10 pearls from Mark Zuckerberg

The future of social networking, the great tech war – Mark Zuckerberg covered it all in one of his most extensive interviews ever.

Following the passing of Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg has emerged as perhaps the most influential business leaders in the technology sector and even the world.

Like Jobs, Zuckerberg personal brand is tied very closely to his company (thanks in no small part to the movie The Social Network).

Like Jobs, Zuckerberg is proving himself to be someone who thinks deeply about how users connect with technology and how various technologies will develop and intersect.

Yesterday Zuckerberg and his chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg appeared in an extensive hour-long interview with veteran reporter Charlie Rose.

The interview ranged over a number of areas (you can check out a full transcript here) but I wanted to pick out 10 choice quotes which I think give some insights into where Facebook will go and how Zuckerberg thinks about business.

Perhaps the most interesting thing Zuckerberg talks about is his desire to retain a small-company feel to Facebook by creating a culture where risk taking and speed is valued almost above all else.

To me, this says a number of things:

• Facebook will continue to create controversy by rolling out products and changes too quickly, without huge amounts of consultation. This is a key part of the culture and clearly important to Zuckerberg.
• Zuckerberg may believe that once he floats, keeping this culture will become nearly impossible as the ownership of the company will change. And as he says below, new owners bring new goals – shareholders tend to focus on the short-term while he wants to look long-term.
• This could eventually become something of a sticking point between Zuckerberg and his investors. They may want to float a lot sooner than he does.

On to the quotes. Please note I have edited them to take out Zuckerberg’s repeated use of the word “right” which can make for tough reading.

On the future of social networking:

“If you look back for the past five or seven years, the story of social networking has really been about getting these 800 million people connected so they can stay in touch with all the people they are about… But if you look forward for the next five years, I think that the story that people are going to remember isn’t how this one site was built. It was how every single service you use is now going to be better with your friends.”

On why a float is inevitable:

“I actually think the biggest thing for us is that a big part of being a technology company is getting the best engineers and designers and talented people around the world. And one of the ways that you can do that is you compensate people with equity or options… we’ve made this implicit promise to our investors and our employees that by compensating them with equity… that at some point we’re going to make that equity worth something publicly.”

On how the US can continue to breed great companies:

“I think you need two things. One is the ability to have engineers and educate engineers… and the second thing is the ability to try out their own ideas and the freedom to do that. And the US, I think historically has been extremely good at both. We’ve led in education and we’ve led in freedom and supporting people trying risky things.”

On trying to hang onto a start-up culture:

“We have this culture where we place a really big premium on moving quickly. One of the big theories that I had about that was 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 on moving quicker then maybe when we’re around 2,500 or 3,000 people now maybe we move as quickly as company that only has 500 people, 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.”

On selling and buying businesses:

“I don’t think that buying a company or selling a company is necessarily a good or a bad thing. I just think that the key thing that you need to realise is that when you go through a transaction like that, what you are changes.”

On the fight between Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon:

“People like to talk about war. You know, there are lots of ways in which the companies work together. There are real competitions in there. But I don’t think that this is going to be the type of situation where one company wins all the stuff.”

And why Facebook can win from hardware innovations these companies make:

“Our goal is not to build a platform, it’s to be across all of them.”

On what he asked Steve Jobs:

“How to build a team around you that’s high quality and as good at things as you are. How to keep an organisation focused when I think the tendency for larger companies is to try and fray and go into all these different areas.”

On why China is not a priority:

“Honestly, the way we have to look at it now is there’s so many other places in the world where we connect people more easily without having to face those hard questions… I think a simple rule in business is, if you do things that are easy first, you actually make some progress.”

On what your next training course should involve:

“All of my friends who have younger siblings who are going to college or high school, my number one piece of advice is you should learn how to program. I think that in the future, all kinds of jobs… are going to involve some element of programming.”