Zuckerberg: Facebook's servers cost $85/month, and he was $160 in debt
pdamodaran · x · 2026-09-25
In a retold interview anecdote, Zuckerberg recalls Facebook's humble 2004 origins: it launched on February 4 as essentially a search box — type a name, get the file — built in a few days of code, with co-founder Dustin Moskovitz buying Perl for Dummies to get up to speed.
Server rentals cost $85 a month while Zuckerberg was already $160 in debt. Meanwhile, big sites celebrated 15% monthly return rates; Facebook's early users came back 70% every day.
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