Founders’ experience
Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson were able to recognize the opportunity for MySpace due to their previous experience in the expanding Internet market. They both grasped a firm understanding of the Internet advertising market while working together for almost three years on projects that both failed and succeeded. After working at first for Xdrive, an Internet data-storage company that fell victim to the dot-com bubble burst, DeWolfe and Anderson learned a lot about which strategies to execute and which to ignore when trying to grow an internet enterprise. They built off of the experience that they gained from the failed company by starting a successful Internet direct-marketing firm called Response Base. Anderson and DeWolfe clearly did a lot of things right with this company as they eventually sold it to eUniverse in 2002 for several million dollars. After selling their profitable company, DeWolfe and Anderson had acquired a good amount of experience, confidence, and personal capital which could all be used to start a new business project. The experience that they gained provided the both of them with a comprehensive understanding of the supply and demand aspects of the growing Internet market. They also learned through personal experience which business tactics were most effective when implementing business strategies. They had gained experience and were ready to start something new. All that was missing was a good idea with a good opportunity, which came to them when discovering the need for a different kind of social networking website.
Great timing
In late 2002, after DeWolfe and Anderson had sold their direct-marketing Internet firm, the term “social networking” was growing increasingly popular throughout the nation. Already a few websites existed with specific networking purposes, such as Friendster, which was created to be a dating site. Facebook was also already in existence andwas made for college students to