Do you have a 10 year plan? If not, here’s a billion reasons to have one.

In 2014, Mark Zuckerberg was under fire for what was seen by many as a crazy move in buying Whatsapp for $22 billion. Facebook’s share price has slid sideways at under $50 for the year, still recovering from a disastrous IPO where its price had fallen far below the opening price.

In October 2014, Mark got on Facebook’s earnings call. Instead of being defensive or focusing at appeasing shareholders - he came out with his 5 and 10 year plan.

He began by saying “Over the next five years, our goals are around taking our next generation of services, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and Search and helping them connect billions of people and become important businesses in their own right.” 

Multiple mobile apps each with a billion people? Many saw this as an impossible goal, as there was only one app which had even reached 1 billion users at the time (Google’s Gmail).

He then said “Now let's talk about how we're approaching our goals over the next 10 years. For the next 10 years our focus is on driving the fundamental changes in the world that we need to achieve our mission, connecting the whole world, understanding a world with big leaps in AIs and developing the next generation of platforms.”

Where are Mark and Facebook three years later? Facebook now has four of the top five most downloaded mobile apps in the world. Three of them (Facebook, Messenger and WhatsApp) now have over 1 billion users a month. 

Instagram isn’t far behind with 700 million. Instagram Stories now has more users than all the users of Snapchat, and slowed Snapchat’s growth by over 80%.

Facebook’s share price has tripled in three years from $50 to over $150.

As for his 10 year plan, Mark posted today: 

“We just announced our quarterly results and gave an update on our progress connecting the world. Our community now has more than 1.9 billion people, including almost 1.3 billion people active every day… This quarter we also took a major technology step forward at F8 by opening up the camera to be the first mainstream augmented reality platform.”

What’s your 10 year plan? 

Like a sailor focusing on their destination, when you commit to a long term future, you can weather any storm. And, like Mark, if you tell enough people where you’re going, it’s only a matter of time before you get there.

“The best way to predict your future is to create it.” ~ Abraham Lincoln