A Facebook Alum Builds an Intelligent Sales PlatformDarian Shirazi turned down a $35 million acquisition offer from Google, and leveraged his massive local database to provide real-time information for sales teams targeting the U.S. small-business market.
ByJason Ankeny•
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Most people start their professional lives working fast-food jobs or retail gigs, but Darian Shirazi isn't most people. At age 15 he began purchasing computer components in bulk from Asia and marketing them on eBay, generating suchimpressive salesthat the online auction giant soon offered him an engineering internship. After two summers at eBay, Shirazi began exploring other opportunities, and in 2005 he became the first-ever intern hired atFacebook,然后逃gling startup whose dozen staffers worked close to Shirazi's family home in Palo Alto, Calif.
"They were guys not that much older than me, working on something I thought was cool," Shirazi recalls, admitting, "It wasn't clear to me if it would become anything big or not."
