14 DAY TRIAL // Chris Hughes, one of the three co-founders of Facebook, has been touring college campuses lately and was at the Startup 2009 conference in New York where he talked about his past at Facebook, some of its competitors as well as plans for the future. He also told the audience that he regretted not having dropped from college with the other two founders to be more involved in Facebook from the start.
Hughes led Barack Obama's online presidential campaign in fall, which proved to be very successful, and has since moved to New York as a permanent residence. Not much was said about his plans afterwards but he revealed that he had been visiting some college campuses like NYU, Columbia or MIT trying to find students with good ideas but who didn't necessarily know how to implement them. “I’m hanging out after class, maybe hanging out on the lawn on a nice spring day, and giving advice…and hopefully setting up something with General Catalyst.”
He also clarified some rumors about his decision to stay in school even when Facebook was starting to be a success. He started the company back in 2004 with then-roommates Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz but decided to return to school after spending the summer in Silicon Valley with them. The other two stayed behind and set up a shop in Palo Alto to work full time on Facebook. He says he now regrets the decision but at the time it was the best he could make.
“I sort of wish I went out there full time,” he said. “It was really hard, spending half of my time in school and half of my time flying out there. It would have been a better experience for me to focus on one thing.” Hughes moved to Palo Alto after graduating and has since had a consultant position with the company.
He also talked about Twitter, which he has just started using recently. He admits he was reluctant at first but has since grown to love the service. However, he notes that while Twitter is great there can be no one product that satisfies all of the user's needs and sees it as just another new way of communicating online.