$1.5MM is impressive. i'd be curious as to how much time was spent marketing. they say "build it and they will come" but if you do an internet archive search on facebook, they had to compete with friendster who was already an established player (and myspace was too). not to mention, there were probably 2 or 3 identical ideas starting up at other colleges, particularly cornell. one fascinating thing is that facebook had tons of media coverage early on, it appears they were being disseminated by the media within days or weeks of the service launching.<p>i would be interested in knowing how sam got odioworks started. you hear stories about reddit, and they had a few guys making it look like an already established service (which fueled further growth). until you cross that chasm, what was done to achieve growth? these are the questions i ask every start up founder.