Venture capitalists also began rethinking their approach. Not all succeeded, but those that did helped to fuel the expansion of Facebook, which now has nearly 700 million users. Such successes helped inspire entrepreneurs to ditch business plans and work on apps. Yet during the term, the apps, free for users, generated roughly $1 million in advertising revenue. De Lombaert’s, for example, allowed users to send “hotness” points to Facebook friends. Many of those apps were sort of silly: Mr. Working in teams of three, the 75 students created apps that collectively had 16 million users in just 10 weeks. The app phenomenon has accentuated the trend and helped unleash what some call a new wave of technology innovation - and what others call a bubble.Įarly on, the Facebook Class became a microcosm of Silicon Valley. But over the past decade, free, open-source software and “cloud” services have brought costs down, while ad networks help bring in revenue quickly. Start-ups once required a lot of money, time and people. For many, the long trek from idea to product to company has turned into a sprint. The iPhone had just arrived, and the first Android phone was a year off.īut by teaching students to build no-frills apps, distribute them quickly and worry about perfecting them later, the Facebook Class stumbled upon what has become standard operating procedure for a new generation of entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley and beyond.
“I almost didn’t realize what it all meant,” he says. His team’s app netted $3,000 a day and morphed into a company that later sold for a six-figure sum. “Everything was happening so fast,” recalls Joachim De Lombaert, now 23. It also helped to pioneer a new model of entrepreneurship that has upturned the tech establishment: the lean start-up. And, as advertising rolled in, some of those students started making far more money than their professors.Īlmost overnight, the Facebook Class fired up the careers and fortunes of more than two dozen students and teachers here.
APPS SIMILAR TO RAPID SKETCH FOR FREE
The students ended up getting millions of users for free apps that they designed to run on Facebook.