Eric Berman
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Well, funny enough, this is back in the late 90s, and we were going after the college market, and then the web started hitting.
And we were actually the first, first of all Facebooks.
We were the original Facebook.
It was called collegeclub.com.
We had grown to, gosh, yeah, about 400 employees, raised $75 million.
And this was at the time, back in the internet, before the first bubble, where venture capitalists,
less about getting profitable.
It was more about buying, getting as many eyeballs as possible.
So spend, spend, spend, get market share, get market share.
And so we were doing that at a furious rate.
And at one point we were the 40th biggest site in the web and really the number one pure college play website.
offering all sorts of features to the college market.
And early on, we realized the college market was the one to go after.
Obviously, Zuckerberg knew that as well.
And years later, certainly did what we were trying to do the right way.
A lot of it was, I think, just timing and missing the wave.
So it was an interesting story that we worked our asses off to finally file to go public.
Uh, we were taking our first vacation about five years.
And then as we were on, uh, in plight of Carmen, Mexico, I remember this very well.
We were watching the stock markets just crash before our very own eyes.