Facebook Exec Jumps Off Career Cliff to Build Giant iPhone Flop
KEY POINTS
- •Molly Graham left her stable HR role at Facebook at age 25 to help build a smartphone despite no prior product experience.
- •Her risky move under Chamath Palihapitiya’s guidance resulted in a costly Facebook mobile phone failure but expanded her expertise.
- •This experience propelled her to senior leadership roles, including COO of Quip and managing operations for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
At just 25, Molly Graham bravely swapped Facebook’s cozy HR spreadsheets for the wild, engineer-packed jungle of smartphone design—despite knowing zilch about product development. Recruited by billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya (the man who doodled her doomed 'J-curve' career graph), she stumbled through hardware trips to Taiwan, endured the WORST performance review Facebook COULD muster, and still managed to draw the phone layout on a whiteboard like a caffeine-fueled art major. Though the phone itself tanked harder than your DMs after 2am, Graham emerged a mobile maestro, later COO-ing Quip's $750 million exit and juggling billions at Facebook’s Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Sheryl Sandberg and her own dad begged her to quit, but Molly’s gut said, 'Off the cliff!' Spoiler: it turns out the falling part was just professional Viagra.
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Who needs qualifications when you have the courage to jump off a career cliff into a $7.4B faceplant? Molly Graham's failure factory is giving your 'risk-taking' mantra some serious side-eye.
Nothing says leadership like getting dumped in a room of phone geniuses and accidentally designing failure, then calling it a growth hack.
Molly Graham’s career is the J-curve every overachiever’s nightmare: a free fall from you-don’t-know-what you’re doing to COO-in-3-years.
Source: Businessinsider | Published: 1/7/2026 | Author: Ben Shimkus
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