Mark Zuckerberg on How to build the future
In this interview, Sam Altman chats with Mark Zuckerberg about how important it is to solve a problem before working on a product. He thinks that entrepreneurs should start with problems that they want to solve in the world rather than being determined to start a company.
“For anyone that has experience building a company, you know that you go through some hard things along the way. What gets you through that is believing in what you’re doing and knowing that what you’re doing is delivering a lot of value for people. That’s how the best companies are getting made.”
Zuckerberg also reveals the hardest moments of Facebook. He shares his TOP experience and pivotal moments.
Yahoo’s offer of $1 billion in 2006
“One of the hardest parts for me was when Yahoo offered to buy the company for a lot of money. That was a turning point in the company. It was the first time we had to look at the future and say, ‘Wow, is what we’re going to build be actually more meaningful than this?”
At the time, many of Facebook’s early employees were in favor of selling.
“For them, being able to sell a company for a billion dollars after a couple years, that was like a home run. And it is a home run. I get that, but I think that I didn’t communicate very well about what we were trying to do caused this huge tension.”
Zuckerberg believed Facebook had a bigger mission.
Management team’s departure
Much of the tension was caused by a failure to communicate Facebook’s mission to the team. As a result, the entire early management team left the company after that. Zuckerberg has never regretted his decision though.
“I got really lucky because not only did what I believed in end up working out, but it ended up working out pretty quickly. The next month after that, we launched News Feed, which now 10 years looking back at it, is one of the most used products in the world.”
Innovation and learning culture
Bigger picture: Zuckerberg says he believes that companies shouldn’t opt for strategies where they need to make massive bets or shifts like acquisitions or a big new product. “I actually think when you do things well, you shouldn’t have to do big crazy things.”
He adds that a company innovates and makes more progress by empowering people to run their own experiments and prove value with data rather than by bottlenecking decisions on management.
“The key is building a company which is focused on learning as fast as possible. There’s something very deep about building this learning culture and moving quickly towards that.”
Facebook’s 3 areas of focus
When asked how the rest of the world will transform over the next 20 years and how Facebook will contribute to it, Zuckerberg says that Facebook has a 10-year road map of three of the big changes that they want to see in the world:
1. Internet Connectivity Worldwide
Connecting everyone around the world to the Internet is indeed a challenge, but it’s so important to solve.
2. Artificial intelligence (AI)
AI is going to unlock so much potential in so many different domains. This is going to save people’s lives and push people forward.
3. Virtual Reality (VR) / Augmented Reality (AR)
VR/AR is the new computing platform that is going to help people be more creative and experience what other people are feeling more immersively than video.
Risk Taking
Finally, when asked about the best advice Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and Facebook’s first investor, has given him, Zuckerberg recalls this:
“In a world that’s changing so quickly, the biggest risk you can take is not taking any risk.”
Watch the complete interview at https://blog.ycombinator.com/mark-zuckerberg-future-interview/.
