Interview Quotes

Here are the most significant quotes from the interview:

The Entrepreneurial Journey and Learning Through Suffering

"I think there's something to Jensen's original sentiment, which is that the entrepreneurial journey is very challenging. Especially the early days when you're running a startup and, you know, there's the sense that what you're doing could just die at any moment."

— Mark Zuckerberg • 00:41:14

"So this one is pathematos, learning through suffering. It's a little family saying and also Aeschylus."

— Mark Zuckerberg • 00:43:10

"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."

— Mark Zuckerberg • 00:43:40

Meta's Technology and Product Strategy

"I think it's that we're a technology company that is focused on human connection, not a specific type of app."

— Mark Zuckerberg • 01:03:17

"So, I think what you would like to have is not a phone that you look down at that kind of takes your attention away from the things and the people around you. You know, not just a small screen. I mean, I think what you ideally have is glasses."

— Mark Zuckerberg • 01:06:12

"So I define our strategy as if we can learn faster than every other company, we're going to win."

— Mark Zuckerberg • 01:14:01

"The comment that someone made to me was, the reason Mark is such a good strategist is because 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."

— Ben Gilbert • 01:16:05

Open Source and AI

"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 know, we wouldn't have been able to get built without open source."

— Mark Zuckerberg • 01:24:37

"So for us, there's a huge amount of good and it philosophically lines up with where we are. We're like, I mean, look, I definitely, you know, firsthand have a lot of experiences. We were like trying to build stuff on mobile platforms and the platforms are just like, nah, you can't build that."

— Mark Zuckerberg • 01:30:13

The 2012 IPO and Mobile Transition

"Well, we were wrong. It turned out that, you know, having the native integration was actually critical for having the interactions feel good 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."

— Mark Zuckerberg • 01:35:02

"But when you're losing it's usually pretty clear what you have to do. And I think a lot of it is like, is just, do you have the pain tolerance to go do it?"

— Mark Zuckerberg • 01:38:25

Critiques and Regrets

"But if that was a year and a half mistake, I think, you know, one of the things I reflect on over the last, like, 10 years or so was, you know, the political environment just changed dramatically."

— Mark Zuckerberg • 01:41:19

"And my guess is if the IPO was a year and a half mistake, I think that the political miscalculation was a 20-year mistake."

— Mark Zuckerberg • 01:45:59

Company Structure and Vision

"So after that, I was like, all right, well, I don't want to get fired from my own company for wanting to build it, so let's, uh, try to set up a governance structure that makes it somewhat harder to do that."

— Mark Zuckerberg • 01:51:41

"I want us to build more things that are awesome in addition to things that are good."

— Mark Zuckerberg • 02:18:07

The Future of Tech and Competition

"I think over the next 10, 15 years, I, I think that kind of like battle over, ideological battle over what should the architecture be of the next set of platforms? Are they going to be the closed integrated Apple, a model that Apple has always done?"

— Mark Zuckerberg • 02:26:21

"My goal for the next 10, 15 years is to build the next generation of open platforms and have the open platforms win."

— Mark Zuckerberg • 02:27:36

Advice to Founders

"Learn from other people's successes and failures, but do your own thing."

— Mark Zuckerberg • 02:32:46

Reflections on the Conversation

"The biggest thing that I kept thinking going into the night as we're talking with Mark, as we're talking with his team, you know, people kept saying, we don't really do this. Mark doesn't really do this. And I kept thinking, yeah, he kind of does..."

— Ben Gilbert • 02:35:37

"He's both a singular individual himself but it's not just that it's that a true superpower of the company is that it is architected from top to bottom legally financially organizationally culturally to reflect and amplify his immense strengths..."

— David Rosenthal • 02:46:33