Zuckerberg is the founder and CEO of one of the most influential companies in the history of the world. He explains the meteoric rise of Facebook in relation to his psychology and computer science background. During his days in Harvard, he realized that people were interested in knowing more about their friends’ lives. He saw an opportunity and came up with the first version of Facebook which at the time was limited to Harvard students only. However, he didn’t predict the high demand coming from other schools and the wider world. He and his team began expansion into other colleges and then highschools increasing the number of people on the Facebook platform. The whole story was an unintended unravelling of what we know today as Facebook. In a few years, they were able to accommodate billions of people in the Facebook platform and become one of the biggest and most influential companies in the world.
When asked to give advice to young entrepreneurs who want to build a company, Zukcerberg suggests starting by identifying a problem and then finding solutions for those problems. That is what he did with Facebook. Then you can build a company out of this process. Unfortunately, there are many who decide on building a company and then start to look for problems and their solutions. This will lead to wastage of time and resources.
Once founding a company, Zuckerberg emphasizes perseverance in facing challenges. He gives his personal anecdote, in 2006 Yahoo offered a billion dollars to buy Facebook which at the time had 10 million users. Most of the management in Facebook wanted to accept the offer and left the company when Zukerberg refused the lucrative offer. However, Facebook made more success shortely and increased its market value exponentially proving the benefits of perseverance.
Zuckerberg also gives importance to quick learning and adaptation to circumstances. To stay at the top of your game in a competitive market, you have to be at least as fast as your best competitor. He founded his company at the age of 19, and as such is always looking for talent despite age or other attributes. His advice for employers is don’t get stuck at the conventional hiring strategies. Look for people who can get the job done in the best way.
Useful link: Mark Zuckerberg : How to Build the Future
