Ex-Facebook Engineer Raises $8.5M After 2 a.m. Zuckerberg Chat

Sophie Novati beat Mark Zuckerberg at chess at 2 a.m., then asked him a question that would shape her entire career.

It was 2011, and Novati was an engineering intern at Facebook during its "move fast and break things" era. The office felt more like a college dorm than a workplace, with people sleeping at desks and hanging out late into the night.

During one of those late-night chess matches, Novati posed the million-dollar question: How would Facebook ever make money? At the time, the platform was growing users faster than anyone had seen before, but its mobile app didn't feature a single ad.

Zuckerberg's answer was simple but powerful. "If you can figure out a way to capture people's valuable attention, you can always figure out how to turn that into money later," he told her. Focus on delivering value first, and the revenue will follow.

That advice stuck with Novati through her next role at Nextdoor, where she became the second iOS engineer and helped build the platform from scratch. But it really came alive when she founded her own company, Formation, in 2019.

Formation helps engineers land better jobs and boost their salaries through resume reviews, mock interviews, and negotiation coaching. Instead of obsessing over client lists or signup rates, Novati focused entirely on one metric: how much more money her clients made after going through the program.

The results speak for themselves. Engineers who complete Formation's programs earn an average of $127,000 more in their careers, while paying just $10,000 to $15,000 for the service. Compare that to college, which costs around $100,000 but only increases earnings by about $20,000 on average.

Why This Inspires

Novati's story shows that career-changing advice can come from the most unexpected moments. A casual chess game at 2 a.m. became the foundation for a business philosophy that's now helped thousands of people transform their careers.

Within five years, Formation raised over $8.5 million in funding and partnered with tech giants like Netflix, Google, Twitch, Dropbox, and Adobe to place thousands of workers. Just one year after launching, the company secured a $4 million seed round from Andreessen Horowitz, the same venture firm that first invested in Facebook.

Novati still follows Zuckerberg's wisdom today. "There's still a lot more that we can do to better capture the value that we're creating," she says. But for now, her attention stays locked on getting people into top jobs and changing the trajectory of their careers.

Sometimes the best business advice comes over a chessboard when you least expect it.