I’m Binge Watching Interviews with Sam Altman…

…so you don’t have to… and here are my takeaways. (Article 11)

This is a continuation from a series of articles found HERE.

2016-Sam Interviews Mark Zuckerberg on “How to Build the Future” for YC

Context:

Bonus!

I’ve done 10 articles so far, covering seven Altman interviews. I’ll break things up and do an article where quotes will be from Mark Zuckerberg. Sam Altman is still in the picture here — Sam is the interviewer!

If this was a course in school, this is like me bringing in a guest instructor.

Unless otherwise stated, all quotes below are from Mark Zuckerberg.

Mark starts out humble, if not slightly obnoxious. Sam says that Mark has built one of the most impactful companies in the world. Mark laughs and says in monotone “I’m not sure where to go from there.”

About starting Facebook:

“I’ve always been fascinated with people and how people work.”

Mark realized that you could find updates about news, sports, etc. But you couldn’t find similar information about people.

Mark says that he studied Psychology and Computer Science. “There are all of these parts of the brain that are just geared toward understanding people” like emotion processing, etc.

“You needed to build tools where people could express what was going on with themselves.”

“People have this deep thirst to understand what is going on around them.”

Mark mentions that he already had this hypothesis long before he built Facebook. He built other products with this philosophy in mind first.

Marks says that he built Facebook because it was a product that he and his friends wanted to build.

“We weren’t focused on building a company. We were just focused on building a product that would be useful at our school.”

Compared to the other products Mark built: “With Facebook, there was just such an intensity where people loved using it.”

“We didn’t set out to build a service that we were going to turn into a company. But that’s just where it led us.”

Sam asks if there is advice that Mark would give to other founders: “I always think that you should try to start with the problem that you are trying to solve in the world. And not that you are trying to start a company.”

Editor’s Note: I have found this reminder immensely helpful as I plan building my own product, which is synonymous in “solving a specific problem.”

Mark says that what gets you through the hard times is believing in what you are doing, and delivering a lot of value for people.

Sam says that people never appreciate just how bad low points in building a company can be. Mark shares his experience: “One of the hardest parts for me when building Facebook was when Yahoo offered to buy the company for a lot of money. Before that we just kind of came in and did what we thought was the best next thing to do… But then Yahoo came in with this really meaningful offer. We had ten million people using the product. It wasn’t as if it was obvious that we’d succeed far beyond that. It was the first point where we had to look at the future. We had to ask if what we are building was going to be so meaningful… At the end of that, Dustin and I decided that we can go beyond… That was really stressful because a lot of people really thought that we should sell the company.”

Editor’s Note: Oh, how awful. Yahoo wanted to give you $1 million :)

But on a serious note, he talked about the conflict and confusion and stress that caused.

“That part that was painful wasn’t turning down Yahoo’s offer. The hard part was that so many people quit because they didn’t believe in what we were doing. The whole management team was gone within a year after that.”

“I got really lucky, because not only did it end up working out. But it ended up working out pretty quickly.” This decision was in summer of 2006, and a month later Facebook launched newsfeed, and then opened Facebook to anyone (not just students) and growth was exponential after that.

“Sometimes you have to make a bet on something, and it’s not clear if you’re going to be right for 5–10 years.”

Mark never thought about selling the company again after that.

Sam gives Mark props again for knowing how to hire. But he also talks about how Facebook keeps an innovation culture. Mark comments:

“Build a company that is focused on learning as quickly as possible. Companies are learning organisms. You can make decisions where you learn faster, or you learn slower… We invest in this huge testing framework… We make so much more progress than if every idea had to come from management. There is something great about building this learning culture.”

“Building a company is just following the scientific method.”

“When you do stuff well, you shouldn’t have to do big crazy things.”

Editor’s Note: What a quote! From the guy who rebranded Facebook to Meta and invested so heavily in the Metaverse — which has such little overlap (on the surface) with their core product.

“People were not just interested in things about their friends, but they were also interested in the day to day changes.”

“You use data and listen to your product and your intuition to decide what problems to go solve.

“The Oculus team is by far the best team working on VR, and so it made sense to make that move (acquire them).”

“It’s better to make big moves than have pride and not do that.”

Editor’s Note: I’m getting a little confused, Mark. Make big moves, or don’t?

“I started Facebook when I was 19. I can’t institutionally believe that experience is that important. Otherwise I’d have a hard time reconciling myself. We invest in people who are really talented, even if they haven’t done that thing before.”

Editor’s Note: Mark is either disconnected, or this is not honest. I’ve been through interview rounds and been exposed to the hiring practices of most major Tech companies. Mark may be disappointed if he were to go through the interviews himself. The tips my friends and I typically give each other is to look for a role that is exactly, or as close to it, as what you have been doing.

Mark gives examples of all of the people who run product groups at Facebook did not previously run product groups, and weren’t in product at all. Perhaps his comment becomes more true as you get close to Mark, but not for more junior employees.

Mark says that people see that there are opportunities at your company that don’t require specific prior experience, and that attracts new talent.

Mark says that key themes over the next 10 years in Tech and for Facebook will be:

• Connecting people
• Artificial Intelligence — Mark talks about how the work Facebook does for AI is the same work that will save lives by diagnosing diseases early, etc.
• Virtual reality.

“I get a little frustrated when people fear-monger about A.I. and how it could end up hurting people. I think that in many real ways, this is going to save peoples’ lives.”

Editor’s Note: But Mark, what if the concerns are legitimate? Saving lives at what cost? I, myself, am not an A.I. doomsdayer, but it feels he should perhaps talk to the legitimacy of many of these concerns. Sam generally does a good job of that.

“Every 15 years, there is a new computing platform that comes around that allows people to do completely different things than they could do before. 20 years ago we were using desktop computers. Now we have phones that help us connect with each other. There is going to be another platform after that. And I think that is going to be virtual reality and augmented reality… I’m really excited about that trend as well.”

“I think the most important things that entrepreneurs can do is: Pick something you care about, work on it, but don’t actually commit to turning it into a company until it’s working.”

Mark thinks that a tremendous amount of companies that end up working out start this way. Sam enthusiastically agrees.

Editor’s Note: This is consistent with past advice that Sam gives about solving a specific company.

Mark credits Peter Thiel showing interest in Facebook with creating an inflection point in knowing it would turn into a real company. “A formal Delaware company” as Mark puts it.

Mark tells a story how he was at Harvard when building Facebook. He had told Peter Thiel that the plan was to stay enrolled at Harvard and build Facebook in his spare time. But Thiel didn’t believe them, that they’d stay enrolled at Harvard. Mark says they first took one semester off. But quickly decided they’d focus full time on building Facebook.

Editor’s Note: This gives me an interesting frame to view Tech companies through. Tech companies offer, mostly, high pay with a pretty cushy lifestyle. Lots of free time. The culture at Tech companies, in my experience, is that you typically end up filling the time one way or another — and not necessarily with valuable tasks. Not just you, but your colleagues, too. Colleagues and the culture at these orgs is quite “comfortable.” The ideal way to do it is that there is frequent bouncing back and forth between Tech companies and start ups, where once a Tech employee has good enough reason to believe he has a legitimate start up to pursue, that he pursues it and leaves behind his Tech job. The salaries at the Tech companies are so darn good that in reality, almost nobody actually does this.

Sam asks Mark what the best advice Peter Thiel ever told him. Mark responds:

“In a world that is changing quickly. The biggest risk you can take is not taking any risk.” Sam enthusiastically agrees.

My Biggest Takeaway from this Interview

Well, there was a fairly substantial amount of disconnect between what Mark said in this interview and most Tech workers’ experience in reality, eg. Related to hiring practices. Besides that…

Sam asks if there is advice that Mark would give to other founders:

“I always think that you should try to start with the problem that you are trying to solve in the world. And not that you are trying to start a company.”

Mark thinks that a tremendous amount of companies that end up working out start this way. Sam enthusiastically agrees. I have found this reminder immensely helpful as I plan building my own product, which is synonymous in “solving a specific problem.” This is also consistent with past advice that Sam gives about solving a specific company.

Also x2, Mark tells a story how he was at Harvard when building Facebook. He had told Peter Thiel that the plan was to stay enrolled at Harvard and build Facebook in his spare time. But Thiel didn’t believe them, that they’d stay enrolled at Harvard. Mark says they first took one semester off. But quickly decided they’d focus full time on building Facebook.

This gives me an interesting frame to view Tech companies through. Tech companies offer, mostly, high pay with a pretty cushy lifestyle. The culture at Tech companies, in my experience, is that you typically end up filling the time one way or another — and not necessarily with valuable tasks. Not just you, but your colleagues, too. Much better would be: There is frequent bouncing back and forth between Tech companies and start ups, where once a Tech employee has good enough reason to believe he has a legitimate start up to pursue, that he pursues it and leaves behind his Tech job. The salaries at the Tech companies are so darn good that in reality, almost nobody actually does this. I could imagine that the origins of cushy lifestyle at Tech companies (say, Google) was they wanted an environment similar to academia where there are long periods of vacation, sabbatical, etc. And in theory, you can go dedicate time to pursue a passion project you had been sitting on.

Also x3, it resonates with me that Mark simply built a product that he and his friends wanted to exist.

More to come!

Articles in Series:

1. https://medium.com/@dwolin/im-binge-watching-interviews-with-sam-altman-29a1f9f07ee1
2. https://medium.com/@dwolin/im-binge-watching-interviews-with-sam-altman-559bea849356
3. https://medium.com/@dwolin/im-binge-watching-interviews-with-sam-altman-44638f1e4eff
4. https://medium.com/@dwolin/im-binge-watching-interviews-with-sam-altman-e1d8ac81ca43
5. https://medium.com/@dwolin/im-binge-watching-interviews-with-sam-altman-588981e6eb2b
6. https://medium.com/@dwolin/im-binge-watching-interviews-with-sam-altman-5ebfe3c79f7e (Lex Fridman Interview :00 to :30)
7. https://medium.com/@dwolin/im-binge-watching-interviews-with-sam-altman-710bc1447a7c (Lex Fridman Interview :30 to :60)
8. https://medium.com/@dwolin/im-binge-watching-interviews-with-sam-altman-cb504390ab8c (Lex Fridman Interview 1:00 to 1:30)
9. https://medium.com/@dwolin/im-binge-watching-interviews-with-sam-altman-68a4fb2b5785 (Lex Fridman Interview 1:30 to 2:00)
10. https://medium.com/@dwolin/im-binge-watching-interviews-with-sam-altman-12b0bad4222e (Lex Fridman Interview 2:00 to end)
11. ← You are here