BUS3ENT: Report on Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, and Entrepreneurship

This report provides an in-depth analysis of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, examining his background, entrepreneurial traits, and the company's competitive advantages. The report begins with an introduction to entrepreneurship and its significance, followed by a discussion of Zuckerberg's upbringing, education, and early experiences that shaped his entrepreneurial mindset. It then delves into the traits and characteristics of successful entrepreneurs, highlighting Zuckerberg's risk-taking ability, creativity, and perseverance. The report further explores how Zuckerberg recognized opportunities and developed his ideas, leading to the creation of Facebook. A key part of the report focuses on Facebook's competitive advantages, such as its large user base and strategic acquisitions. The report concludes with recommendations for the company and a brief discussion on the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The analysis draws on various entrepreneurship theories and academic sources to provide a comprehensive understanding of Zuckerberg's entrepreneurial journey and Facebook's success.

Running Head: MANAGEMENT 0
MARK ZUCKERBERG

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Contents
INTRODUCTION 3
ENTREPRENEUR’S BACKGROUND 3
TRAITS AND CHARACTERSTICS OF AN ENTREPRENEUR 4
RECOGNITION OF OPPORTUNITIES AND IDEAS 5
FACEBOOK’S COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE 6
RECOMMENDATIONS 7
CONCLUSION 8

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INTRODUCTION
Entrepreneurship means developing the business from an innovative idea. The idea, that can
solve the problems of millions in the world. It is about running the business in the sea full of
risks and challenges to achieve the target level of profits. An entrepreneur needs to be the man of
perseverance because running an enterprise involves swimming against the high tides. The
following report will be discussing about the entrepreneur of one of the greatest social media
Giant companies “Facebook”. The aim of the report is to analyze the background of the Mark
Zuckerberg about what makes him one of the greatest aficionados of entrepreneurship, the traits
which are responsible in an individual to be an entrepreneur and the competitive advantage
developed by him in the business.
ENTREPRENEUR’S BACKGROUND
The cultural background of the entrepreneur influences entrepreneur’s abilities and skills, which
decides, the type of the venture an individual would take up in future. The background includes
family culture, religion, individual’s innate qualities, person’s education, and gender. Mark
Zuckerberg was born to highly educated parents, where his father was the dentist and mother was
the psychiatrist. Zuckerberg was the brilliant student in academics. He excelled tremendously at
Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy and Classical studies (Mfume, 2016). As a teenager, he
developed immense interest in computers and creating software. The acknowledgement for his
immense interest in software, could be given to his father who taught him Atari Basic
Programming in 1990s. As a teenager, Mark Zuckerberg developed software named “ZuckNet”
for his father’s convenience so that he could communicate with the employees at his dental
office from his house (Riley, 2019). A writer named Jose Antonio Vargas referring to the Mark
Zuckerberg capabilities, he mentioned that some kids are found of playing games while some
develop them. Even during his high school, he worked for Intelligent Media Group where he
invented a music player named Synapse Media Player. He started his college in Harvard where
his interest made him to study psychology and computer science; there he also invented various
programs. One such program was Facemash that helps the students to select the best-looking
person from the selected pictures. These great and creative work done by him in future has
influenced the Zuckerberg to launch Facebook from the dormitory room of Harvard on February
4, 2004. The Mark Zuckerberg background had influenced him a lot in choosing the

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entrepreneurship in Information technology. The invention of the Facebook was owed to the
positive experiences, he had in the field of software development. The accomplishments he had
received in high schools and colleges in software developing had made him to take up the full-
time profession in the software. It was recorded that Zuckerberg loved languages and he had
command over Hebrew, Latin, French and Ancient Greek. His interest in languages made him to
learn the machine languages.
TRAITS AND CHARACTERSTICS OF AN ENTREPRENEUR
There are many traits and characteristics that are responsible for the person to develop him into
an entrepreneur in future. As traits required by every profession is different, the traits required in
doing an entrepreneurship are also different. According to Authors Yasir, Liren, Mehmood and
Arfat, it was observed in various surveys that 70% of the entrepreneurs have an entrepreneurial
parent. It is likely that a person with an entrepreneurial background to go for entrepreneurship in
future (Yasir, et al., 2019). In the case of Mark Zuckerberg his father, Edward was the tech-
savvy dentist who owned practice of dental practice (POPPER, 2011). His influence has made
him an entrepreneur. According to the authors Boudreaux and Klein, Creativity and
entrepreneurship are also linked, an individual with high creativity of developing something is
inclined towards entrepreneurship (.Boudreaux & Klein, 2019). As creative people, get bored
easily with the normal routine of their job so they are more likely to jump for entrepreneurship
later in life. The authors of a Journal Article Yasir, Liren, Mehmood, and Arfat claim that
Gender and entrepreneurship also have association regarding the type of the entrepreneurship a
person will be undertaking (Yasir, et al., 2019). The males are more likely to undertake the
entrepreneurship in the Information Technology, automobiles, construction, and financial
services as males predominantly have an acumen for the technology than Females, who would
more like to take up venture in clothing, fashion apparel and cosmetics. In the case of Mark
Zuckerberg, his innate talent for software development made him to develop, the social media
software Facebook. Entrepreneurship is all about risk taking, managing challenges, and
creatively innovating a product and service. An individual’s life experiences also shape the
person’s attitude to get into the field of entrepreneurship. A person whose life has been a roller-
costar ride would be interested in the field, as he had developed a problem-solving skill,
perseverance in the face of challenges and a risk-taking attitude. On the other hand, a person who
lived a routine life, where there was stability in it so he would more likely to go for a stable

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profession. In the case of Mark Zuckerberg, he lived a life of an enthusiast where he tried
number of new things like literature, mathematics, creative programming which developed, in
him the traits of creative-problem solving and innovativeness.
RECOGNITION OF OPPORTUNITIES AND IDEAS
Recognition of opportunities and ideas depends a lot on personality traits of an individual. In one
of the psychological theories by Coon 2004 which is the Personality trait theories (Simpeh,
2011). The personality trait theories mean that there are innate qualities of a person, which make
him an entrepreneur in future. The qualities include are risk-taking, innovativeness and
perseverance.
Mark Zuckerberg from the beginning was an inquisitive boy who loves exploring new
dimensions of things. His inquisitiveness is evident from his allrounder performance at school
and college. In school, he tried many numbers of things. Mark Zuckerberg accomplished a lot at
school. He won prizes in Mathematics, Physics, astronomy, and classical studies. He loved
learning various languages and acquired proficiency in French, Hebrew, Ancient Greek, and
Latin. He also served as the captain of the fencing teams and excelled brilliantly at software
development. Even the writers Jose Antonio Vargas said that the Mark Zuckerberg was different
from other kids of his age, other kids of his age loved playing games but he loved developing
them. As a college boy, he developed software such as Facemash. He dropped out of Harvard,
which reflects his bold attitude to follow his dream. Mark Zuckerberg life’s journey reflects his
curious, risk-taking attitude who loves to innovate and an enthusiast who does not care about
societal opinions of him.
The other most important theory is Anthropological entrepreneurship theory, which states that
the culture, belief, family, community and traditional values have an impact on a person
choosing to be an entrepreneur (Future Learn, 2019). In the case of Mark Zuckerberg, he was
born in Reform Jewish household where the importance was given more to reason and intellect
but not on ceremonial rituals. His parents were highly educated which means the focus was given
on continuous learning and to be an expert in a field. The culture of the family and religious
values shaped him, which made him, one of the greatest entrepreneurs in the social media
industry.

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FACEBOOK’S COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
The competitive advantage is the competency, the company has developed over the years, which
make it the best in the industry. Facebook is a social media industry. Its large user base is its
competitive advantage when compared to its competitors, which are Google, Instagram, snapchat
and WhatsApp. According to Walter Isaacson, the biographer of Steve Jobs once said that Steve
Jobs commented that there is no social media industry, which dominates the userbase than
Facebook.
The Facebook Strategy of continuous development of its website and additions of new utility
features, made it one of the most popular websites and increased its userbase. The Facebook did
not have a first mover advantage. Before Facebook, there were other social media industries,
which include Friendster and Myspace. The Facebook’s unique strategy made it a great player.
One of the strategies that the Facebook uses is developing its presence in many e-commerce
sites. It has acquired Oculus, WhatsApp. The Facebook strategy of acquisition made it a
profitable player in the social media industry.
The development of new product and services made it a successful player. The Facebook has
improved its product portfolio by adding the features of News Feed, Messenger, Groups, photos,
events, video, and pages. The new product development strategy helps the Facebook to make it
one of the most user-friendly social media sites.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Although Facebook is a user-friendly company, which takes care of its users’ rights and privacy
but the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal had undermined the Facebook’s image as the social
media company. The scandal was a political one. The political consulting firm Cambridge
Analytic was accused of stealing the personal data of millions of Facebook users to use it for
political motives. It was done without the Facebook’s consent. It is recommended to the
company to bring about changes in its privacy policy of the users’ account so that such incidents
could be avoided in future. The Facebook should make the privacy of its users, the most
important priority.

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CONCLUSION
The traits of an individual matter a lot in entrepreneurship. An individual with the risk taking,
learning attitude is more likely to become an entrepreneur. These traits are usually decided by the
person’s childhood and the experiences, he goes through in his lifetime. These traits become the
deciding point, whether the person will choose entrepreneurship as a career or not.

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