The Mark Zuckerberg Interview
18 Sep 2024 (1 day ago)
Acquired Podcast Hosts
JP Morgan Chase Event
- Jamie Diamond, the chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Chase, welcomes listeners to the Acquired Live event at the Chase Center.
Mark Zuckerberg's Views
- Mark Zuckerberg states that he does not apologize anymore.
- Mark Zuckerberg believes that Meta's approach, characterized by speed and iteration, is distinct from Apple's approach, which emphasizes polish and longer development cycles.
- Mark Zuckerberg acknowledges that Facebook made mistakes and faced legitimate criticism, particularly regarding their understanding and handling of the changing political environment after 2016.
- Mark Zuckerberg believes that when facing a political problem, taking responsibility for issues that are not the fault of social media or the tech industry can lead to more blame.
- Zuckerberg believes that it is important to support academic research on the impact of social media to address accusations and provide evidence-based perspectives.
- Zuckerberg acknowledges that regaining public trust and addressing the political miscalculations of the past will take time, but he believes the company will emerge stronger.
- In 2006, Yahoo! offered to buy Facebook for one billion dollars. The management team and board of directors at Facebook wanted to accept the offer, but Mark Zuckerberg did not.
- Zuckerberg did not do a good job communicating his long-term vision for Facebook to his management team. He did not view Facebook as a company at the time, but rather as a fun project.
- Zuckerberg believes there is value in remaining flexible and being able to change direction quickly when starting a company. He prefers to keep teams small so that individuals have more agency.
- Mark Zuckerberg is still very involved in Meta and its future. He does not appear to be slowing down or stepping back from the company.
- Mark Zuckerberg's main focus is Meta, which he sees as a vehicle for his life's work and a way to create products with his team.
- Zuckerberg's control over Meta allows him to have significant influence over his own sphere of influence, similar to Steve Jobs at Apple, Bill Gates at Microsoft, and Jensen Huang at Nvidia.
- Meta is structured to reflect and amplify Zuckerberg's strengths, making the company an extension of his vision.
Entrepreneurial Challenges
- The entrepreneurial journey, especially in the early days of a startup, is incredibly challenging, with the constant possibility of failure and extreme volatility.
Values and Behaviors
- Values are not simply statements written on a wall, but rather lived behaviors that are revealed and shaped through difficult choices and challenges.
Future of Social Connection
- The speaker believes that the future of social connection extends beyond the limitations of phones and small screens, envisioning a future where glasses provide a more immersive and less isolating social experience.
- Glasses will be able to project images like holograms, enhancing social experiences by creating a sense of presence even when individuals are not physically present.
Development of Advanced Glasses
- The development of these glasses involves creating a new display stack, miniaturizing components like chips, microphones, speakers, cameras, eye tracking, batteries, and novel RF protocols.
- While working on the advanced glasses, a collaboration with EssilorLuxottica, the maker of Ray-Ban, led to the development of glasses with current technology, aiming to make them as useful as possible.
Meta's Success Factors
- Meta's success is attributed to its focus on human connection and its strong technology foundation.
- Meta's CEO believes that a significant number of engineers in a company are essential for it to be considered a technology company.
- Meta's CEO believes the company's ability to transition between platforms is due to its strong technical foundation and the balance of engineers and product managers on the management team.
- Meta's product strategy is centered around rapid iteration and learning to improve user experience.
- Meta prioritizes a culture of shipping products quickly to gather feedback and iterate, even if it means releasing products that are not fully polished.
Open Source Technology
- Meta would not have been built without open source technology.
- Google was the first company to build a distributed computing infrastructure and kept it proprietary.
- Open source technology makes it easy to develop and iterate products quickly.
Facebook's Mobile App Development
- Facebook attempted to build a web-based platform for their mobile app to enable daily updates and streamline development across different phone operating systems.
- The company prioritized development velocity over native integration, believing any downsides would be offset by faster updates and a single development platform.
- This strategy proved unsuccessful, as native integration was essential for a positive user experience, leading to a complete rewrite of the mobile apps.
- Facebook paused feature development for a year or so to focus on rewriting and improving the platform.
- Mobile usage was increasing while web usage was decreasing, impacting Facebook's monetization strategy as mobile was their only business model at the time.
Reality Labs and Future Goals
- Reality Labs, while not currently highly profitable, is important for long-term goals and controlling the company's future.
- Owning the platform, rather than relying on others, could significantly increase profitability.
- The speaker's focus is shifting from building merely "good" products to building "awesome" products that inspire and uplift, such as those being developed by Reality Labs and the company's AI team.
Personal Projects and Interests
- The speaker is collaborating with Daniel Aram on a project.
- The speaker is raising cattle on a ranch in Kawaii with the goal of producing the highest quality beef.
Meta's Growth and Vision
- The speaker believes that Facebook is growing in importance and that the company will continue to expand.
- Meta was chosen as the new company name because it represents a vision of the future and a commitment to pursuing that vision, even amidst challenges.
- Meta is seen as a company that sets ambitious goals and relentlessly pursues them, undeterred by obstacles.
Competition with Apple
- The speaker views Apple as a significant competitor, particularly in the realm of platform architecture, where they represent a closed, integrated model in contrast to Meta's more open approach.
- The speaker believes that open platforms will lead to a more dynamic tech industry.
- The speaker believes that Apple will be their primary competitor and that the competition will be driven by values and ideology.
Inspiration from Daughter
- The speaker's daughter, August Chan Zuckerberg, inspired him by saying that she wants people to want to be like her when she grows up.
Companies Mentioned
- Statsig is a company that helps businesses accelerate growth and democratize product building. Many A-list companies use Statsig.
- Crusoe is a climate-aligned cloud platform for AI workloads. They build and operate data centers powered by low-cost stranded energy that would otherwise be wasted. Several large companies trust Crusoe with their AI infrastructure.