mark zuckerberg
episode 22
Broadcast date: March 2018
The Moonshots Podcast unpacks another Silicon Valley heavyweight - Mark Zuckerberg. Be part of our discussion that follows Mark from the dorm rooms of Harvard, to Facebooks HQ in the valley, to being one of the most influential people of our time.
SHOW OUTLINE
THEN AND NOW
Hardest Moments at Facebook
Marks Challenges for 2018
Founder CEOs
Three Reasons for Success
Facebook Culture Sheryl Mark
MENTAL MODELS
You Don't Get Judged By Mistakes
Start with Problems
HABITS
Decisions and Willpower
ZUCK IN THE WORLD
Zuck on Gates
Mark Obama Interview on Entrepreneurship
TRANSCRIPT
Hello. Hello and welcome to the moonshots podcast. It's a very special episode, 22. On your cohost Mike Parsons. And as always, I'm joined by the man himself, Mr. Chatto and this time HD video, the live and in video. How many platforms are we streaming on today, Mike? It is mind boggling, man. I I'm just trying to keep up with all these tabs.
So like, uh, every time I open a tab, it's like this more video jumping out of the internet and it's a view of me. Well, I just wanted to say thank you, Mike, for pushing us into the future here as we're streaming live on, I believe it's Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, and Periscope. All at once while we record today's show really exciting to take the show to the next level.
And we really do want to thank all of our listeners were approaching a very special milestone where almost almost at 10,000 listens for the show, which is pretty exciting stuff. And, um, Chad, I'm, I'm blown away by how much positive feedback I've been getting about the show over the last six months.
How's it been for you? Yeah, it's, it's fun. You know, every time I bump into a friend, that's a listener. Um, they, they want to know, you know, what's, what's next, you know, which shows are on the docket and, um, you know, have fun kind of talking about the subject, you know, whether that's in talking about the Superbowl and the Patriots, uh, in relationship to our episode on bill Belichick or, um, there's so many announcements coming from Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, you know, keeping up with those two is, uh, is a job in and of itself.
Yeah, I w I think these guys are just a really prolific and before we get to our very prolific, uh, feature guests on the show today, we've got to remind everyone that if you want to get audio video of the show, you can get all of that from moonshots. Dot IO. We also do a pretty good job of pulling together all of the show notes or the important information we often are talking about great books and Chad, you know, we loved your book recommends.
And so I hope you get some time over the next few weeks to put away a few good innovation biographies so you can inspire us. Yeah, it's tough. You know, I, I read a lot. Um, and adding more books to my, to my list is, is hard sometimes. But yeah, I think, um, some of the subjects that we're looking at for the next couple of shows have some books out.
Uh, so I'll have to move them to the top of my reading pile, do that because we love your book recommends. And what I would say also to all the audience is don't forget my little tip on using Insta read or Blinkist where you get books, summaries, both in audio video. Visual form. Um, these are really smart ways of sort of getting to the crux of a book without having to spend days or weeks reading it.
So I love those services. My peak is Insta read. Uh, you know, I love it because when people say, Hey, have you read this it's great. Um, I can just search it up on Insta read. And, uh, in 30 minutes I've got the whole idea of the books. You'll get all that information from, from moonshots.io and stay tuned because whilst we're going to be decoding and other innovation guru, we've got some really exciting news and announcements about future shows.
Um, so stay tuned for that. And Chad, we're going to go on a roller coaster today. So who've we got coming on the show. Yeah. So we've kind of been holding onto this, uh, person for some time. Now you might be wondering, Oh, you know, when are they going to talk about Facebook? Well, today we're going to talk about Facebook.
We've chosen Mark Zuckerberg and some really interesting news clips, uh, quotes and interviews from him and a really fun one towards, towards the end of the show too. But yeah, I'm, I'm really excited to, to see how Mark fits, you know, with all of the other disruptors and innovators that we've profiled so far on the show.
Yeah, I agree, Chad, and, you know, Zuckerberg is a really interesting character. He was obviously incredibly young, uh, when he was thrust on to onto the stage of, of global media. And I could just imagine, you know, if I had been at the center of the world's media universe at such a young age, I think he's done an admirable job of actually growing and becoming a, like, Uh, man, during the whole process while the world is looking at you, I mean, that's a kind of a scary thought, isn't it?
Yeah. Well, and I think it's kind of coming back to him now, you know, with all of the heat that Facebook is getting with regards to its handling of, you know, outside foreign agents and, and you know, uh, how to combat trolls and, you know, I think it's. It's more timely than ever to talk about him and what he's been doing at Facebook and some of the lessons that he's learned while working and growing a company like Facebook.
I think my favorite thing about Mark is that I can see him growing into a leader like Fred Smith, because he's a founder CEO that has stuck with the company for a very long time and has committed himself. He's pretty much said that Facebook is going to be his life's. Work. And so I'm very interested to see, like, what will the Mark Zuckerberg 20, 25 years from now be like when he has 40 or 45 years of experience under his belt at a company like Facebook.
So that's, what's really fascinating and intriguing to me. And what's amazing to think of right now is the scale of Facebook. So here's some stats. Are you ready? 2 billion active monthly users. 2 billion Ted, or what's the number for worldwide population? It's like only seven or 8 billion, right? Yeah. Yeah.
It's, it's pretty much, he's got a quarter of the planet. Exactly. Right, exactly. And, um, there's been over a trillion, uh, likes the, the services available in 101 languages. There are 65 million business pages. And, you know, the crazy thing is about this service is most of the users come back daily. I mean, there has hourly, they come back at hourly.
I'm like, I don't know about you, but it seems like everyone around me here in New York city is on their phones either on Facebook or Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. That's right. And, and so, um, it's, it's gone from being a, sort of a. A neat, uh, fun social network. I think it's become like a utility.
It's like g-mail right. It is pervasive. It's ubiquitous and all to think that this was started just only, are you ready? 14 years ago, and they have 2 billion active customers every month that is unrivaled in history for the scaling of a service. And now we've got the opportunity to dig in and look at what the founder and the creator has learned.
Uh, there's been so many amazing events in their history. You remember the what's those two twins that had the lawsuit with soccer, Berg. Do you remember that Vinco Voss, there's them. There's the acquisition attempt by Yahoo, which sent the sent Facebook into a spiral. There's so many things that was the time he was on Recode wearing his hoodie and he was getting too hot and sweaty.
I mean, what an Epic story and we get to dig into it. So, uh, I, I can't wait, Chad. Yeah, we've got just a fun kind of intro clip it, it, Facebook is moving so fast that the clip is already a little outdated, but here's just a fun kind of current events clip getting us up to date on what Facebook has been up to in just eight years.
Mark Zuckerberg has gone from college student to multi-billionaire. I would say to Mark Zuckerberg, you are identifying entrepreneurial one of the top 10 entrepreneurs who has ever existed. Sucker Berg's brain child. Facebook has found its way into the personal lives of 800 million people. When you put technology behind the power of who we are as people, the world changes, that is the power of
Once in awhile, the business comes along. That defines an era by doing something very new and very big in this case, changing the way hundreds of millions of people talk to each other. If you go, doc, most people in the world had no voice, or they had no podium where they can share things. But now everyone does he's right.
Even the queen is on Facebook as well as one in eight of the whole human race. It's phenomenally powerful. But the biggest issue for Facebook is it becomes too popular soccer Berg's creation, that's produced lawsuits and accusations of privacy invasion while building one of the world's most valuable businesses.
Crazy at all to say, Facebook will be worth a hundred billion. Facebook is hot spokes advertising machine uses the detailed, personal information its users have given it, but that may be just the start of its moneymaking. Any business that they want to get into at this point, they will dominate. So there you have it.
It's actually one in four people now, right? Mike, not just one in eight people that, that are on the service. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, uh, it's ridiculous, ridiculous scale. And without doubt, um, you don't get to be so big and so successful. Without lots of challenges and without, um, lots of obstacles. And I think this was something that we've discovered with all of the entrepreneurs, all of the innovators we've looked at, it's almost your, it's a Rite of passage.
You have to climb the mountain and we've got a number of great clips that we can share with you now, which gives us any insight into the challenges that Zuckerberg faced. Not only in creating. Facebook, but also really, uh, the challenges that he faces now. So let's have a listen to Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg's personal challenges have included learning Mandarin, visiting every us state and building an AI personal assistant.
But this year, his challenge isn't about self-improvement, but rather fixing Facebook Zuckerberg writing on Facebook, of course, quote, Facebook is a lot of work to do, whether it's. Protecting our community from abuse and hate defending against interference by nation States or making sure that the time spent on Facebook is time well spent.
My personal challenge for 2018 is to focus on fixing these important issues. We won't prevent all mistakes or abuse, but we currently make too many errors, enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools for successful this year, then we'll end at 2018 on a much better trajectory. Zuckerberg is saying that he'll gather experts to help work on topics such as whether technology is a decentralizing or centralizing force and to better understand trends like encryption and cryptocurrency and what they mean for Facebook and Zuckerberg vision.
And one thing that's like work doesn't need to fix is Facebook stock. It's up over 50% in the past year. Yeah. Uh, the performance of Facebook really does speak for itself, but it's interesting to hear how he's chosen to fix the platform as his one thing that he wants to fix here in 2018. And I had alluded to this earlier.
I think it's really his not realization. Cause I think he's known this for a long time, but him owning up to the influence and impact that Facebook has. I think he tried to. He tried to say that, Oh, well, you know, Facebook is just, you know, this platform that's out there and it can't really make that big of a difference.
And he's kind of eating his foot now because I think Facebook does share a lot of the responsibility for the way people and maybe even, you know, state actors are using the platform, uh, to influence things. And so I'd be really curious to see. What changes he decides to make and the impact that that will have on their business model and you know, how that affects both attention and eyeballs and then the advertising revenues that they're able to charge, uh, for that attention.
Well, you get right to the heart of it there. And I think that the, the, the most important thing in sort of steering Facebook for Zuckerberg is that. He has to create a service, which is rich and engaging and highly personalized. For you, the audience, but at the meanwhile, then provide that profile to advertisers and it's such a precarious situation.
And then with the introduction of third parties coming onto the platform and all the issues that they have right now, What do you think he is? How do you think he's trying to gear up to address this? Because he's gone from this call app in a dorm room and they enjoyed all this scale for, for over 10 years.
And now it's akin to the responsibility of somebody. Who's running a utility service, um, providing 2 billion people on the planet, a service. Now he's exposed to all these different issues. How, how do you think, uh, someone adjust to that huge shift from being like a cool kind of growth hacking kind of a guy to, Oh my gosh, I've got this empire of 2 billion customers, which is, you know, now subject to all these forces that he couldn't even have dreamt of.
How do you manage that? I don't know is the answer. Um, but I think it's just foreshadowing of what's to come for, you know, these big platforms like Amazon and Google and Facebook. I think, you know, they're coming after Mark and Facebook first because. Of the politicized nature of what happened in the American 2016 election, but Google and Amazon have just as larger, even larger platforms in certain, in certain industries in certain realms.
And I think that it's going to be the most interesting policy decision, you know, I think, uh, around how these companies are regulated or not regulated by both the us and the EU and other systems that have already, you know, kind of. Been exploring antitrust, uh, types of actions and, and those sorts of things.
But I honestly don't have, have, have an answer on how and how to deal with it, but what an Epic challenge to face as a founder, going from a dorm room now you've got 14 years later, 2 billion customers, uh, you're exposed to all these macro political, economic, social forces. I mean, tough times, uh, ahead. And dramatically different skillset.
So what's really interesting for our listeners, I think is just how much the leadership role can change over time. I'm sure Mark never had any idea of, he never even thought about many of these issues. So it's going to be really interesting to see how this plays out. And it's a great reminder to us and to the audience that your role as a leader changes over time.
Yeah. And we have a really interesting clip from Mark, as he's talking about his unique perspective as a founder CEO that has been in charge of the company. Now, like you said, going on 15 years, just my view of looking through that, the technology industry and its history. Um, I think the companies that have done the best have often been led by their founders, right.
Or at least extremely early employees at the company. And, um, I, I think that that's because. You know, they often those people, um, have a better sense of why the company was created. Um, Have a lot of credibility within the company in order to make the decisions that need to be made the world changes so quickly.
So, um, being able to guide the company efficiently, I think it's an extremely important part of that. Someone showed me an interesting stat once that out of public companies, um, ones that were still run by their founders, outperformed others. And I think that that, that would be an interesting thing to look into.
I don't, I don't know, you know, obviously there's, it's, that's probably someone can dispute that or, um, question what it means, but. I think that the model of having the person who's guiding the direction of the company, um, run the company while being surrounded by a group of really talented people who are, uh, effectively managing the company and running its different areas.
Um, it is a very good model, you know, but, but no matter what the model is, it's really important to keep in mind that it's never just one person. Right. So in our case, we have just a handful of really great executives. You know, whether it's folks like Sheryl Sandberg, who is our chief operating officer, or, you know, a much rep for our head of engineering who joined us from Mozilla or, um, you know, Chris Cox, our head of product, who, who, who has, who started off as an engineer at Facebook and is built some of the most innovative products here and is now our head of products.
Um, You know, it's, it's really, it's always a team of folks that, um, and, and even more than, than those that I, that I mentioned, um, who really are running the place. It, Mike Mark brings up this study and I would love to find the study. I couldn't couldn't find it in research, but he says, you know, companies that are still run by their founders are outperforming companies that aren't, again, going back to, to Fred Smith, he's been running FedEx for over 40 years and they are.
Killing it out there in the, in the goods, transportation and in courier services, businesses. And what advantages have you seen founders, CEOs and companies that you've worked with or companies that you follow? What kinds of advantages have you seen them have? Uh, I think it comes down to vision and purpose and drive determination without a doubt.
Um, what you know is that founders often have. This vision that mobilized everybody in the early days. And you notice like take Larry and Sergei at a Google. They let Eric Smith come in for a while and be the CEO. And then they ended up returning as the co CEOs. I think there is some inherent direction, vision and leadership that always happens when the founders are driving the business.
And what's remarkable is your member Schultz, the CEO and founder of Starbucks. You remember, he went from being the CEO, founder, went to chairman and then returned. I think it's like driving force it's will it's determination the ability to mobilize people. And I think what's important for our listeners to realize is that.
Mark Zuckerberg by no means by no means was CEO material of a company with 2 billion people when he started it in the dorm room, but he's, but he's growing in time. And the other thing, uh, that he pointed he alluded to here was that there's other people involved and I cannot stress enough. Chad Kim hiring Cheryl Sandberg to come in as the chief operating officer kill a move, kill a leadership play because he's like, I need someone who can run this business can operate this business so he can do the vision and the long-term stuff.
And I think they are like dream team situation. I mean, I mean, I'm, I'm betting on those two big time. Yeah. And we actually have fantastic clip with both of them talking about building culture at Facebook. And you can just hear the experience and perspective that Sheryl Sandberg is bringing into Facebook, just in, in this clip as she's, uh, she and Mark are talking, I believe it's to Charlie Rose in this interview.
How was your culture say different from the culture that you saw at Google? What is the Facebook culture? You know, when I think about this, if you compare Facebook and Google to, you know, most of the world, right. To other companies and other industries, they're actually in some ways, incredibly similar.
They are founder led Silicon Valley based technology companies that have projects that are driven by engineering. They're very similar, right? In the little Silicon Valley bubble in which we live. They're truly different. Totally different. How so? Couple of things, Google is fundamental
mentally about, you know, algorithms and machine learning. Right. And that, and that has been very important, continues to be very important. They're doing a great job. We start from a totally different place. We start from an individual who are you? You know, what are, what do you want to do? What do you want to share?
You know, for us, the vision of the world, um, is that we are like a hacking culture. And we mean that in the best of ways, we do not mean scary people breaking into your home or anything or espionage or espionage. What we mean is we build things quickly and ship them. So we are not aiming for, you know, perfection that comes over, you know, years.
And then we ship a product. We don't work on things for years and then ship it. We work on things. We ship them, we get feedback from the people who use it. We get feedback from the world. We iterate, we iterate, reiterate. We have these great signs around, you know, done is better than perfect. What would you do if you weren't afraid?
We're very much a culture. The notion of perfect is the enemy of good. Yeah. And a culture of, of, of very, very rapid, very rapid innovation. It is, it is really different from a culture where you're already taking the web and your primary mission is okay. I want to organize something that's out there. Um, we have this culture where we, we place a, a really big premium on moving quickly.
Right. And one of the big theories that I had about that. Was that all technology companies and probably all companies just slow down dramatically as they grow. But if we can focus at every step along the way and moving quicker than, you know, maybe when were, were around 2,500 or 3000 people now, um, you know, maybe we, we move as quickly as.
You know, a company that only has 500 people, right? Because we've invested so much in building up the infrastructure and tools and also the culture that tells people to take risks and try things out. And I just think that that ability to, to build stuff quicker, um, will be a big advantage for us and will help us build better products over the longterm.
Oh, man. There's so much in this clip, Mike, I just want to point out some of the numbers and he's saying, Oh, we know we're almost at 3000 people. That's a company with 3000 employees that is inter that has facilitated interactions between 2 billion people. And yeah, that, to me, that is just incredible. And the other thing that's interesting to me too, is I think Cheryl said this, you know, What would people do if they weren't afraid?
I think a company that actively asks that question of their employees can potentially do some really interesting things. And that's not a phrase that I've ever really heard associated with any other companies, certainly not a company of the size and influence of Facebook. Yeah, that that's, that's true.
I mean, here's what, what I see all the time is that as companies get larger, uh, the risk of going beyond the core business becomes higher. Because every time you do something new, there's a chance it might fail. But if the big businesses become very large, then what happens is culturally the business.
Wants to protect itself. So it's looking to de-risk everything. And this is why so many large companies end up getting into problems such as blockbuster Kodak, Nakia, because what actually happens is they become stuck. They become so big, they get paralyzed and they can't move. What's really interesting for us to learn about in what zackerburg was saying is he's looking to introduce speed and de-risking.
Innovation and doing new things and you'll notice that they talk a lot about it. Doesn't have to be absolutely perfect. Just ship it. They've got this culture, get stuff out there, and this is great for, um, for our listeners to understand that when you de-risk the environment and you make people feel safe.
Check in ed Catmull and Pixar here, when people feel safe to explore and to do different things, they have the freedom to imagine what's possible without the constraint of, I don't want to make a mistake. And so I think what we can learn from this is it's critical as a business grows to keep challenging the status quo, but in order to really get new thinking and disruptive thinking from the same group of people, there needs to be not only the ability to move fast.
But to move without fear, which is great. Yeah. W we've actually got a really great clip of, of Mark kind of elaborating on that insight that you're, that you're poking at Mike and how, you know, at least at Facebook, you, you're not getting punished for mistakes that you're making. You have the power to just, I mean, you can sit down and you can code something.
You can try it if you don't, it doesn't matter to you. Whether someone thinks it's a good idea or not because you have the power to go put that online and, you know, see whether it resonates and connects with people, stay focused on, on the stuff that, that you're, that you're providing to your users.
You're going to make a ton of mistakes. It doesn't matter. You don't get judged by the mistakes. People don't remember those years from now. They remember the things that you did that were good. Yeah. And I see this just as. A better statement from him instead of, you know, move fast and break things. This is kind of the, the two sentence version, uh, that I think gets at, you know, his intention a little bit better.
Yeah. And, and, um, what you can start to see is a pretty huge insight for anyone trying to build a product, a digital product. Uh, that exploits, this exponential characteristic that you mentioned, you talked about 3000 employees, yet 2 billion customers. This is what we kind of call exponential characteristics of technology.
So when you deploy technology at scale, if it's doing it right, you get these ridiculous numbers. 3000 employees serves 2 billion customers, and you'll remember that, uh, Zuckerberg really knows about this. Cause when he bought WhatsApp, I believe they had the highest. Valuation per employee ever in the history of, of modern business, where they had only a few hundred staff yet they had well over half a billion users when they were acquired by Facebook.
So he really gets this, but what's most important for our listeners is that in order to unlock this ourselves, we have to build a company that exploits emerging technologies work at speed. But create a culture of safety, a culture where it's okay. If it's not perfect, or if you miss, so this moves you more into, Hey, not thinking about things as like failing fast, but learning fast.
And I think that's the big takeaway. Hm. Yeah. It's I don't know if this is just the, the accretion of all of the shows that we'd done and everyone that we've listened to. But I think that Mark Zuckerberg has a lot of. I guess personality aspects to him, kind of from many of the people that we've, that we've spoken about.
Like I said, Fred Smith and you just brought up ed Catmull. I think this also speaks to kind of his customer obsession, like Jeff Bezos and, you know, I think maybe he has been in trouble. By being so customer and fat obsessed, he kind of overlooked, you know, kind of some of these bigger picture aspects of, of, you know, the consequences of what Facebook is doing.
But he just says, if you're doing something that the customer wants and you're shipping it, And getting feedback from them in a almost real-time fashion, then keep doing that. It's okay. If you make some mistakes, you break a few things along the way they, they had, uh, famously, they attempted to create a mobile operating system, which didn't didn't work.
They've had a number of setbacks and so forth, but I think the thing to really learn here, They have over 2 billion customers, right? Everybody's on the platform. Um, and what I've noticed is a couple of things, and I really wanted to just kind of reflect a little bit on how much Facebook has really become like a utility.
I've got many friends around the world where emails and cell numbers change, but Facebook and wait for this Facebook messenger. No matter where I am, what platform I can always get in touch with friends no matter where they are in the planet. And it really is quite remarkable that despite this kind of test and learn, they've got a little bit of a shit fast learn fast, and it's a little bit got to hold on.
And it's a bit of a bumpy ride. The net result where we are today. It's one of the fastest, largest scaling businesses in history. And I think what's really interesting to know is he's not sitting there beating his chest, saying 2 billion customers. I am the God of how fire. Actually, what he's saying is, Oh man, I'm kind of in a, fixed the product here.
And I find that refreshing. It reminds me of when, uh, the, the, just the recent CEO of dominoes. Who's if I, if I, if I remember this, right, he came out and said, look, our pizzas don't taste good. And we're going to fix that. And this led to like a big turnaround effort. I think this ability. To be more transparent and say, you know what?
In kind of Zuckerberg style, I got to fix a number of things with the products this year. He's not talking about more acquisitions. So he's not talking about running for president is like, no, I'm going back to fixing the product. And I think this is another learning of how you grow a business like Mark Zuckerberg.
It seems that. He always has the ability to, to catch himself and know where he's at and not be drinking the Kool-Aid too much in contrast to someone like Travis Kalanick. I, in a way I think this. Is something that sets Mark Zuckerberg apart from him in that before things got into deep at Facebook, you know, before maybe some of these bad or suboptimal practices, uh, spread too far, he's like, hold on a minute.
You know, let's take some stock, let's have an inward focused year this year and really be sure that. They get back to the core of the product, which he said, I think even in the very first interview, you'd unearth a clip from 2004, where it's really just about building your online profile and an identity and sharing that with as many people as, as you want and being able to explore other people's personal identities.
You know, not getting caught up in this whole newsfeed thing and how can we push more ads and silo to news content to people. And I'd be very curious to see how they bring the focus back on to that core. Product at the end of this year. Yeah. Yeah. And I think what we've really learned here is that you don't get this big, you don't get this successful without facing challenges.
And I think at the heart of what they've done is they've created kind of a safe culture, a culture of curiosity and expiration things. Don't have to be perfect. Good enough. Is fine. And I think that that's enabled them to scale so fast. So that's a huge learning that I think we, we've not really had the chance in the show until today's show was Zuckerberg to really see at the heart of the growth is that let's be honest or founders and entrepreneurs.
Right. They all want to grow like Facebook. There's nobody who goes. Grows the carriers to start a company who's not sitting there. I want this to go gangbusters. So it's really interesting opportunity for us to understand. How he did it. And I think at the heart of it was this safety moving at speed. And I think there's a, there's a, there's, you know, a ton of other things that we're going to get into.
But I wanted to, to ask each other before we get into all his mental models and his habits and how he sees the world. So we've got tons of stuff coming up. If you've heard this, this, uh, these, these clips, and we've discussed them. If you were starting a new company today, What would you be taking from, from Zuckerberg and what we've heard so far?
What would be the, if you could just choose one thing to take from Zuckerberg as a lesson, as a guiding light, what would you take in order to like set up like an explosive, fast growing startup? I think it would have to be the. Well, the move fast and break things. I think with my, my spin on it, based on what we've learned here, doing the show of it's, it's not about getting things and product out.
Faster. It's about learning things about your customer and your product faster. Right? So what kinds of tiny experiments and changes can I implement in my day to day and my team's day to day and my company's day to day that can get us to those learnings faster. And I think. That I think maybe Mark had come up with that a little after the fact, you know, after they were on every college campus, as you know, in the country and, and whatnot.
But when he looks back and, you know, w w what, cause he could point to the hacker culture. He's like, Oh yeah. What was the hacker culture? Yeah. Yeah. That let us do this, but it's a little more nuanced nuanced than that. It's like, no, it's actually, we weren't afraid to try these things. We tried them and we learned from them and then we went back into the code and fixed it and.
That's really, I think what has enabled their, their massive growth. This is really different to what we learned from, from Joe gabbier at, um, at Airbnb, because you really had the impression of how much Polish the design team at Airbnb, they Polish and they Polish, and they, they really try to, to make something beautiful and perfect.
What's fascinating is Airbnb has been wildly successful and growing dramatically has no competitors. Likewise, Facebook, very similar characteristics, but got there from a completely different way. Rough around the edges, breaking things, sort of a bull in a China shop analogy. And I think this is really great.
We can see there's more than one road will get you to Rome here. And I think the, this next part of the show. We're going to see some very specific things that Zuckerberg does in order to create this culture to move at at speed. And I really want to, um, I'm dying to, I don't know if you, um, if all our listeners know, but is that caboose famous for wearing the same t-shirt all the time.
And this is something, um, that even Barack Obama only had two suits and many innovators. Many really great people have this characteristic of wearing very minimal wardrobe. So we're going to actually uncover the thinking behind that. We're even going to hear him jamming on bill Gates and hanging out with, uh, with Obama.
So there's tons of good things coming up in the show. So stay tuned and don't forget. Uh, not only can you get all the show notes, uh, from moonshots.io, but we are now every week we are live all over the interwebs, Facebook, YouTube there's new video content. So we're really keen to get everyone's feedback.
We want to find out what's your preferred channel to get our live broadcast. So get on the, uh, the old, uh, moonshots.io. Send us your feedback. Send us a note on Facebook, wherever you are. We want to hear from you. Yeah. We're, uh, we're still learning this whole live stream thing, so you can always get the latest updates on when and where to find us@moonshots.io.
And, uh, eventually Mike and I will be able to multitask enough where we could take questions live from you. For from the different platforms and then hopefully incorporate them into the show. But, uh, you know, we're excited to go on this journey as we, you know, deliver hopefully more and better insights to you on as many platforms as we can, as we can find a push, push our content out to.
Right. So let's, let's jump into this, uh, this new block of, uh, of insights and learnings from, from Zuckerberg. Um, we're going to hear Mark Zuckerberg talking about. How they create safety and how they think about mistakes. Yeah. You know, I always think that you should start with the problem that you're trying to solve in the world.
And not start with, um, deciding that you want to build a company, right. And the best companies that, that get built are things that are trying to drive some kind of social change, even if it's just local in one place, uh, you know, more than starting out because you want to make a bunch of money or have a lot of people working for you or, or build some company in some way.
So, you know, I always think that this is kind of a perverse thing about Silicon Valley in a way, which is that. You know, people decide often that they want to start a company before they even decide what they want to do. And that just feels really backwards to me. And, you know, for anyone who's had the experience of actually building a company, you know, that you go through some really hard things along the way.
And I think part of what gets you through that is believing in what you're doing and knowing that what you're doing is, is really delivering a lot of value for people. Um, and that's, I think how the best companies ended up getting made. Hmm. The interesting thing aside from relating to what Richard Branson has to say about, you know, starting with problems, I love how he puts a stake in the ground and says, don't start a company to, for, for company's sake or for money's sake, you know, start with the problem that you're trying to solve first and then build the company, which is why he's been successful in spite of himself, because he wasn't some bright eyed, bushy tailed.
You know, sophomore at Harvard, that's like, I'm going to start a billion dollar company. He was just trying to solve the problem of, you know, he and his friends figuring out who other interesting, or maybe good-looking Harvard, where, who was hot or not. Come on. You say the original product was hot or not, right?
Yeah. Pretty much, pretty much so Tinder before its time. Right. But you know, the interesting thing here is I think this really helps us understand. That, this big theme of people who are mission-driven solving problems, that they have experienced themselves. So this is a very clear problem with the world and they go out and solve it.
And. Actually the first thing is they are just incredibly motivated and solve the problem. And then company ends up being the right vehicle to solve it. Now, this is a theme that Elon Musk talks about a lot. He's like forget waiting around for the government to get us to the moon or to get us to Mars.
That's the real job of the enterprise. And the same thing with Richard Branson, Branson is forever saying like, Oh, problems are just things that help you in the end, you, by solving them, you can go create a company. And this seems to be this really interesting thing. We can learn that entrepreneurs have this mental model that starts with successes and entrepreneur.
Seems to be a mission-driven problem-solver and that the whole success entrepreneurially seems to be a, like a unexpected outcome is sort of, uh, sort of, uh, uh, something that gets tacked on at the end. Right. And I think as, as people studying this. What seems to be the inside for me is I'm thinking this through is, is it, you don't start with, I'm going to build an enormous company.
I'm going to make lots of money almost. You have to put that to the very end. Is that how you are interpreting Zuckerberg? Yeah, absolutely. I think this is his unique take kind of amongst the previous disruptors and innovators. We've, we've talked about so far. His his, his reflection on 15 years and realizing that that is what made him successful was starting with that seed of an idea of, okay, how do I create an online identity?
How do I share it and how do I see other people's? And then that grew into 2 billion people across the globe using the platform. Uh, and again, it's kind of stumbling over himself. To build the company, you know, through lawsuits, through, you know, founder, breakups, and eventually it thankfully kind of just in time, although he could have done it much sooner identifying and recruiting a leader like Sheryl Sandberg to really take the reins of the company and.
You know, codify both in operations and in, in culture. Um, what has made Facebook so successful that maybe, you know, Mark wasn't able to do on his own inside the company? You know, as I think about it, one of the things that I've noticed as well, particularly when you hear. Based off skin, Zuckerberg and mask when they're talking about it.
Yeah. Companies, uh, sometimes they, they feel incredibly intense almost. I would say like, they're like zealots, like there's so, almost fanatical about their missions, but I'm starting to understand it. I think this is coming from the fact that. They are a problem. A mission-driven problem-solver first, before they are a CEO.
What I mean by that is they're so compelled by the problem and you, and you see this Rusnak a bit, when he talks about Facebook, it's really intense. But I think because he sees it as more than a business and a way to. And money and create his own personal world. I think he truly is very consumed with the mission that they're on.
And I think there's a lot of things that he does that kind of helps him live, breathe, sleep, uh, Facebook, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think the most interesting one and we've got a clip. Here for this. There've been lots of studies that have shown that we have a limited amount of decision-making power and willpower.
And you had alluded to his hoodie and his t-shirt and the fact that president Obama only ever had two suits. Um, well here's Mark talking about how important it is to manage that reserve of willpower. It's a very simple question in a way, but it actually speaks to. Um, how we think about, um, our duty to the community here, you know, I really want to clear my life to make it so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve this community.
Then, um, there's actually a bunch of psychology theory that even making small decisions around what you wear or what you eat for breakfast or things like that. Um, they, they kind of make your tired and consume your energy. And I just, my view is, you know, I'm in this really lucky position where I get to wake up every day and help serve more than a billion people.
Right. And, and I feel like I'm not doing my job if I spend any of my energy. On things that are silly or frivolous about my life. So that way I can dedicate all of my energy towards just building the best products and services and, and helping us reach our goal and, and achieve this mission of helping to connect everyone in the world and giving them the ability to stay connected with the people that they love and care about.
Um, so that's what I care about. So even though it kind of sounds silly to all right, that, that, that's my reason for wearing a gray t-shirt every day. Um, it also is true. This is again, how I think Mark is a little different from some of the other hyper customer obsessed leaders. And I think it's because he's younger and is maybe a little more open to this kind of almost kind of life hacking newness to this where, you know, he in kind of a temporary way he's found out, like if I don't have to choose what I wear in the morning, then.
I can get started making the tough decisions in my business instead of having to figure out what I'm eating and what I'm wearing and, and those sorts of things. And I. I think he's realizing the, the accreted value of that over time. Like it, it might only save you one decision or two decisions a day, but if he's making decisions that are affecting billions of people, you know, you want to build up some of those reserves of the decision-making power that you have.
Yeah. And, and, uh, I really want to emphasize my personal experience has been very inline with what Zuckerberg says, which is reduce clutter, make as few decisions as possible. Um, When we first met, we were working with a guy called Matt Dory and he only wore black. Right. Remember Maddy only wore black and he was thinking the same thing and, um, props to Mattie because it really helped me.
Take something like wardrobe and I have dramatically reduced my wardrobe down to essentially monochromatic black, white, and gray. And it does make life simple. I literally have my three favorite pairs of shoes and that's it. That's all I wear. I have stripped it down and I think that. Decluttering your life, not only in your wardrobe, but in, in all your possessions and things.
These all enable to clear your mind. And I really do want to encourage our, our listeners that this is a huge opportunity in life. We acquire so much crap. Excuse my French. We just get so much crap and stuff is so cheap. Um, just hold back and just focus on experiences focused on simplifying your life.
And it's this release that you get. Like, I always have very minimal desktops purposely because I want to calm my mind and I want to focus on the highest value things. And this is ridiculous. Discipline and structure are there. When you hear him talk about it, Chad, you sort of listened to him and you think, wow, this is so intense.
I mean, you kind of hope he's having some fun, right? Yeah. But I think that's the point he has codified the. The decisions that don't really make a difference or matter to him very much so that he can do the things and spend the time on the things that he really wants to. And I can just echo what you've said, Mike.
And I think what all of us can do is look at some of the things that we're spending a lot of time on that. Aren't very important. And then taking five, 10, 15 minutes or even an hour and afternoon to just say, okay, from now on you kind of creating a rule for yourself, it's like, you know, If this happens, then I do this and you write that rule down and then you just follow that rule.
So, you know, you may take an hour to make this decision once, but then you never have to make it again. And so I think, and it could be as simple as wardrobe or what you're eating, but it could even be, you know, how you're doing things in your business, um, or how you're hiring someone or how you're delegating.
All of those things can be systematized in a way where. You front-load the kind of decision making and thinking so that it makes it so much easier down the line. And if you're going to build a company of 3000 people, that's had the impact of Facebook, you have to, you have to do those sorts of things, because at some point you just simply don't know everyone's name and you don't know what's going on and you, and you have to be freed from having to make all those decisions yourself.
Yeah. And I, and I think that, uh, as we've seen with guys, like Elan, you need enormous. Uh, you know, I w I will tell you actually, lady Gaga, she's like, you've got to be relentless in the, in the chasing of your dreams. You have to be courageous. You have to have this driving force. And I really get the feeling of Zuckerberg has this abundant focus and energy and drive to get the job done.
Yeah. I don't want to, uh, to take us too far off track, but yeah, I think contrasting Mark and bill Gates is an interesting exercise and kind of the generational difference between the two and how the times in which they found themselves set each of them up for success in different ways. So here's actually at Mark Zuckerberg, responding to some questions by an interviewer on his thoughts on bill Gates.
There were probably a lot of people who can, who can run Microsoft and do a reasonable job. When I was growing up, bill Gates was my, my hero. Oh, come on. Yes. He spiked our theater. He's not, he's done Luke Skywalker and he's the bad guy. No, he is not. Um, bill Gates ran. One of the most mission-driven companies that I can think of.
Right. And, you know, right now I think Microsoft, their mission is less focused than it used to be. But when I was thinking about, you know, what would I want it to be when I grew up, you know, Microsoft, I thought had had a great mission, put a computer on every desktop. And in every office, right. Or maybe it was every desktop and every home.
Uh, but you know, there are companies that define themselves by a way of doing things, right. I mean, there's, um, them like the HP way that I was talking about. And there were companies that define themselves by making a concrete change in the world and, um, You know, Microsoft did that. And, uh, like I have a huge amount of respect for him for doing that.
And he pushed them and it was an incredibly inspiring company. Um, during the time that he was doing that, I think that there, they still are doing a lot of things, but I think that they've lost some of the focus. And, um, I don't know. I mean, I think he's like one of the, one of the greatest visionaries that are, that our industry has ever had.
Hmm. It's high praise from, from Mark, but is interesting to me that what he latched on to about bill Gates was that it was a mission driven company that it wasn't just about building computers, but it was actually giving the power and. Infinite possibilities of computers to everyone in their homes and on their desks at school.
And at work exactly you, you call it it's. The vision was a PC on every desk. Right. And what's interesting is actually how similar, so how similar they are. So. Facebook wants to connect every human on the planet. Microsoft wanted to put a PC on every desk, and this is where you see the Zuckerberg in, in many ways is, uh, really sort of a new generational version of bill Gates.
And what's quite fascinating is actually how good friends they are. Facebook. Obviously it took an investment from Microsoft way back in the day. They're they're often, uh, doing, uh, videos together and hanging out. So I, I think we can draw a lot from that. What's really interesting Gates though. He achieved this through, you know, our big man show that we decoded from him was you get what you, you know, you get what you measure.
Right. And he was all about quantifying understandings to see the patterns. What's interesting. However, is that the book actually has quite a different approach, much more cavalier. I would say he's like go for a move fast break things, ship product, and you can even hear in, in, in Sheryl Sandberg. She's adopted some of this cultural referencing as well, but to show you the scale and importance of, of, of Zuckerberg's approach, he's often on the world stage talking with world leaders and visionaries.
And what's really exciting is that we've got this great clip coming up where he's actually on stage with, with, uh, Barack Obama. And I think what's also exciting is that he's able to, Zachary is able to frame his thinking really into some very powerful thoughts on entrepreneurialship. So let's take a moment now to have a listen to Mark Zuckerberg, just hanging out with his friend, Barack Obama.
How's Facebook thinking about its own role in creating this platform for entrepreneurship around the world. I know that's something that you've been thinking a lot about to me. Entrepreneurship is about creating change, not just creating companies and you know, the, the most effective entrepreneurs that who I've met.
Care deeply about some mission and some change that they're trying to create. And often they don't even start because they're trying to create a company. Right. And, you know, that's how, how I think about, um, you know, my connection to, to all of us here is when I was getting started. I, um, and I, it, I cared deeply about giving everyone a voice and giving people the tools to share everything that they cared about and, uh, bringing a community together.
And it started small and in one university, And I didn't think it was going to be a company at the time. Um, as a matter of fact, I was pretty convinced that at some point someone would build something like this for the world, but, uh, you know, I thought that that would be some other company that, you know, already had thousands of engineers and was used to building stuff for hundreds of millions of people around the world.
And you know, what ended up happening was, um, No that no one built it. Right. So we just kind of kept on going, right? I mean, people said at each step along the way, um, you know what you're doing, right. Maybe college students like it, but no one else is going to like it. And you know, there's not going to be any money in doing this.
So, all right. So you only really do it if you care, right. If you're passionate about doing it. And then it started growing and people said it would be a fad and it would never be a good business, but you know, you keep going because you care. Not because you're trying to create a business. Um, and you know, then there's the shift of mobile where people thought that it wouldn't be a sustainable business and, um, you know, through each of these things, the entrepreneurs.
So I think build things that lasts for a long time, keep going, because they care fundamentally about the change that they're trying to create in the world. Um, and they're not in it just to, to build a company, you know, it's this deep belief that you're trying to make a change. You're trying to connect people in the world.
And I really do believe that if you do something good and if you help people out, then eventually some portion of that good will come back to you and you may not know upfront what it's going to be, but. That's just been the guiding principle for me in the work that we've done. And I hope that some of the work that we do can play a role in empowering you and so many more entrepreneurs to build the next.
Great. Excellent. Yeah. I love that statement from Mark. It's really kind of his big vision, not only for Facebook, but what he wants to see from young entrepreneurs all across the globe. Yeah. And, and, um, whilst he echoed a number of things, we had decoded, what I really liked is how. You know, he said, look, the idea really hasn't changed, right?
We're still on that same mission. And I think that's what keeps you going through all the naysayers, the failed Yahoo acquisition. It goes through his management team leaving. It goes through the, there was this time where everybody thought they had missed mobile. In the end, they just keep going. And what's pretty crazy.
Chad is, he's like, well, there's a ton of people who are still not even on the internet. So where does that take your mind to? I mean, how do you see Facebook over the next coming 14 years? I mean, what, where does your mind go? I think for them to continue to conquer the globe, they have to get more people on the internet.
So I think that will become a core part of their business. I mean, Mark can justify it as, you know, a social cause because he's connecting people. But the business reason of why they're doing that is that they need more eyeballs on the platform. And if they're going to do that, they just need to get them on.
But I think this is where someone like Jack ma has a huge advantage over Mark Zuckerberg because Jack MA's been raised and grown up and been an entrepreneur. In a country that has over a billion people and has scaled its services, Ali-Baba has scaled it services to most people in the country that has a S you know, even just an SMS capable cell phone.
And so I think, you know, as we see Facebook and Amazon and Google making big plays outside of the United States in the European union, um, I think, you know, it would behoove them to learn from Jack ma and other non-American non-ego entrepreneurs that have kind of already figured it out and built very successful businesses in those arenas.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. If you were to compare zackerburg the 20 plus other entrepreneurs that we've decoded, what are your feelings on his most unique characteristics? And what are the ones you think he shares a lot with other entrepreneurs? What makes him so special to you? I think he's very similar in that he's mission driven and product customer driven, like so many of.
So many of the other entrepreneurs, I think he's probably a bigger risk taker than most. I mean, I would put him right up there with Richard Branson and mom and Musk. Yeah. Yeah, but he has, he's my age. He, you know, he has that kind of social mission, millennial bent, um, that I also think makes him very unique.
Um, but you know, even in contrast, contrast with Jack Dorsey, who's also very young and, and Joe Gebbia and, and, and others that we profile. They're very young, you know, I, I put him more in the camp of like, Lady Gaga, you know, we're all young, we're all young, you know, 30 something millennial. Yeah. Hang on restless an now I agree with you.
I think that, um, moving fast and creating safety, particularly within his tech, uh, arena, obviously ed Catmull is whilst he has a tech mentor. He's a lodging in the storytelling entertainment business. You rarely hear. Tech guys, tech, CEOs, tech leaders talking about the need to create safety and in order for the business to grow.
And he seems, I think exactly those scenes uniquely aware of trying to keep it feeling like a startup, even when it's not. So I think he's got this very, um, as you said, very mission-driven, but it's this safety and working at speed, even when you're huge, I think sets him apart. And I think it's also, can you think of any other entrepreneur that we've listened to?
That's been so tuned into the changing. Evolving nature of the company as it grows and, and, and really thinking about those stages and adjusting to them and scaling in the right way. I don't think we, yeah, not yet. Not to the, to the degree that Mark has. I mean, look, Amazon, um, maybe Uber. Became aware of that maybe Travis became aware of it a little too late.
They sort of, they, they sort of became a 10 headed beast and grew out of control. Um, but you don't even hear, uh, you don't even hear Bezos with all of this philosophy and thought about scaling and keeping that, that, that safety, I mean, that's something that you never hear Bezos talking about. No, no. Jeff bays is talk some more about, uh, you know, work force, fly mission and well, but, um, but just in terms of kind of the company, you know, he's very big on empowering the employees and educating the employees, but not necessarily.
Thinking about it in the way that that Mark has at Facebook? Yeah. Well, I mean, what a, what a great entrepreneur. I mean, I took a lot out of, uh, uh, the Zuckerberg, um, ideas. I think that this, this idea of moving fast and safety, those were huge ones for me and I, and I feel that. Once again, Zuckerberg, like all the other entrepreneurs has proven to have these shared values, but his own unique twist, his own unique flavor on, uh, how to innovate, how to build a business.
I think what's really exciting is, is to think about the next 14 years and what Facebook might get up to. Yeah. I've kind of made this decision just now, but I would love to go deeper into Facebook and listen to what Sheryl Sandberg, um, has to say. Um, I know she, you know, she's got, uh, several. Good books out.
You're mentioning that you wanted to bring the, uh, the Chad book reviews back. And, um, I think it would be interesting to get both Mark's and her perspective and kind of a one-two punch to really, uh, hopefully get a complete picture, um, or a better picture of, of what's happening inside of Facebook and what we can learn from, from the two of them, uh, compared and contrasted with each other.
Look, and we know that the future will be challenging without a doubt, very easily going into their most challenging era, because they're just so big now, like it's all challenged from now on like there's no like hiding in a, in an empty office block in the back of, uh, Cupertino or Palo Alto or Menlo park.
I mean, these guys are in the center. I mean, I don't know if you saw that Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister. Came out earlier this week and said, Hey, sorted out Facebook. Or we will buy basically threatening regulations on Facebook. Yeah, no, it'll be, it'll be very interesting how they react and respond because it's going to have a ripple effect for all the other companies that.
That we mentioned before. Yeah. Yeah. Now talking about futures, we've got some exciting news happening in the future. Chad, we're going to make our way around the world. We're going to be, uh, doing something new with live video and sort of Amsterdam inspired, but another part of your, give us the news chat on.
Yeah. So March 15th at, I believe 5:00 PM Eastern European time. Is that the right time zone? Sounds pretty close to me. Yeah. In Bucharest, Romania, we'll be talking with three incredible entrepreneurs connections through, uh, through Mike and the amazing work that he's been doing with there in Bucharest.
Why don't you give us a little teaser on who we can expect to hear from on that live show? Mike? Yeah, we've got three, uh, entrepreneurs, uh, to, uh, actually all of them are founder CEOs. They come with a world of experience. We're going to, uh, have all sorts of learnings, uh, not only about innovation and technology, but also how they're productive.
How they get through their day. And we're going to talk a lot about how they actually collaborate work with others and inspire people to do great things. So it's going to be a great show. There's going to be a really large audience. Um, so it's going to be full of lots of energy. So you're going to need to bring all your wiz-bang cameras and technology and gadgets.
Chad, we're going to need all the technology, how we can get it's going to be a riot. It's going to be great. Yeah. It's partly why we're doing the live show like this, just so I can kind of get it under my belt so that when we're in front of all those people, I, I know, I know what I'm doing. Hey, we rocked it.
We rocked it in Amsterdam. So I'm completely confident that we'll, we'll tear the house down and, uh, we'll, we'll get lots of innovation wisdom into the minds, into the hands and the hearts of our audience. And so if you would like any more information about. The live video broadcasts in the event in Bucharest, head on down to moonshots.io, where you can get all the information on the planet.
Now, before we wrap up chat, we got gotta, we got a jam. We've got to think about who is going to be next, where in the midst of our Silicon Valley, founder, CEO run, uh, we've got a couple or any names coming to mind, or you want me to hit you with a list? Well, I already gave you mine. Sheryl, Sheryl Sandberg.
Well, you just want to go straight into Cheryl. Yeah. Why not? I already spent, I already spent this week in Facebook. Let's spend another, another week in Facebook, Santa. It is that's awesome. She's got a great book. You have to do some reading chat. Well, she's got two books. Uh, what's it. Option, option planning, drive, option B and lean in.
Yeah. Okay. I didn't realize was coauthored the option B or plan B book was co-authored but yeah, it looks like I got to get into my, my, uh, Insta read and find out, uh, if I've got some Sheryl in now, I'm better. I do. That sounds really good. Um, we'll have a couple of, more of our live video shows for our regular episodes.
And then as you said, Middle of March. We will be on to a, we'll be in front of a huge live audience, uh, broadcasting to the universe. I can't wait. I can't wait to do this Cheryl show. I'm all excited because I hadn't even thought about this. Yeah. Now I'm all excited. So thanks for inspiring me on a, on a Friday morning.
Yeah. Well, and I just wanted to give a shout out to everyone that is watching us live. And for those of you listening to us, Uh, asynchronously, you know, just be on the lookout@moonshots.io for the announcements on our live shows, or just follow us on Facebook, uh, moonshots IO, and, uh, you'll be able to see the live broadcast there and you can find us on YouTube, Twitch, and Periscope as well.
So there's plenty of places to find us on, uh, on the web live streaming and, um, You know, if you have any feedback on the format or just want to say hi, or if you have suggestions, you can email us@helloatmoonshots.io and, um, Mike, and I love getting all of that feedback from you, the listener or now viewers.
Um, and you know, we really appreciate it. True well said Chad own. I think we've got to that famous point in a show where we can say goodbye from Brooklyn, New York, USA, and Sydney, new South Wales, Australia. Thank you everybody. For dialing in, remember to check us out@moonshots.io and tune in for our next show, where we dive into the world of Sheryl Sandberg from Facebook and author of all sorts of good things.
So once again, thank you from the team here at the moonshots podcast, that's a wrap.