innovation projects associated to the competence of
innovation, creativity and entrepeneurship in the Universitat Politècnica de València. INTED
proceedings (Online), 2903-2907.
Alemany Díaz, M. D. M., Cuenca, L., Boza, A., Fernández-Diego, M., Ruiz Font, L., Alarcón
Valero, F., & Gordo Monzó, M. L. (2016). Innovation projects associated to the competence of
innovation, creativity and entrepeneurship in the Universitat Politècnica de València. INTED
proceedings (Online), 2903-2907.
Cakmak, E., & Lie, R. (2017). Field mechanisms in informal tourism entrepeneurship. CAUTHE
2017: Time For Big Ideas? Re-thinking The Field For Tomorrow, 598.
Ciruela-Lorenzo, A. M., & Padilla-Meléndez, A. (2016). Indigenous female entrepeneurship: a
qualitative studies in the context of Bolivia.
Esen, A., & Iscioglu, T. E. (2017). LIFESTYLE ENTREPENEURSHIP IN TECHNOLOGY
START-UPS: THE CASE OF “PIRI” MOBILE APPLICATION. Journal of Management,
Marketing and Logistics, 4(3), 271-278.
González, L. S., Castro, R. F., González, M. Á. C., & Cendón, J. A. (2016, September). A
learning experiment based in collaborative project implementation for the development of
entrepeneurship. In 2016 International Symposium on Computers in Education (SIIE) (pp. 1-6).
IEEE.
Marganingsih, A., & Pelipa, E. D. (2018). PENGARUH PENDEKATAN CHEMO
ENTREPENEURSHIP DAN PELATIHAN KETERAMPILAN BERWIRAUSAHA
TERHADAP MOTIVASI BERWIRAUSAHA MAHASISWA. JURKAMI: Jurnal Pendidikan
Ekonomi, 3(2), 113-126.
Saidah, S., & Handajani, S. (2018, July). Development of Entrepeneurship Training Based on
Life Skill for Islamic Boarding School Students. In International Conference on Indonesian
Technical Vocational Education and Association (APTEKINDO 2018). Atlantis Press.