Mark Zuckerberg is doing a victory march as he continues to soak in the success of Threads, a rival to Twitter. The social media network already has over 100 million sign-ups, angering Twitter owner Elon Musk, who has called Zuckerberg a “cuck” in a tweet and has also said that the two should have “a literal d*** measuring contest”.

The win for Zuckerberg comes after years of controversies around privacy-related issues but the man has held his ground and continues to surge ahead.

Meta, which was previously called Facebook, has had a successful run, one that could have been cut short several times. In fact, many successful companies could have been snuffed out in their early days.

MySpace wanted to buy Facebook

Like many companies, MySpace, the social media biggie from the early 2000s, wanted to buy Facebook. The then MySpace CEO, Chris DeWolfe, thought $75m was too high a price to pay. Ultimately, MySpace was bought by Rupert Murdoch and it turned out to be a disaster.

Excite didn’t want to buy Google for under $1m

Google wanted to sell itself for under a million dollars but the once popular web portal Excite turned down the offer and the company’s then CEO George Bell even refused when the asking price was down to $750,000. Excite was acquired by Ask Jeeves in 2004.

Blockbuster turned down Netflix for $50m

The year was 2000 and Blockbuster Video had the opportunity to acquire Netflix for $50m but its CEO John Antioco and other top executives held back their laughter and refused the offer. According to reports, Netflix was losing money in its early days and that didn’t sit well with Blockbuster.

Ring was rejected publicly

In 2018, Amazon bought smart doorbell company Ring for a whopping $1 billion. It’s the same company that was rejected by investors on ABC’s Shark Tank. Founder Jamie Siminoff went on the show in 2013, pitching a business that was then known as Doorbot. The idea was about selling Wi-Fi-enabled doorbells and there was rejection across the board (well almost). It almost brought him to tears.

(Clockwise from top-left) Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Reed Hastings of Netflix and Jamie Siminoff of Ring