Facebook received the 30th HBSA/NC Entrepreneur Company of the Year Award at the Hyatt Regency in Burlingame on June 17 to an audience of over 360 HBS alum, sponsors, and guests.

Jeff Holland, HBSA/NC Chairman welcomed everyone, highlighting HBSA/NC club achievements this past Centennial year and thanking all those involved with organizing the dinner. Jeff gave special recognition to Dan Ahn (HBS’97), Phil Sanderson (HBS’97), and Ben Dubin (HBS’97) for their leadership as the dinner co-chairs and helping to raise funds for HBS Community Partners to enable them to achieve their public service mission by providing pro bono consulting and management assistance to Bay Area non-profit organizations. Dan, Phil, and Ben highlighted Jeff’s contributions to the club and thanked him for his outstanding leadership to HBSA/NC most recently having been the club’s Chairman over the past three years.

Facebook, the evening’s honored company, was introduced by Phil Sanderson who interviewed Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg (HBS ‘95). Phil touched on many interesting areas about Facebook, including how the company was started, where the growth opportunities are, and their unique culture. Mark articulately shared that how Facebook was started at Harvard and its amazing growth, for example, how Microsoft’s investment in Facebook was a milestone in their company history. Yet when asked about their competition, both Mark and Sheryl did not view Facebook to be merely limited by the current social networking players, but focused on the Facebook user/consumer as being the lighthouse of their efforts.