EVERY SPOKEN WORD
85 min read · 16,932 words- 0:00 – 1:49
Setting the stage: Acquired Live at Chase Center and what’s coming next
- DRDavid Rosenthal
So how many interviews with Mark do you think you watched before tonight?
- BGBen Gilbert
[chuckles] Oh, to prepare?
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Yeah.
- BGBen Gilbert
[chuckles] Uh, th- thirty to forty? Uh, the, the best ones are the '04 to '06 vintage, but they're all so different. It's almost like every three to four years is a new era that is markedly different from all the previous eras.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Totally. And, uh, I think we might have witnessed the beginning of a new era right in front of us on stage.
- BGBen Gilbert
[chuckles] Oh, yes, absolutely.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
All right, should we do this?
- BGBen Gilbert
Let's do it.
- SPSpeaker
Who Got the Truth? [upbeat music] Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Who got the truth now? Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Sit me down, say it straight. Another story on the way. Who got the truth?
- BGBen Gilbert
Welcome to the Fall 2024 season of Acquired, the podcast about great companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
I'm David Rosenthal.
- BGBen Gilbert
And we are your hosts. Listeners, we have something very special for you today: our interview with Mark Zuckerberg from Acquired live at Chase Center.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Ooh!
- BGBen Gilbert
Mark is the iconic founder CEO of our time, and this conversation was just too good to hold onto any longer, so we are getting it out quickly before we release the full video of the entire show.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Which, speaking of the full show, [chuckles] was utterly amazing. We had surprise appearances from Jensen Huang, Daniel Ek, Emily Chang, and of course, we had the one and only Mike Taylor, the artist who sings Who Got the Truth, performing live. It was incredible. We've got basically a whole film production that's now happening behind the scenes, with another ninety minutes of content beyond just this Mark interview. We should have that out in the next couple weeks, so stay tuned for that.
- 1:49 – 4:57
Sponsors and partners: why J.P. Morgan Payments matters to the show
- BGBen Gilbert
First, though, a huge thank you to our partners this season. You know our presenting partner, J.P. Morgan Payments.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
And we are also pumped to have two more great returning sponsors this season: Statsig, the world's first product acceleration platform that thousands of companies, from OpenAI to Series A startups, rely on to ship fast, learn more, and make smart decisions. You can find out more about them at statsig.com/acquired.
- BGBen Gilbert
Sounds a lot like Meta.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
[chuckles]
- BGBen Gilbert
And Crusoe, which is the world's best climate-aligned AI cloud and data center operator that is leading the industrial build-out of AI. Find out more about them at crusoe.ai/acquired. As always, come discuss this afterwards with us in the Slack, acquired.fm/slack. And if you wanna be notified when every new episode drops, sign up at acquired.fm/email.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
All right, one more thing before the interview. We need to say a huge, huge thank you to the entire J.P. Morgan Payments team for securing the Chase Center [chuckles] for this, for orchestrating the entire evening. Our partnership this year has been absolutely incredible and gone, I think, way beyond what either of us ever could have imagined.
- BGBen Gilbert
Yeah, for those who don't know about J.P. Morgan Payments, they empower businesses to accept money, hold money, send money, protect money from fraud, and gain unique insights from money flows to help your company grow.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Yep, and the payments business specifically, like most things at J.P. Morgan, is the largest and most trusted payments provider in the entire world. They move ten trillion dollars a day. That's almost twenty-five percent of all US dollar payment flows in the global economy. Pretty much every single company that we cover on Acquired works with J.P. Morgan Payments in some way. You can never outgrow them. They partner with startups and small companies like us, [chuckles] like you would be, Ben, all the way up to the largest enterprises in the Fortune 500.
- BGBen Gilbert
Yeah, we've got more to share about their new payments products and technology this season, like the pay-by-face biometric payments that we saw live at Chase Center.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Yeah, that was super cool.
- BGBen Gilbert
Yep, so that you can learn which may be the right fit to solve your payments challenges and grow your business.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
The other thing we gotta say is, like, Ben and I really worked side by side all year with their incredible team to make this evening happen, and we really got to know them, Max, Umar, Dustin, Hannah, Vinnie, Nick, Amy, Carly, and so many others. It's like we were one team. You guys rock.
- BGBen Gilbert
Yeah, for the first time, we actually got to experience what it would be like if Acquired was a large, world-class organization and not just, you know, our little team. And, uh, what happened at Chase Center is really the physical embodiment of that.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Thank you guys for being the best partners we could ever imagine, and a very special shout-out to Dustin Sedgwick, J.P. Morgan Payment CMO, who's a longtime listener of the show and a good friend of ours, and he's just been the driving force behind all of this. Without him, Chase Center wouldn't have happened. We're so grateful for our incredible relationship with you and all of J.P. Morgan.
- BGBen Gilbert
Yep. So please enjoy our conversation with Mark Zuckerberg, and to take us in, the chairman and CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase, Jamie Dimon.
- 4:57 – 5:31
Jamie Dimon welcome: opening the live event
- SPSpeaker
Hello, Acquired listeners. Welcome to the Chase Center and to Acquired live. I'm Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase. I'm happy to kick off the show tonight and welcome all of you to one of my favorite arenas. It's been a great partnership all year between J.P. Morgan Payments and Acquired, storytelling and educating about some of the greatest companies in the world. For many of them, just like many of you in the crowd, we're thrilled to call you friends and partners of the firm. Sorry I couldn't be there in person tonight, but I hope everyone enjoys the show. Ben and David, over to you.
- 5:31 – 7:21
Zuckerberg arrives: would you start Facebook again, and the cost of the journey
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Mark. [audience cheering]
- BGBen Gilbert
Hey!
- DRDavid Rosenthal
It's great to have you here. [audience cheering]
- MZMark Zuckerberg
It's great to be here. You know, I was watching, I was watching Jensen's video, correcting the record, and I was thinking to myself, "We might need to book the next one of these for all the things I'm gonna have to apologize for that I'm gonna say tonight." [laughing]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
[laughing] For what?
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Nah, just kidding.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Well, uh-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
I don't apologize anymore. [laughing]
- BGBen Gilbert
We've noticed. [chuckles]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Uh, well, okay, wait, wait, here's the question: If you knew what you knew today...
- MZMark Zuckerberg
What's that?
- DRDavid Rosenthal
If you knew what you know today, would you have started Facebook?
- MZMark Zuckerberg
... Oh, God! Um, I mean, I, look, I, I think-
- BGBen Gilbert
Coming out hot, David. [chuckles]
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah, no, I mean-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Wait, he started it. [chuckles] Literally.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
I, I think there's something to Jensen's original sentiment, which is that n- the entrepreneurial journey is very challenging, especially the early days when you're running a startup and, you know, there's this sense that what you're doing could just die at any moment, and, you know, the volatility, everything is just getting thrashed so much. And it's, it's not, you know, you, you obviously, you look back, and you have all these fond memories, but it was not the most fun part of the journey or, you know, the part of my life that I, like, wish I could go back and relive. So, I mean, I, I do think that there's something to what Jensen was saying that I thought was very honest, and that when I heard him say it the first time, I was like: "Yeah, I get that." Right? It's like I think, I, I think there are l- like, a lot of people for whom, you know, if you knew how painful, uh, it would be along the way, you wouldn't get started. But then, you know, I think that that's one of the things that's good about human nature, is you can underestimate how painful things are going to be, so that way you can go and do good things. [audience laughing]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Well, um, [chuckles] on that topic, we have a lot to talk about.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah.
- 7:21 – 10:14
“Pathemathos”: learning through suffering, values, and lived behavior
- DRDavid Rosenthal
I think this is actually very appropriate. First, we have to ask you about your shirt and what you're wearing. [audience laughing]
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah. You know, I, um, I started, uh, working with people to design some of my own clothes. And, um, [audience laughing] so I figure, you know, look, we're gonna design eyewear, we're gonna design other stuff that people wear. Let's get, let's get good at this. And, um, so, so this one, I actually... I worked with this great fashion designer, Mike Amiri, and, um, he's got a great story. So I, I, I wouldn't be surprised if you're doing one of these with him one day. Um, and this one is-- So I've, I've, I've kind of started working on this series of shirts with my, some of my favourite classical sayings on them. So this one is pathemathos, uh, learning through suffering. [audience laughing] It's a little family saying, and- [laughing]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
[chuckles]
- BGBen Gilbert
[chuckles]
- MZMark Zuckerberg
... also Aeschylus.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
[chuckles] Was, uh, w- was that your family saying growing up, or is that your family now?
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Oh, no.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
No.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
I'm just saying my sister's saying. [laughing]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
[chuckles] L- uh-
- BGBen Gilbert
Well, no, let's, let's pull that thread.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah.
- BGBen Gilbert
Uh, no pun intended, I promise. Uh-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
[chuckles]
- BGBen Gilbert
What does learning through suffering mean to you?
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Um, well, I think you learn what matters to you and what's important, and kind of your place in the world, through repeatedly hitting your head against different challenges. And, I mean, I think that that is sort of, that's the journey, right? I mean, that's the, the entrepreneurial journey. It's also, I think, part of the beauty of building things. And, um... But, you know, this is something that Jensen talks a lot about, too, right? It's like I, I, I feel like you, you know, when you go to start a company, you, you know, everyone kind of writes down what they would like their values to be, but values are not what you write down on the wall. It's, like, your lived behaviors. And you only really learn what you care about when you have to make hard trade-offs and face challenges. So yeah, you learn the most important things through facing challenges.
- BGBen Gilbert
Hmm.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Well, um, speaking of facing challenges, we wanna talk about a number of those because I, I m- w- we counted, by our count, I think you have faced more existential challenges than any meaningful company in history through your first twenty years. First, though-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
It's a dubious distinction. [chuckles]
- BGBen Gilbert
We, we will make our case to you of why-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Well-
- BGBen Gilbert
... w- and enumerate them.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
You're still here.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
That's good.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Um-
- BGBen Gilbert
But first-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
But first-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
I, I kind of think my... You know, like, that old Nike Michael Jordan ad, where he's talking about how he's failed over and over and over again, and that's how he succeeds? That one really resonates with me, too.
- 10:14 – 15:54
Ray-Ban Meta glasses: the long arc from social apps to AR presence and AI assistants
- DRDavid Rosenthal
So, um, w- thanks to you guys, I got a pair of these this summer, um, and I genuinely love them. Tell us the story of how these came to be.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah, so... Thanks. I'm, I'm, I'm excited about them, too. [chuckles]
- BGBen Gilbert
[laughing]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
[chuckles]
- MZMark Zuckerberg
So, you know, we, at Meta, we've been building social experiences for twenty years now, and originally it took the form of a website, then mobile apps. But the thing is, I, I, I never thought about us as a social media company. Right, we're not a social app company, we are a, a social connection company, right? I mean, I, I, we talk about what we're doing as building the future of human connection. And that's not only gonna be constrained over time to what you can do on a phone, right, on a small screen. So when you think about... You know, when we got started, okay, we're like a handful of kids. You know, we weren't able, we didn't have the resources at the time to go define whatever the next computing platform is. And also, you know, Facebook originally got started around the same time as, you know, a bunch of the early smartphones and those platforms got started, so we didn't really get to play any role in developing that platform. And one of the big themes, I think, for the next chapter of what we do is I, I wanna be able to build what I, what I think are sort of the ideal experiences, not just what you're allowed to build on some platform that someone else built, but, like, what is actually, if you can think from first principles, what is the ideal social experience? So I, I think what you would like to have is not a phone that you look down at, um, that kind of takes your attention away from the things and the people around you, you know, not just a small screen. I think what you'd ideally have is glasses-... and through the glasses, um, there's one part of it where the glasses, you can- they can see what you see, and they can hear what you hear, and in doing so, they can be kind of the perfect AI assistant for you because they have context on what you're doing. But then part of that is also that the glasses can project images, basically like holograms, out into the world, and that way, your social experiences with other people aren't constrained to these little interactions you can have on a phone screen. You know, in the, in the not-so-distant future, you can imagine, um, because you guys have demoed some of the stuff that we, that we, that we've done, a like a, a version of this, where we're having a conversation like this, but, you know, maybe like one of us isn't even here. They're just like a hologram, and we have glasses, and it really y- th- there's the question of delivering a realistic sense of presence. There's something magical in the realm of building social experiences around the feeling of human presence and, like, being there with another person and this physical perception, right? Where we're very physical beings, right? And people like to intellectualize everything, but a lot of our experience is very physical, and th- this physical sense of presence that you are with another person, doing things in the physical world, is something that you're gonna be able to do through holograms, through glasses, um, without being taken away from, you know, whatever else you're doing, just kind of have that mixed in with the rest of the world. Um, it's gonna be, I think, the ultimate digital social experience, and I think it's also gonna be the ultimate incarnation of AI because you're gonna have conversations where it's like, all right, there's some people. It's like, maybe like I'm physically here. There's, like, a person. You're, you're like a hologram there. There's an AI that is kind of embodied as someone who's there, and the glasses will enable this. So, okay, so how are we going after this, building this? This is like some, some huge project. We've been working on it for ten years, um, and there are a lot of different challenges to solve to get there. There's like, you have to build a novel display stack, right? It's not-- these aren't just screens, like the kind that are in phones. There's this long lineage. They, they, they're connected to the screens that have been in TVs and monitors and things for a long time. There's been this massive optimization of the supply chain. There's, like, brand-new display stack around holographic displays that basically need to get created, and then they need to be put into glasses. They need to be miniaturised. And the-- you also, in the glasses, need to fit chips, microphones, um, you know, speakers, cameras, eye tracking, to be able to understand what you're doing, batteries to make it last all day.
- BGBen Gilbert
Operate on-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Like, okay, so then there's like-
- BGBen Gilbert
New, novel RF protocols.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah, it's, it's like, okay, it's a pretty big challenge. So we're like, all right, let's go try to go for the big thing, right? And, and we, we've been working on that for a while, and we're pretty close to being able to show off, um, kind of the first prototype that we have of that, and I'm really excited about that. At the same time, we also came at it from this lens of, all right, so that's like a lot of new technology that needs to get developed, um, a lot to pack into a form factor 'cause the glasses have to be good-looking, too. So what if we just constrain ourselves to, like, we're gonna work with a great partner, EssilorLuxottica. They make Ray-Ban. They make a lot of the iconic glasses. Let's see what we can fit into glasses today and make them as useful as possible. And, you know, I, I actually, I kinda thought when we were getting started with those, that it was almost like a practice project for like, for the, the ultimate AR.
- BGBen Gilbert
Which, let's be clear, that's what you thought Facebook was.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
That's true. That's true. [chuckles] Yeah, I did.
- BGBen Gilbert
Like, for your real start-up someday.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
That's true. Yeah, no, this is... Yeah, let's go on a tangent there for a second.
- BGBen Gilbert
[chuckles]
- 15:54 – 18:40
From side project to company: early Facebook ambition (or lack thereof)
- MZMark Zuckerberg
When, when, so I started Facebook in school, came out to Silicon Valley with Dustin and, and a handful of people working on it at the time, and we did that because Silicon Valley is where all the start-ups came from. And I remember we got off the plane, we were driving down 101, we're like: Wow, eBay, Yahoo! Like, this is amazing. The-- all these great companies. One day, we're- maybe we'll build a company like this. And I'd already started Facebook, and I was like, S- surely the project that we're working on now is not a company. It's like-
- BGBen Gilbert
And Facebook had, like, some scale at this point.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Oh, no, no, it was a great project. I just didn't have the ambition to turn it into a company at the time. That just kind of happened. Um, but anyhow, um- [laughing] Uh, yeah, I mean, a lot of hard work, obviously, but, but it's, but I, I just at the time, I was kinda like: Yeah, no, I don't, I don't think this is it. Um...
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Well, that's your answer of would you have started-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Would I have started-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
You actually didn't try to start Facebook. [chuckles]
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah, [chuckles] I didn't, no. Um, so yeah, so I mean, the, the, the glasses, though, you know, we thought that this was like, all right, we, we wanna get working with EssilorLuxottica, so we can start building more and more advanced glasses. And then, you know, they're really good. They look good, and then AI, like the massive transformation in AI.
- BGBen Gilbert
So-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
And, and I, I remember-
- BGBen Gilbert
Let's, let's, for listeners, let's just be really clear. You guys shipped this product that I'm holding before LLMs, or at least before the-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah
- BGBen Gilbert
... public consciousness was aware of-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah
- BGBen Gilbert
... you know, the ChatGPT moment.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah.
- BGBen Gilbert
And these were not manufactured and shipped as an AI device.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah.
- BGBen Gilbert
That came later when they were already in market.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah, a few years ago, I would have predicted that AR holograms would have been available before kind of like full-scale AI, and now I think it's probably gonna be the other order. So now it's like, all right, great, well, this is actually a great product because it's got, it's got the cameras, so it can see what you see, it's got the microphone, it's got the speakers, you can talk to it. I, I remember calling Alex Himmel, the, the guy who runs the product group that-
- BGBen Gilbert
That's exactly the story
- MZMark Zuckerberg
... running it, and I'm like: Hey, you know, I, I think we should probably pivot this and make it so that, um, that Meta AI is the primary feature of it. And then, like, I remember I came in the next week, and they'd built a prototype of it on Tuesday, and it was like: All right, good. Yeah, no, this is good. This is gonna be a very successful product.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
He told us a much more high-stakes version of that story. [laughing]
- BGBen Gilbert
He's like: So I was, I was on the highway with my kids, and I get this call on a Saturday from Mark, and he's like, "Those glasses-... Could we put Meta AI in them running on device and, like, ship that soon so we can see if that's a good idea or not?
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah, that's, that tracks. That's what I just said. [laughing]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
[laughing]
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Sounds right.
- BGBen Gilbert
[laughing] Okay, so thank you for opening up with a story.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
[chuckles]
- 18:40 – 28:49
Why Meta keeps winning: platform shifts, engineering culture, and learning velocity
- BGBen Gilbert
The question that I would like to try to answer tonight is: why has Meta worked as spectacularly well as it has? I mean, one of the most valuable companies in the world through multiple iterations, multiple technology waves, fighting off, you know, maybe le- let's name all the waves in which people said, "Oh, Facebook and Meta are so screwed," and yet that is not the way it looks today.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Uh, MySpace, Twitter gen one-
- BGBen Gilbert
Yep.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Um, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, TikTok.
- BGBen Gilbert
Apple app-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
ATT
- BGBen Gilbert
- tracking transparency.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
You could put in its own whole category. Um, and now ChatGPT. That's nine.
- BGBen Gilbert
And, like, there is a widely held public narrative every single time Snapchat discovers stories, or the- there's something where people are like, "Oh, the cool thing that Facebook the company did is just obsolete now, and they're gonna go away." You very much haven't gone away. What do you think is the through line of the DNA of the company that allows you to keep winning?
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Um, I think it's that we're a technology company that is focused on human connection, not a specific type of app. So, like, we never thought about ourselves as a website or a social network or anything like that. For, for me, building this kind of glasses to enable the future of people being able to feel present with another person, no matter where they actually physically are, is the natural continuation of the kind of apps that we build today, but it depends on how you define what you are. And then you need to figure out, well, how do you build-- how do you give yourself the competence to actually go do that? And that's where I think being a strong technology company comes in. Because, you know, a lot of companies, I think, think about themselves too narrowly in terms of, okay, well, we're this kind of one thing, and the reason why we can build all these things is because we are-- have a really strong technology foundation. And some of that is just me and how I think about stuff, and I, I was an engineer before I got started. I mean, I, like, mostly took, like, systems engineering-type classes when I was in college. So, you know, you talk about, like, Friendster and MySpace and all the scaling challenges they had doing the graph calculations of like, all right, uh, do you know this person? Should you show them-
- BGBen Gilbert
Friends of friends of friends.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Yeah, actually, can you take us back? And, like, we wanna ask you the story of that time. I mean, um, it seems quaint now, Friendster, MySpace, but you studied computer science, graph networking, social graphs. That is a very-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah
- DRDavid Rosenthal
... very difficult computational calculation.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
So, so I think it's a combination of, of a, a product question and a technology question. I think you can define the product in a such a general way that the technology becomes basically impossible to solve. Um, so you wanna have a smart product definition, but then you wanna be competent and better than everyone else at the technology. And I, I think that that's something that we've held ourselves to and build a good organization around. And it's, it's one of the things that I, I observed as soon as I came out to the Valley, that all these companies that called themselves technology companies were not really set up that way, right? It's like the, the companies I was talking about, it's like they, you know, they... the CEO wasn't technical, the board of directors had no one technical on it. They had, like, one dude on the management team who was the head of engineering, who was technical, and, like, everyone else wasn't. It's like, all right, if that's your team, then you're not a technology company. So I, I think one of the things that I've always been pretty careful about is I, I actually, like, want, like, the, a lot of the people on our, on our management team, it's like, you know, split mostly people running, um, either these big product groups who've come up through different technical pathways at the company, and I think that there's, like, a balance, right? It's like you don't want everyone to be an engineer because there's other things that matter, too. But if you don't have enough of your kind of share of the company as engineers, then you're not a technology company. And I think that that also is important to the board, and, and I, I think just, like, in terms of how you weigh decisions and culturally, things inside the company matters a lot. But, but I, I, I think that that's one of the things that has been really fundamental, right? It's like we're able to kind of go from platform to platform and do these different things because we've invested and cared about the underlying technology. The product experiences that we build on top of that are an implementation, and they matter. And for that, I think we also, I think, are a pretty curious and learning-focused organization. Um, where, you know, I view the product strategy less as any one specific thing and more as how do we iterate and learn as quickly as possible, how to make each thing better for, for the people we're trying to serve, right? So i- if, like, I define our strategies, if we can learn faster than every other company, we're gonna win. We're gonna build a better product than everyone else because we're gonna get it out first or early. We're going to, uh, have a good feedback loop. We're gonna get, get a bunch of feedback. We're gonna learn what people like better than other people. And then, over time, by the time you get to, you know, whether it's version three or four or five, I mean, they're not even discrete versions because we, you ship so frequently. It's, um, you just, uh, you learn faster. So I think that's basically the formula: be a technology company-... build good foundation, like, learn from what, what people are, are kind of focused on in the world, and l- and just iterate as quickly as you can.
- BGBen Gilbert
In one of my research calls to prep for this, someone, uh, uh, described you as a master strategist, which, like, I, uh, it's- we, we all sort of acknowledge that at this point, but that the-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
I mean, except for, like, all the stuff that I just thought was not gonna be that important, that ended up actually being the most important. It's- [chuckles]
- BGBen Gilbert
[chuckles]
- MZMark Zuckerberg
But you're very-
- BGBen Gilbert
Well, no, but that's the thing is, like-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
I, I... Part of it is like, okay, you, you wanna set up the game so that way you optimize- you create your luck.
- SPSpeaker
This is what Jensen told us. Like, the apple's gonna fall from the tree in some direction, and if you just set up the game that you have a hand close enough to catch it...
- BGBen Gilbert
The comment that someone made to me was, "The reason Mark is such a good strategist is because he, he plays the company as if it's a turn-based strategy game, and he just makes sure he gets more turns than anybody else, and he makes sure that he learns more from each turn than the next player does." Do you feel like that encapsulates, like, Meta's product development?
- MZMark Zuckerberg
I, I do like turn-based strategy games. [chuckles]
- SPSpeaker
[chuckles]
- BGBen Gilbert
But it does kind of feel like the way that you make bets is like, I, uh... Well, if we have great engineering, then that can kind of take care of the speed part. That's like, m- you know, many iterations or multiple at bats. And then the, the-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Well, great engineering, and speed, and iteration are actually two different values. They're not necessarily at odds, but I think, like, there are a lot of great engineering organizations that try to build things that are super high quality and have good competence around that. But I know there's, there's a certain personality that goes with kind of taking your stuff and putting it out there before it's fully polished. And, and look, I, I'm not saying that our strategy or approach on this is the only one that works. I think in a lot of ways, we're like the opposite of Apple, and clearly their stuff has worked really well, too, right? But I mean, they take this approach, it's like: We're gonna take a l- like, a long time, we're gonna polish it, we're gonna put it out. Um, and maybe for the stuff that they're doing, that works. Maybe that just fits with their culture. But for us, I, I think that there are a lot of conversations that we have internally where you're almost at the line of being embarrassed about what you put out. Um, because you i- t- it's... You know, obviously, not, not in the sense that it's like... You know, y- you wanna, you wanna put stuff out early enough so you can get good feedback. You obviously wanna test things that are reasonable hypotheses, so if it's, like, so ineffective, then you're not testing a good hypothesis. That doesn't work. But I, I do think a lot of the conversations that we have are, are like: Okay, well, we can get this to be a lot better if we work on it for, like, another couple of months, or whatever. And, and I, I, I do just think that, like, you wanna really have a culture that values shipping and, and getting things out and getting feedback, um, more than needing always to get great, positive accolades from people when you put stuff out. Because I, I think, like, if you wanna wait until you get praised all the time, you're missing a bunch of the time when you, you could have learned a bunch of useful stuff, and then incorporated that into the next version you were gonna ship.
- BGBen Gilbert
And it's just about making sure that the- what the thing that the company's known for, or its brand, can withstand all the little damage that you do to it by shipping stuff that's not quite ready.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Well, I would, I would like to hope that it's not damaging to the brand, um, but, um-
- 28:49 – 32:16
Invention vs discovery: News Feed, copying (proudly), and market signal humility
- BGBen Gilbert
So I'm building to this question of, uh, uh, to you, is product creation an act of invention or discovery? Like, is David always inside that marble, and you just need the very best tooling and ability to get things in market and get feedback to discover-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah
- BGBen Gilbert
... the statue of David, or do you conceive of David in your head, and I'm like, "I'm going to make this and put it in the world?"
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Does it have to be one or the other? I mean, I think it's a combination. I think you're basically taking some kind of values, either kind of like values that you have or a value for something that you believe should exist in the world, and trying to build something that's aligned with that, while trying to match it up with what is, is going to resonate the most with people, right? I think if you, if you just do the latter, then I think you just don't have enough conviction to see through hard things. And if you just do the former, then you probably don't get to product market fit or optimize what you do, because you're not focused enough on your customers. So, um, I think, I think both probably matter. Yeah.
- BGBen Gilbert
Uh, the- I'm like, a- as I pore through all these historical examples, there's, uh, like the market discovers, some other participant in the market discovers the stories format, and suddenly the whole world is like-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah
- BGBen Gilbert
... "Oh, my God, that is the way that we all- that's the social interaction mechanism." And that's, like, a pretty pure discovery, where y- you have products that have stories-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah
- BGBen Gilbert
... they perform very well. Uh-... that's been discovered. But there's other times it feels like everything you're trying to do in Reality Labs, all, you know, 50 plus billion dollars that you've put into it is like, we're gonna freaking will this thing into existence-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
[chuckles]
- BGBen Gilbert
-because I have an idea of the way that I want the world to be. I'm not really, like, asking for that much feedback. I'm putting it in the world.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Well, it's a combination. I, I mean, I, I think that there's, there's certainly a lot of things that we've invented or created for the first time. I mean, like in 2006, when we built the first version of News Feed, right? The... Like, before that, social networks were basically profiles, and then we were like: Hey, like, people actually kinda wanna get the updates, and let's, like, show them that. And if we rank them, then we can... You know, there's so many updates that this can help people parse through that quickly. And today, it's, like, hard to imagine any social product without a feed. So I think that that's obviously, there are some of these things are sort of seminal, I- I don't wanna call it an invention, but, like, patterns that we, that we basically established first, and then some of them are ones that other people did, where we take pride in learning from what is working in, in the i- i- in the world. Um, you know, I, you know, we're not embarrassed about learning from things that other people, like, discovered that were good first, and, and then we build a better version of it. And, um- [audience laughing] [chuckles] I mean-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
[chuckles] Damn.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
I think that that's... You know, no one company is gonna invent everything, right? I think if you don't invent anything, then it's hard to, to kind of be a successful company. But, um, but I, I do think that there's a mix of this. There are more smart people outside of your company than inside your company. If you're not learning from what's going on in the market, then you're missing a lot of opportunities to get valuable signal from, from people in the community and customers about what they want you to be doing.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Which, uh, speaks to the thesis of Facebook as a technology company. Um-
- BGBen Gilbert
Meta.
- 32:16 – 36:26
Open source as strategy: from LAMP to Open Compute to Llama’s ecosystem logic
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Meta is a technology company. Uh, we'll get to that later. Um, Ben and I have been, uh, having a conversation. I wanna take this, uh, to open source, um, and open source technology, and its importance to you. And Ben posited first to me, and then to many other people in our calls over the last couple weeks, that Meta has been the largest-
- BGBen Gilbert
Beneficiary
- DRDavid Rosenthal
... beneficiary of open source technology in the modern world. And I'm curious if you would agree with that, and if you would comment on-
- BGBen Gilbert
Hmm
- DRDavid Rosenthal
... your relationship to open source.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Well, I think almost all of the major technology companies at this point are primarily using open source stacks. So, yeah, I mean, I don't... We wouldn't have been able to get built without open source. I think probably that's true for any new company that's been created since like, I don't know, 19- the late 1990s or something. Um, for us, open source has been important and valuable, um, partially-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
I mean, you were the first big company built on the LAMP stack.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah. Yeah, no, and it's, it's great. Makes it super easy to develop stuff quickly and iterate quickly. But we've also had an interesting relationship this, with this, because sequentially, as a company, we came after Google. So Google was the first of the g- uh, great companies that built this distributed computing infrastructure. So they came first, so they were like: All right, let's keep this proprietary, 'cause it's a big advantage for us. And then we're like: All right, we need that, too. But we built it, and then we're like: Okay, not an advantage for us, because Google already has that, so, uh, we might as well just make it open. And by making it open, then you basically get this whole community of people building around it. So, you know, it wasn't gonna help us compete with Google for any of the stuff that we were doing to, to have that technology, but what we were able to do with things like Open Compute were, um, get it to become the industry standard. So now you have, like, all these other, you know, cloud service platforms that, you know, basically use Open Compute, and because of that, the supply chain is standard around- standardized around our designs, which means that it's, like, way more supply, way cheaper to produce. We've saved billions of dollars, and the quality of the stuff that we get to use goes up. So, all right, that's like a win-win. But I, I think in order for this to work... We do a lot of open source stuff, we do a lot of closed source stuff. I'm not like a zealot on this. Um, I think open source is, is very valuable, but I also think it sort of makes sense for us because of our position in the market. And the same for AI, I mean, around Llama.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Yeah. Well, okay, this is where we were going with this.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah, it's, um, you know, sim- similar deal. Um, you know, we wanna make sure that we have access to a leading AI model, right? I think just like we wanna build the hardware so that we can build the best social experiences for the next 20 years, I don't think that... You know, for, for us, it's like we've just been- we've been through too much stuff with the other platforms to, to fully depend on, on anyone else, and we're a big enough company at this point that, like, we don't have to, right? We can build our own core technology platforms, whether that's gonna be AR glasses or mixed reality or AI. So I think that's somewhat of an imperative for us to, to go do that. But, you know, these things are not like pieces of software that are monolithic, they're ecosystems. They get better when other people use them. So for us, there's a huge amount of good, and it philosophically lines up with where we are, where like... I mean, look, I, I, I, I definitely, you know, firsthand have a lot of experiences. We were, like, trying to build stuff on mobile platforms. The platforms are just like: "Nah, you can't build that."
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Well, okay, uh-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
That's frustrating. So-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Can we take a real quick detour?
- MZMark Zuckerberg
What's that?
- DRDavid Rosenthal
I really wanna ask you something.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
We can, we can take a detour.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Okay.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
You took a detour, we're gonna take a detour. Um, help us with our research here. Uh, the eve of the IPO.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah, this is a quite a detour. [audience laughing]
- BGBen Gilbert
Wait.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Quite a detour.
- BGBen Gilbert
Wait, David, you-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
I know, I know.
- BGBen Gilbert
Did you just-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
You're really grabbing the wheel here. I'm sorry.
- BGBen Gilbert
Is this connected, or did you just decide that it was your turn to talk? [audience laughing]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
I'm sorry.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
I was, like, really, like, wound up.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
I know!
- 36:26 – 42:06
The HTML5 mobile bet and IPO drawdown: a painful rewrite and the birth of feed ads
- DRDavid Rosenthal
I do. I really genuinely do.... Facebook on mobile is HTML5.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Uh-huh.
- BGBen Gilbert
In twenty-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah.
- BGBen Gilbert
Twelve.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Twelve.
- BGBen Gilbert
May of twenty twelve.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
May twenty twelve.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Yeah. I wanna ask you what you were thinking going into the IPO with Facebook on mobile being HTML5, and what happened? You IPO at a hundred billion dollar market cap, over the next three months, you have a fifty percent drawdown, probably because of that.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Mm-hmm.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Um, but I, the, I guess the related question to what we're talking about now is: how much is that informing your approach here with AI?
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Well, it was a pretty different, different technical issue. So, I mean, our legacy was building on web for websites, and we were very used to building one thing and being able to continuously deploy it, and it fits with our iteration style and all that. So now, all of a sudden, this like app model comes along, and it's like, we have to build like different ones for each phone? And like, you have to go through s- approval to get it shipped, and we have to wait, like, weeks before it can ship. It's like, this sucks. So we're like, all right, we have an idea. Let's build this platform where we can get a web-based platform. So you basically build a native shell, and you build this web-based platform in it, and we'll be able to just update our apps every day, and we'll ship one thing once, and we'll update our apps across Android and iPhone and BlackBerry and Windows Mobile, and all the stuff that existed at the time because it, it hadn't gotten consolidated yet. And, um, we're like, that's gonna be... That's w- w- we're like, basically, whatever downside we are gonna have from not having the most native thing, we're gonna make up for in velocity and by having like way more of our energy focused on one platform. Well, we were wrong. It turned out that, you know, having the native integration was actually critical for having the interactions feel good, and, a- and that-- So we basically went through this period where we had to go rewrite our apps from scratch, and that coincided with mobile growing dramatically. And mobile, we didn't have any revenue, um, because it may seem like it's pretty similar, but there's a very big difference. On, on desktop, you basically have the app, and you have a column on the side that we could put ads. And on mobile, we needed to figure out, what does it mean to put ads into the experience, right? So-
- BGBen Gilbert
The, like, let's be clear, the feed ad had not been invented yet.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah.
- BGBen Gilbert
Like, the ad unit of our time.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
No, that was, yeah, one of the things that the team did. Yeah, and it's, and like advertisers have like specific formats that they like working with, and the idea that we were just gonna be like: All right, now your ad is gonna look like a feed story, was a big challenge for advertisers. And the idea that now for people, you were gonna have this organic feed that was the most important part of the product, and now we're just gonna start putting ads in it, was a challenge for, for, for the people who are using the product. So we needed to figure that out, and we needed to get the apps to be better, and we basically took... I think it must have been like a year or something. We're just like: Look, we're gonna pause feature development of the company because it's hard enough to do a rewrite, right? It's if you look at, like, the history of the tech industry, there are all these examples like Netscape and, you know, all these things that like, they tried to do a rewrite, they needed to reestablish their technical platform, and they also tried to add features. They basically just like never terminated. So that's a, a real risk, right? When you're like, r- like, completely changing your underlying platform, that there's n- you're, you're gonna miss it. Um, it's like, all right, we gotta minimize the chance that that happens, so we're not gonna ship any new features. We're just going to rewrite it, make it faster. Um, but while we're doing this, like, basically, mobile's growing, so the percent of our traffic that is monetizable is shrinking because web is basically shrinking and, and mobile's growing.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
And that's your only business model.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah, and I was like, all right, like, okay-
- BGBen Gilbert
And you're now recently quarterly reported-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
You know, but the thing is, it was actually pretty clear what we needed to do.
- BGBen Gilbert
Oh.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah, I think strategically, a lot of the time, it's, um, it's somewhat harder to know what to do when you're winning. Like, when stuff is going well, it's like, what is the next move to, like, go from winning to winning more? Um, but when you're losing, it's usually pretty clear what you have to do. [laughing]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Yeah. [laughing]
- MZMark Zuckerberg
And, and I think a lot of it is like, is, is just, do you have the pain tolerance to go do it? So a lot of this was like, all right, the team was like: Okay, um, well, we're going public, and, you know, it's-- investors really aren't gonna like this if we are, like, not making money for a year and a half. And it's like, well, a year and a half is short in the grand scheme of things. Let's do this. And, and we did it, and it was a painful year and a half, and then we came out of that, and we were in great shape. So I, I, I think like people inside the company, it felt a lot better sooner because it was pretty clear to people that we were doing the right thing. Um, and they, they knew that we were executing it in a responsible way, um, and, and, and basically focused, and we're doing the right thing. But I, I think it's actually when you have something that's working well, and you're on one local hill, and you need to jump to another hill, that's the stuff that's really culturally hard. Um, but this one I think was... It was, it was not fun. There have been a period, a, a series of periods throughout the company that were not, I don't know, not, not the, not the most fun periods, but, um... Although that one, in retrospect, is, you know, looks pretty good in retrospect. [laughing] It's like, not that bad. It's like, your market cap only got cut in half for a year and a half? Like, great! [laughing]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
[laughing]
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Great. Yeah, I'll take that. Um- [laughing]
- BGBen Gilbert
[laughing]
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Anyway, where were we?
- 42:06 – 49:26
Most legitimate criticism: political miscalculation, accountability, and pushing back
- BGBen Gilbert
Well, w- maybe could I, uh, so could I connect? So D- so David asked: Hey, can you help us with, with our research? Can I follow that thread that you just said, "Hey, that, that one wasn't so bad." Um, there's been a lot of amazing things the company has done. There's also been, like, a lot of criticism. If you were to be self-critical of your own company, of your own creation, of all the criticisms that have happened over the years, which do you believe is the most legitimate, and why?
- MZMark Zuckerberg
... I mean, there's so many things that we've messed up, um, that there are many criticisms that are legitimate. Um, but if that was a year-and-a-half mistake, uh, I think, you know, one of the things I reflect on over the last, like, ten years or so was, you know, the, the political environment just changed dramatically, right? It's like before 2016, there was, like, not a month that went by, except for maybe this IPO period, where the sentiment about the company was anything but positive. And then after 2016, after the election, basically, there was not a month for a while where the sentiment about the company was positive. And we-- I, I think so much of this stuff is correctly understanding your place in the world and in history, and, you know, so I think, you know, we talked about before how it's like... I, I think we understood that we are a technology company, and that you have to be a technology company to build this kind of thing. Um, I think we understood that we're not a social network company, we're a human connection company, and that will take different forms over time. Um, the political environment, I think I, I didn't have much sophistication around, and I think I just fundamentally misdiagnosed the problem. So I, I, I, I think that there was this basic challenge, and there were a lot of things. I don't want to simplify this too much. I mean, there were, there were a lot of things that we did wrong, there were some things that we did right. But I think one of the things that I, I look back on and regret is, um, I think we accepted other people's view of some of the things that, you know, they were asserting that we were doing wrong or were responsible for, that I don't actually think we were. And, you know, uh, that's-- it's, um... There were a lot of things we did mess up, and we needed to fix. But I, I think that there's this view where when you're a company and someone says that there's an issue, I think the right instinct is to, like, take ownership for it, right? Say, like: "Okay, like, maybe, maybe it's not like, maybe it's not all our thing, but we're gonna fully own this problem, we're gonna take responsibility for it, we're gonna fix it." But when it's a political problem, I actually think a lot of the time, sometimes there are people who are operating in good faith who, who are identifying a problem that wants something to be fixed, and there are people who are just looking for someone to blame. And I, I think to some degree, if you, i- if, if you take responsibility for things because you think it's a corporate crisis, not a political crisis, um, and your view is, like: "Okay, I'm, like, I'm gonna take responsibility for all this stuff." Like, if people are basically like, like blaming social media and the tech industry for, like, all these different things in society, and if we're saying: "Okay, we're gonna really, like, do our part to go fix this, like, this stuff." I know there were a bunch of people who just took that and were like: "Oh, you're taking responsibility for that? Let me, like, kick you for more stuff." And, and honestly, I think we should have been firmer about, and, and clearer about which of the things we actually felt like we had a part in and which ones we didn't. And my guess is, if the IPO was a year-and-a-half mistake, I think that the political miscalculation was a twenty-year mistake. And I... So it started in 2016, and I think that we have been working super hard to fix a lot of issues and to figure out kind of what the right tone is for navigating what is a very kind of fraught political dynamic across both the country and multiplied across all these places around the world. And I think we've sort of found our footing on, and like, like, what, what, what the principles are, like, where we think we need to improve stuff, but where, um, you know, where people make allegations about the impact of the tech industry or our company, which are just not founded in any fact, that I think we should push back on harder. And I think it's gonna take another ten years or so for us to kind of fully work through that cycle before our brand and all of that is back to kind of the place that it maybe could have been if I hadn't messed that up in the first place. So, but look, in the grand scheme of things, twenty years isn't that bad either. [laughing]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
[laughing]
- MZMark Zuckerberg
And we'll get through it. Um, and, and I think we'll come out stronger. Um, but I do think that is one of the kind of more interesting critiques that I think people get. And we get critiques on both sides on that. There are people who don't think we've taken enough responsibility, but, um, but I, I think certainly there's one line of critique, which is, you know, you, you kind of bought into too much of the stuff that you shouldn't have. And, um, yeah, I think it's gonna take us a long time to dig out of that.
- BGBen Gilbert
Do, do you have a reasonable framework at this point for like: "Okay, here's the stuff where I feel like we actually do want to take responsibility for it, and here's the stuff where we're like, 'No, that's not our fault.'"?
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah. I mean, at this point, I think a lot of this stuff has been studied.
- BGBen Gilbert
Hmm.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
So, I mean, I don't want to go rehash all the different things, but, um, but I, I think at this point, there's been, like, years of academic research on a lot of these things. And, you know, part of the thing that's challenging is, and one of the things that we've learned, is we actually should be trying to support more academics and doing more of this research ahead of time. Because, like, when you get to a point where you're being kind of accused of something, you're not super credible, just standing up yourself and being like: "I don't think we did this one." [laughing] Um, you know, it's, like... So, uh, but what has worked over time is like, you know, you do the research in advance and, and you get kind of third-party academics, respected folks, who get to debate all these different issues. And then it's like: Oh, no, actually, like, the evidence just does not show that social media is correlated with this kind of harm at all.
- BGBen Gilbert
Hmm.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
So I, I, I think that, like... Or, or it's, you know-- So I, I think that's, um, I think that it's, it's, it kind of cuts, it cuts both ways.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
To me, this brings up another topic we wanted to talk about with you, [chuckles] and you just, you know, you said, "That's, uh, twenty years isn't that long." [chuckles] Um-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
I'm young.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Well, you're young, you're young. [chuckles] Uh, we all are, um-
- BGBen Gilbert
This is the advantage of being a college dropout founder on one company.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah, no, it is. When you start when you're nineteen-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Yeah
- MZMark Zuckerberg
... it's like, hopefully, we have more than twenty years left.
- BGBen Gilbert
And hopefully, you have, like, Buffett duration.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah, uh, yeah.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
You-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Hopefully.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
You set up the company-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
... in a, especially at the time, truly unique way, ah, where you can operate the company and take that, you know, take that approach. Um-
- BGBen Gilbert
Do you mean super voting shares?
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Super voting shares is like, you know, the technical aspect of it. There are- I think there are a bunch of technical aspects to it that we're not gonna get into in this conversation. But effectively, you can take that perspective in a way that if you are a CEO, non-founder, you know, without a structure that you've set up, you, you just can't. And I think, you know, in doing all the research for this, a thesis we've developed is that, like, that is just one of the core fundamental advantages that Meta has. Um, so as you were setting up the company, [chuckles] you know, when you were so young, even when you went public, you were so young, like, why was that so important to you?
- 49:26 – 53:57
Founder control and governance: the Yahoo offer, attempted firing, and super-voting resolve
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Well, in 2006, Yahoo! wanted to buy the company for a billion dollars, and everyone on our management team wanted to sell it, and the board tried to fire me. And everyone-- and basically, in the next year, everyone else on the management team left because they, I hadn't done a good job communic-- I mean, I don't want to blame them. I, I, like, I hadn't done a good job communicating the long-term vision because I didn't, I wasn't thinking about that at the time. I, like, wasn't thinking in terms of this as a company. I was just like: This is a great project. It's awesome. Like, a lot of people like what we're doing. I think this will probably continue for a while. I think it's going to be pretty important in the world. Um, but I didn't, I didn't, like, know how to think in terms of, you know, like, long-term financial plans or, um, um-
- BGBen Gilbert
Like, make a case to them why it would be worth more than a billion.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah, yeah. Or, or just like: Look, we're doing this for the long term. We're not planning on selling the company. So it's like, w- without having made that case, it was understandable that basically Yahoo! comes around. A lot of people, it's like this is, like, all their startup dreams come true. You gotta take this offer. Um, because I, I, like, I just wasn't in a place where I had the sophistication to basically articulate a lot of the stuff around where we were going longer term. It probably wasn't super confidence-inspiring to them when I was like: Hey, I think we should turn this down because, um, we're gonna do this. So, um, so after that, I was like: All right, well, I don't want to get fired- [laughing]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
[laughing]
- MZMark Zuckerberg
... from my own company for wanting to build it, so let's, uh-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
[laughing]
- MZMark Zuckerberg
-try to set up a governance structure that makes it somewhat harder to do that. Um, so-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Wow!
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Learning through suffering. [laughing]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
[laughing] Wow.
- BGBen Gilbert
A- and being very cash generative very early, such that you had a very real going concern on your hands, and you just-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah
- BGBen Gilbert
... didn't, didn't need to cut off your arm and sell it to someone in order to-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah
- BGBen Gilbert
... build your business.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah, absolutely.
- BGBen Gilbert
Like, I think, I think this is a fundamentally misunderstood thing about-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Oh, yeah
- BGBen Gilbert
... uh, Facebook, the startup. I- it is the-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
The iconic startup
- BGBen Gilbert
... prototypical startup.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
You are the iconic startup founder.
- BGBen Gilbert
Of this century, and there's a lot of people that want to start a startup for a lot of the glamorous reasons of starting a startup. You hated being a startup and wanted to stop being a startup as fast as possible and be a, like, going concern.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah, I mean, I think we're having a lot more fun now. [laughing]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
[laughing]
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Like, I get to work on all this stuff. It's awesome!
- BGBen Gilbert
But, uh, like, what is your advice to all these founders who sort of romanticize the idea of, of starting a company and kind of-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
I, I don't know
- BGBen Gilbert
... raising all this money and-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Obviously, starting a company is not bad, right? I mean, I, I think that there's different schools of thought on how to do it. I think some people think: Okay, I wanna go start a company, so I'm gonna, like, go dive into this idea. And I just think that that's a little bit dangerous because there's this issue, which is you have to be able to be nimble and pivot around until you can, like, figure out what works, right? It's-- I mean, part of the reason why I didn't think Facebook was g- gonna be the company early on was 'cause when I was in school, I built, like, twelve different things, right, that I-- were just things that I wanted to exist. And it was like: All right, this is fun. Okay, let's build another thing. It's like, okay, this one's fun. People are still using that. I'll, like, help upkeep this one. But I had, like, a bunch of other ideas for stuff I was gonna build, too. So I just, like, I didn't, I didn't, like, know how to think about what a company was gonna be. And, and it was... So, um, I think there's something about maintaining flexibility that's, that's helpful. Um, you know, once you hire a bunch of people, you know, it's a lot easier when you can just have meetings in your own head about what direction you wanna go in. [laughing] Um, and it's like, and there's a lot less pride and, like, people dug in when you're just like: Okay, I'm gonna change direction. It's like, you know, people haven't, like, invested their ego in like: "No, we were going in this direction, and, like, now I must be convinced." It's like, nah, just... So I, I, I do think that that's a thing, where you wanna, like, keep things lean and, and, and be able to do that. And that's one of the reasons why we tried to get the company back to being, you know, whatever the, the leanest version of a large company is that we can, we can be. But, um, but I do know there's something to that, where it's like y- y- it's obviously, it's not, it's not super fun not having the resources to do what you wanna do, but I think it also is problematic to have more people working on something than you should have for the stage that it's at. Because then the people who are working on it don't have the agency to actually, like, make the changes and do the things that they need to, which is less fun, and then you can't attract the best people to go work on those things because it's less fun. And so I, I do think you've gotta, you just have to dial it right.
- 53:57 – 1:03:46
Reality Labs, “awesome vs good,” and the next decade: platforms, ideology, and Apple
- BGBen Gilbert
You're spending a gajillion dollars on Reality Labs. [laughing]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
[chuckles]
- MZMark Zuckerberg
[chuckles] It's a technical term.
- BGBen Gilbert
It's not making that much money. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna play mark-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah
- BGBen Gilbert
... back to you-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Sure
- BGBen Gilbert
... of, it's not appropriate to have all these people and resources working on things for more than the stage warrants.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Mm-hmm.
- BGBen Gilbert
I'm being a little facetious here, but I'm curious how you th- w- why you categorize it differently.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
I mean, well, I think some of the stuff, by the time you're at the scale that we're at, is also just about, like, what do you wanna do over the next ten to twenty years? And what do you think are gonna be important? And, you know, we were talking about, like, making your own luck and all that, and how, you know, it's like I think there are some broad strokes that we can have a sense of where things are going. I'm pretty sure glasses and kind of like holographic presence and AR is going to be a completely ubiquitous-... product, right? It's just like everyone who had a phone before replaced it with a smartphone, and then a lot of more people got smartphones. If all we get is all the people in the world who already have glasses upgrading to glasses that have AI in them, then, like, this is already going to be one of the most successful products in the history of the world. So, um, and I think it's gonna go a lot further than that. So another is that, there is the thing about controlling our own destiny. Um, it's strategically valuable. You know, we did this calculation or estimate at some point, where it's like, how much money do we lose from our core family of apps to the various, like, taxes that the platforms have to, like, when they tell us we can't run the ad business the way that we think we should be able to, when they tell us we can't ship certain products, so that way, like, people use the things less or like them less? And, um, I, I- it's hard to exactly estimate it, but I think we might be, like, twice as profitable if we own the platform or something. So I think from that perspective, that's worth a lot, just from, like, a pure, like, dollars perspective, which is not primarily how I come at this stuff. But even, like, now, I've learned a thing or two since the Yahoo days, so now I at least am able to like, like, um... I might not be able to convince the- all the investors that we should be investing to the extent that we are in Reality Labs if I didn't control the company, but at least I can sort of articulate a case for why I am confident that it's going to be good over time. But for me, it's always been way more about the product experience and what you can enable and build. And, you know, o- one of the shifts, and th- this is sort of like a value shift, um, over time, is... You know, one of the things that, um, and one- some of the early Oculus guys used to say to me, that there's a difference between building good things and awesome things. And, and, like, good is good, right? It's helpful, it's useful, it's things that people use on a day-to-day basis because it adds something to their lives. But awesome is different. Awesome is uplifting and inspiring and just, like, leads you to just be way more optimistic about the future and is, is just like this uplifting thing about humanity. And so I, I, I think a lot of what we've done with social media so far is, is very good, where we've got- we've built these products, more than three billion people use them on a, you know, near-daily basis. Right? It's like, it's-
- BGBen Gilbert
It's like three point three-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah
- BGBen Gilbert
... billion on a daily basis.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah, d- yeah. So yeah, and so that's- And they use it because it is useful in their life, right? And in, in, in all these different ways. I mean, obviously, people vary, people use it for different things, but it's useful, and it helps people, and it, it helps people stay connected, it helps people build businesses, it helps people form communities. It's good. There aren't that many people on a day-to-day basis who get out of bed and are like, "Fuck yeah, social media!" [laughing] Like, it's like that's- right? It's, I mean, that's not like, um... So [chuckles] I, I kinda think for the next, for my next stage, right, for the next stage of the company, the next, like, fifteen years, I want us to build more things that are awesome in addition to things that are good. And I think that they both matter, um, but to me, this is like a little bit of a kind of the next stage of what I want our company to stand for and be. And so I think a lot of the Reality Lab stuff that we're doing is gonna be in that bucket. Um, a lot of the AI stuff that we're doing, I think is gonna be in that bucket. There are a bunch of things in the apps that are gonna be in that bucket, too, um, new apps, too. But, um, but I don't know. I think that there's, there's just something that's, like, fundamentally pretty good about that. And that's- M- maybe it's also just, like, where I am in my life, right? I'm, I'm, like, like to think I'm young. I'm a little older, right? But it's, but it's like, I, I, I do think that at this point, you know, it's not just a meta thing. Also, you know, in my, like, personal life, a lot of what I personally value is doing things that are inspiring with people who I find inspiring. All right? And, you know, so there's the personal version of this. It's, like, I get to work on, you know, i- interesting science problems with, like, Priscilla, my wife, and like, and a bunch of awesome people. You know, I get to, you know, design shirts with, like, some of the best fashion designers in the world, right? It's like I am-
- BGBen Gilbert
Statues.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
S- yeah, sculpture-
- BGBen Gilbert
[chuckles]
- MZMark Zuckerberg
... of, of my wife. Bring back the Roman tradition of designing sculptures of people you love. Um-
- BGBen Gilbert
I'm not at all being facetious. Like-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah, no, I-
- BGBen Gilbert
... really cool!
- MZMark Zuckerberg
No, I, but, I mean, I think Daniel Arsham is, like, a really talented guy, and I was like, "That's a person who I'd love to work with on something. Let's go find a project." You know, building... You know, I have- one of my side projects is, you know, we have this cattle ranch in Kauai, and I'm trying to see if we can raise the highest quality beef in the world. And there's, like, all this stuff. It, like, starts with, like, it's, it's awesome. We got, we got this steer, Chunk. He's like, he's- [laughing]
- BGBen Gilbert
Chunk.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
He's just the man, he's the man. We're having a hard time keeping him on the ranch because we- every time we put him in a steel enclosure, and he sees a female cow, he busts through the steel enclosure. [laughing] But I feel like that's the kind of bull that you want to make the highest quality beef in the world. [clapping] And we're just working with, you know, trying to do really high quality, awesome things with awesome people. That's like, if, if that's what I get to do for the next fifteen or twenty years, then, like, it's gonna be a good fifteen or twenty years.
- BGBen Gilbert
I- was, was there a moment... Like, what changed? Like, when did this become your priority and why? I can't- it feels so radical that it, how could it have possibly been gradual? Or was this just, like, Mark all the time?
- BGBen Gilbert
... and we just couldn't see the real Mark?
- MZMark Zuckerberg
I don't know. I, I think that there might have been something around the way the company shifted in operations around COVID. I mean, it's like the, you know, COVID, like, all these tech companies went remote temporarily, and it was an interesting period to just, like, get some more time, like, a step back. I'm a pretty introverted person, and I do think it's- i- I need to be careful where, like, I get a lot of value, and energy, and ideas from being around other people, but I also need time with myself. And with COVID, I, I kind of got that, and I- it was a time of reflection, um, where I, I was able to think about this stuff. And we were also going through this very difficult political time in the country, and, and our company was at the center of a lot of those things. So that, that was a cause of a bunch of reflection. And then I think that a bunch of the things that we'd spun up earlier, but at smaller scale, right? So the Reality Labs stuff that we started in 2014, really. Um, the FAIR stuff around, you know, fundamental AI research, um, the, yeah-
- BGBen Gilbert
2012, '13?
- MZMark Zuckerberg
2012 to '13.
- 1:03:46 – 1:27:04
Wrap-up: naming Meta, founder advice, the custom shirt, and post-interview reflections
- BGBen Gilbert
We're, we're start- we're starting to enter, uh, looking at the clock like conclusion, lightning round territory.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
All right.
- BGBen Gilbert
I've had one, like, lurking in the back of my head.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah.
- BGBen Gilbert
It makes sense to me that you would rebrand the company something that is not Facebook, given how broad the family of apps was that you've got. L- let's imagine you were going to rebrand it today.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah.
- BGBen Gilbert
You've got AI going on, you've got AR going on, you've got VR going on. Um, would you pick the name Meta if you were going to rename the company today?
- MZMark Zuckerberg
I like Meta. [chuckles] [audience laughing] It's a good name. You know, finding good, short names... I mean, this actually was a thing that we talked about for a while, because it was pretty clear that, you know, Facebook is continuing to grow in importance in the world, which I think a lot of people don't appreciate, and it's kind of mind-boggling at the scale that it's at. But the, the other is, I mean, when it- you know, we went through a period where it's like we had Facebook and a handful of small apps, and now we have like, you know, four apps that have a billion people or more using them. You know, hopefully in the next few years, five with Threads, if that continues scaling. And, um, this was a conversation that we had a bunch, where it's like: Does it make sense for the name of the company to be one of the apps as the other apps, as, as it's really becoming a family of apps? And it was important to me, this was also coinciding with a lot of, a lot of the challenges that we were having, right? The political brand challenges, different things, and a lot of people were proposing that from the perspective of running away from the Facebook brand, right? They, they were like: Oh, well, like, is the- does the Facebook brand have issues? Do we need a new brand? And I was like: We don't run away from that. Right, it's like, w- like, it might make sense one day to not have Facebook be the lead brand for the company because we do so many different things, but I'm only going to do this when we come up with a brand that is going to be evocative of the future that we're trying to build, because we run towards something, we don't run away from things. And when we got to Meta, then I was like: All right, we're here. And it was around the time when we were doubling down on the investment and where there was all the controversy, and it's like, look, like, if we're doing this, we're going to lean into this, and we're going to do it, so let's do it.
- BGBen Gilbert
And if I were to make the case to you, I feel the core competency of Meta is you are able to discover products in the world. You have great ideas, you work on them, you discover interesting products, and you, Mark, are not someone who wants to define yourself by anything. You, you want to have, like, your hands on a bunch of great controls and maximize your degrees of freedom, see where the world's going, and then have the best freaking spaceship possible to go maneuver your way over there.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah.
- BGBen Gilbert
It seems like I would pick a brand that almost doesn't pigeonhole me into a specific future. I, I might be looking for something that's more like: Look, I, I want to maximize my, uh, maneuverability.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah.... I get it. Um, but [clapping] I don't know. That's just, I, I- we align around a vision and a mission of what we're trying to do, and we run towards it. That's always been how we've operated. Yeah.
- BGBen Gilbert
And in many ways, doing what I just suggested would kind of be running. It's like, "Well, we don't believe in it that much." And you're like, "No, we-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah
- BGBen Gilbert
... we believe in it."
- MZMark Zuckerberg
No, I, I mean, we're, we're a company that, like, puts a flag down around what we're doing, and we're gonna go do it. It's like, put a wall in front of us, there's gonna be a Mark-shaped hole in the wall. [laughing]
- BGBen Gilbert
[laughing]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Uh, [chuckles] speaking of lightning rounds and Mark-shaped holes, um, you are accelerating what used to be your annual challenges. I always... I mean, when, when we were all kids, uh, [chuckles] and, and, and we didn't know each other, I mean, I was so inspired. You would do your annual challenges-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Mm-hmm
- DRDavid Rosenthal
... you would post about them, and I was like: Wow, that's, like, pretty damn cool. And then we all get a little older-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Mm-hmm
- DRDavid Rosenthal
... and we all have kids on the stage now, and we all have companies on the stage now, and there's-
- BGBen Gilbert
Some large, some small
- DRDavid Rosenthal
... the demands on your time, like it, for me especially, and I think lots of people, that's like, that space gets sucked, and you have expanded it. How?
- MZMark Zuckerberg
What do you mean?
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Well, you used to do annual challenges, and I feel like-
- MZMark Zuckerberg
Yeah, I know
- DRDavid Rosenthal
... you're now doing weekly challenges.
- MZMark Zuckerberg
I was doing annual challenges, but I stopped.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
You're, you're designing T-shirts. You're making sculptures.
Episode duration: 1:27:04
Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript
Transcript of episode QciJ9ubeLQk
