The world’s largest social network has ‘gone public’ with an historic Initial Public Offering (IPO) valuing the company at over $100 Billion. That makes Facebook worth more than Hewlett-Packard, Starbucks or Disney.

In less than a decade, founder Mark Zuckerberg has grown Facebook from its humble beginnings in a Harvard dorm room to an Internet giant with over 900 million users. Its success offers these lessons to anyone starting up a business.

Create a community

It’s easier to sell something to people who are already part of your business. Expected to soon reach the billion-user mark, Facebook makes its money by offering advertising opportunities to reach that community.

Invest in customer experience

Make your customers happy all the time. Facebook invests heavily in continuous improvements to its customer experience. Users enjoy an unending banquet of new features, applications and services. As a result, Facebook enjoys a very active and loyal user base.

Work with smart people

It’s impossible to know it all. While he’s arguably a genius, Zuckerberg, age 27, built a business leadership team consisting of other brilliant people with skills much different from his own.

It’s comforting to remember that every superstar company started out very small – such as Facebook, Apple and Microsoft. Like them, your upward potential is unlimited – if you simply apply some lessons learned from these masters.