Ten lessons one of Facebook’s first employees learned from Mark Zuckerberg… who now has an $80M-per-year business

One of Facebook’s earliest employees has revealed the lessons he learned from working under founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Noah Kagan, now founder and CEO of software platform AppSumo, was the 30th employee hired at Facebook in its early stages.

He joined the company as a product manager in 2005, the same year Zuckerberg left Harvard University to run Facebook full-time. The company, now known as Meta, has a net worth of approximately $1.2 trillion.

Although he was fired after just nine months, Kagan has shared the “non-obvious” management lessons he learned working directly under the tech manager in an after.

Since his stint at Facebook, Kagan has founded AppSumo — a platform for entrepreneurs to buy and sell digital products — which brought in about $80 million in revenue last year.

The first lesson Kagan revealed he learned from Zuckerberg was to “focus on one goal.”

“Mark’s goal was 1 billion users,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“Every idea we brought up, he asked, ‘Does this help user growth or not?’ If it didn’t lead to that goal, we didn’t do it. You don’t grow fast by doing many things, but by doing ONE thing very well.’

His second tip was to act quickly when it comes to growing a successful business.

He wrote: ‘At Facebook it was normal to work twelve hours a day. We were constantly bringing out new features and letting our users provide feedback. As a startup, speed is your biggest advantage over large companies.’

Third, make sure you only hire “A players,” noting that Zuckerberg, who is now worth $163 billion, would only hire people he would like to work for himself.

“Even our customer service team was filled with PhDs from Harvard,” he wrote.

“Facebook employees started Asana, Quora, AppSumo, OpenAi and more. A startup is much more dependent on great people than a large company.’

The next lesson Kagan said he learned was to always treat your employees well.

He said Facebook has done many things for its employees that are now considered the norm, including offering free lunches and dry cleaning and paying for apartments or parking passes.

‘Treating your employees well improves work and increases morale. It doesn’t have to be money; people just want to feel validated,” he said.

Next on Kagan’s list is “scratch your own itch.”

‘I used Facebook to connect with friends and meet girls. That meant that if I saw something wrong, I could fix it myself. Most people start businesses in categories they have no interest in. Build selfishly, share selflessly,” he explained.

His fifth tip is to make sure you pay attention to details.

He recalled that Zuckerberg once sent him an email at 3 a.m. saying he had missed a point in a document.

“Mark has set a high standard of excellence for us. It was challenging, but super rewarding,” he wrote.

Another piece of advice Kagan learned from Meta’s founder was to “give ownership to the team.”

He wrote: ‘Surprisingly, Mark wasn’t super involved in the day-to-day operations. He coded some of the time, but was mainly focused on the macro view.

“He was great at giving people purpose, setting boundaries, and coaching people from the sidelines.”

Kagan’s eighth lesson was that Zuckerberg would “yell” if employees called people Facebook users.

‘They are people,’ he told us.’ On the other side of that username or email address is a fellow human being,” he explained.

The next lesson on his list was “hire fast, fire quick.”

Kagan explained that his boss was fired the day he started, his next boss was fired a month later, and he himself was fired after just nine months.

He added: ‘Mark was intense about retaining only A players.’

The tenth and final “non-obvious” management lesson Kagan shared was having a “big vision.”

“We were all in our 20s when Mark was offered $1 billion to sell Facebook. When he said no, he sent a message to all of us and the world. His goal was to connect the ENTIRE world,” he wrote.