Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Facebook co-founder offers advice for entrepreneurs

The Central NY Business Journal reported on Chris Hughes speech at Onondaga Community College where he let his audience know his definition of entrepreneurship.

"Profit isn't what defines what entrepreneurship is about," the Facebook co-founder said just a few minutes into his speech.

Rather, he said entrepreneurs focus on building organizations that have an impact on the world. Those organizations could be companies. They could be nonprofits or schools or churches.

The desire to spark change is what drives them, he said.

Hughes spoke today during the first lecture in this year's Famous Entrepreneurs Series. The annual lecture series aims to inspire more entrepreneurship in the region. OCC's Storer Auditorium was filled to capacity for the talk and an overflow crowd of students watched a video feed of the event elsewhere on campus.

Hughes founded Facebook in 2004 with Harvard University roommates Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz. In 2007, he left the company and became director of online organizing for President Barack Obama's campaign.

Hughes said he and his roommates never really thought of themselves as entrepreneurs. None of them were even business students.

And, of course, he said they made plenty of mistakes along the way.

"In a lot of ways, we didn't know what we were doing when we got started," he said.
For more on this story, see the Nov. 20 print edition of The Central New York Business Journal.

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