The Mark Zuckerberg Interview

0:00 So how many interviews with Mark do you think you watched before? Tonight. Oh to prepare. Yeah. Uh thirty to forty. I don't know the the best ones are the O four to O six vintage.

0:14 But they're all so different. It's almost like every three to four years is a new era that is markedly different from all the previous eras. Totally. And uh I think we might have witnessed the beginning of a new era right in front of us on stage. Oh yes. Absolutely. Alright, should we do this?

0:31 Let's do it. Who got the truth? Is it you, is it you, is it you who got the truth now? Is it you, is it you, is it you? Me down

0:43 Say it straight. Another story Welcome to the fall twenty twenty four season of Acquired, the podcast about great companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert. Um David Resenthal. And we are your hosts.

1:00 Listeners, we have something very special for you today. Our interview with Mark Zuckerberg from Acquired Live at Chase Center. Ooh. Mark is the iconic founder CEO of our time. And this conversation was just too good to hold on to any longer. So we are getting it out quickly we release the full video of the entire show. Which speaking of the full show.

1:24 Utterly amazing. We had surprise appearances from Jensen Huang, Daniel Ek, Emily Chang, and of course We had the one and only Mike Taylor, the artist who sings Who Got the Truth, performing Live. Incredible. We've got basically a whole film production that's now happening behind the scenes with another ninety minutes of content beyond just this Mark interview. We should have that out in the next couple weeks, so Stay tuned for that.

1:49 All right listeners. Now is a great time to talk about a new partner of ours here on Acquired, Lagora. The agentic operating system that is redefining how the world's best legal teams work. Yep. It's sort of obvious that AI is gonna completely change the legal industry. I bet most of you listening have dropped a contract into some sort of AI chatbot out there. Ligora took that insight and asked the question, what if you really built something with that power from the ground up for the legal industry? So the founders did exactly what great founders do.

2:22 operate with obsessive customer focus. They embedded inside a massive law firm for months. They sat with the lawyers just watching how the work really gets done. And that's how you get features that customers love, like tabular review, where you drop in a folder of hundreds of contracts and it pulls every key term into a grid a lawyer can actually work with. Lagora's Bet Here is interesting. Since it lets each lawyer handle more complexity, any given person can increase the quality of their work. and do higher value work. And this means that the pie can grow even as each individual task takes less time.

2:58 And they recently launched Lagora Agent, offering greater intelligence and performance. The agent lets lawyers set an objective. Then it can handle the planning and the execution and delivery of the final product. Legal teams get to maintain full control and transparency since they're still involved where judgment is required. And Lagora works where you already work. You can use it within Microsoft Word while redlining or drafting. The early Lagora numbers essentially speak for themselves. When they have a head to head pilot with their top competitor, they win seventy percent of the time. Legora now has over a hundred thousand lawyers on the platform from twelve hundred legal teams in fifty countries. And crazily, they went from one million to a hundred million in ARR.

3:44 In about. Eighteen months. truly insane numbers. And that is the real test. Plenty of things demo well, but the question is whether a busy associate actually reach for it during crunch time, or whether a partner trusts it before going into a conversation with a major client.

4:00 If your legal team wants to check it out, whether you're a law firm or you're in-house at a company, you can learn more at Lagora.com/slash acquired. And just tell'em that Ben and David sent you. As always, come discuss this afterwards with us in the Slack, acquired.fm slash slack, and if you want to be notified when every new episode drops, sign up at acquired.fm slash email. All right. One more thing before the interview. We

4:27 Need to say a huge Huge. Thank you. to the entire JP Morgan payments team for securing the Chase Center for this for orchestrating The entire evening.

4:38 Ben and I really worked side by side all year with their incredible team to make this evening happen. And we really got to know them. Max, Umar, Dustin, Hannah Vinny, Nick, Amy, Carly, and so many others. It's like we were one team. You guys rock. Yeah, for the first time we actually got to experience what it would be like if acquired was a large world class organization and not just, you know, our little team. And uh what happened at Chase Center is really the physical embodiment of that. Thank you guys for being the best partners we could ever imagine. And a very special shout out to Dustin Sedgwick, JP Morgan Payment CMO, who's a longtime listener of the show and a good friend of ours. And he's just been the driving force behind all of this without him. Chase Center wouldn't have happened.

5:23 We're so grateful for an incredible relationship with you and all of JP Morgan. Yeah. So Please enjoy our conversation with Mark Zuckerberg and to take us in.

5:33 The chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Chase. Jamie Diamond. Hello, acquired listeners. Welcome to the Chase Center. And to acquired live.

5:42 I'm Jamie Diamond, Chairman and CO of JP Morgan Chase. I'm happy to kick off the show tonight and welcome all of you to one of my favorite arenas. It's been a great partnership all year. between JP Morgan payments and acquired

5:57 In the world. For many of them. Just like many of you in the crowd. We're thrilled to call you friends and partners of the firm. Sorry I couldn't be there in person tonight.

6:06 I hope everyone enjoys the show. Ben and David, over to you. Mark. Right? It's great to have you here.

6:15 It's great to be here. You know, I was watching I was watching Jensen's video correcting the record and I was thinking to myself We might need to book the next one of these for all the things I'm gonna have to apologize for and I'm gonna say time. Mm. I don't apologize anymore.

6:30 We've noticed. Well okay, wait, wait, here's the question, if you knew what you knew today. Would you have started Facebook?

6:43 Oh God. I mean I look I I think it Mm-hmm. Literally. I I think there's something to Jensen's original sentiment. Which is that

6:55 Mm. 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 and

7:08 And the volatility, everything's just getting thrashed so much and It's it's not No, you you obviously you look back, you have all these spawn memories, but It was not the most fun part of the journey, or you know, the part of my life that I like wish I could go back and relive. So I mean I I do think that there's something to what Jensen was saying that

7:28 I thought it was very honest. And No, when I heard him say it the first time I was like yeah. I get that. It's like I think

7:36 I I think there are a l like a lot of people for whom You know, if you knew how Painful. Uh It would be along the way you wouldn't get started. But then you know I think that that's one of the things that's good about

7:49 human nature is you can underestimate how painful things are going to be. So that way you can go and do good things. Well um Yeah. On that topic We have a lot to talk about. Yeah.

8:01 I think this is actually very appropriate. First We have to ask you about Your shirt and what you're wearing. Yeah, you know.

8:10 I um I started uh Working with people to design some of my own clothes. And um

8:21 So I figure, you know, look. We're gonna design eyewear, we're gonna design other stuff that people wear. Let's get let's get good at this. And um So so this one I actually I Worked with this great

8:33 Fashion designer Mike Amiri And um he's got a great story. So I I I wouldn't be surprised if you're doing one of these with him one day. Um and This one is so I I've I've I've kind of started working on this series of

8:49 shirts with my some of my favorite classical sayings on them. So this one is Pathe Matos. Uh learning through suffering. Uh Little family saying and

9:02 Also Askeless. Was that your family saying growing up, or is that your family now? Well no, let's let's pull that thread. Uh No pun intended, I promise.

9:20 Uh What does learning through suffering mean to you? Um 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. And

9:36 I mean I think that that is sort of that's the journey, right? I mean that's the the entrepreneurial journey. It's also I think part of the beauty of Building things. And Um Fine.

9:48 Yeah, this is something that Jensen talks a lot about too. It's like I I I feel like You you know, when you go to start a company, you Yeah, everyone kinda writes down what they would like their values to be. But values are not what you write down on the wall. It's like your lived behaviors.

10:04 And you only really learn what you care about. when you have to make hard trade offs and face challenges. So Yeah. You learn the most important things through facing challenges.

10:17 Mm. Well um Speaking of facing challenges, we want to talk about I I think you have faced more existential challenges than

10:31 Any meaningful company in history through your first twenty years. old Nike Michael Jordan ad where he's talking about how he's failed over and over and over again and that's how he succeeds. That one really resonates with me too.

10:54 So um This summer. Um And I genuinely

11:03 Love them. Tell us the story of how these came to be. Yeah, so Thanks. So

11:17 You know, we It Meta we've been building social experiences for twenty years now. And originally it took the form of a website. Then mobile apps.

11:28 But the thing is I I I never thought about us as a social media company. Right, we're not a social app company. We are a a social connection company. Right. I mean I I we talk about what we're doing is building the future of human connection. And

11:44 That's not only going to be constrained over time to what you can do on a phone. Right on a small screen. So When you think about you know when we got started. Okay, we're like a

11:54 handful of kids. You know, we weren't able, we didn't have the resources, the time to go define whatever the next computing platform is. And also Yeah, Facebook originally got started around the same time as you know, a bunch of the early smartphones and those platforms got started. So we didn't really get to play any role in developing that platform. And

12:12 One of the big themes I think for the next chapter of what we do. is I I wanna be able to build what I what I think are sort of the ideal experiences. Not just What you're allowed to build.

12:27 on some platform that someone else built, but Like what is actually, if you can think from first principles, what is the ideal social experience? So I I think what you would like to have. It's not a phone that you look down at. Um that kinda takes your attention away from the things and the people around you, you know, not just a small screen.

12:45 I think what you ideally have is glasses. And Mm. Through the glasses. Um there's one part of it where the glasses you can

12:55 They can see what you see and they can hear what you hear, and in doing so, they can be kind of the perfect AI assistant for you because they have context on what you're doing. But then part of that. Is also that The glasses can Project

13:08 images basically like holograms out into the world. And That way your social experiences with other people Aren't constrained to these little interactions you can have in a phone screen. You know, in the in the not so distant future, you can Imagine

13:22 Um Uh because you guys have demoed some of the stuff that that we that we've done. A like a a version of this where we're having a conversation like this. But you know, maybe like one of us isn't even here, they're just like a hologram and we have glasses and it really. Yeah, there's the question of

13:37 Delivering a realistic sense of presence. There's something magical in the realm of building social experiences around The feeling of human presence and like being there with another person and This physical perception, right, where

13:50 We're very physical beings, right? People like to intellectualize everything, but a lot of our experiences very physical. And the this physical sense of presence that you are with another person. doing things in the physical world. It's something that you're gonna be able to do through holograms. Through glasses. Um without being taken away from you know whatever else you're doing, just kind of

14:10 have that mixed in with the rest of the world. Um It's gonna be I think the ultimate digital social experience. I think it's also gonna be

14:21 the ultimate incarnation of AI. because you're gonna have conversations where it's like all right, there's some people, it's like maybe like I'm physically here, there's like a person, you're you're like a hologram there, there's an AI that is kind of embodied as someone is there. And The glasses will enable this. So how are we going after this, building this? This is like some some huge project. We've been working on it for

14:42 Ten years. Um And There are a lot of different challenges to solve. to get there. There's like you have to build a novel display stack, right? It's not these aren't just screens like the kind that

14:54 Or in phones there's this long lineage. They They're they're connected to the screens that have been in TVs and monitors and things for a long time. There's been this massive optimization of the supply chain. There's like brand new. display stack or on holographic displays that basically need to get created. And then they need to be put into glasses, they need to be miniaturized. And

15:14 The you also in the glasses need to fit. Chips, microphones. Um speakers. cameras, eye tracking to be able to Understand what you're doing. Batteries to make it last all day.

15:32 So Try to go for the big thing. Right, and and we we've been working on that for a while. And we're pretty close to being able to show off

15:42 um kind of the first prototype that we have of that and I'm really excited about that. At the same time we also came at it from this lens of all right. So that's like a lot of new technology that needs to get developed. Um A lot to pack into a form factor, because the classes have to be good looking, too.

15:58 So What if we just constrain ourselves to like we're gonna work with a a great partner, Esslor Luxotica, they make Ray Band, they make a lot of the iconic glasses. Let's see what we can fit into glasses today. And make them as useful as possible.

16:13 And Yeah, I I actually I kinda thought when we were getting started with those. that it was almost like A practice project.

16:23 for like for the the ultimate. Which let's be clear, that's what you thought was. That's true. That's true. Like for your real startups. came out to Silicon Valley with

16:40 Dustin and and a handful of people working on it at the time. And we did that because Silicon Valley is where all the startups came from. And I remember we got off the plane, we were driving down 101, we're like, wow, eBay, Yahoo, like this is amazing. All these great companies, one day. We're maybe we'll build a company like this. And I'd already started Facebook. And I was like, s surely the project that we're working on now is not a company. And Facebook had like some scale at this point. Oh no, no, it was a great project. I just didn't have the ambition to turn it into a company at the time. That just kind of happened. Um but anyway.

17:12 Um Uh Yeah. A lot of hard work, obviously. But but it's but I I just at the time I was kinda like, yeah, no, I don't I don't I don't think this is it. Um

17:25 Well that's your answer of would you have started to do it. You actually try to start Facebook. I didn't know. So yeah, so I mean the the the glasses though You know, we thought that this was like, all right, we we want to get working with SLR Luxotica, so we can start building more and more advanced classes. And then

17:40 You know, they're really good. They look good. And then AI Like the massive transformation in AI. So to for listeners, let's just be really clear. You guys shipped this product. That I'm holding.

17:52 Before L's. Or at least before the public consciousness was aware of the chat GPT moment. And these were not manufactured and shipped as an AI device. That came later when they were already in market.

18:06 Yeah, a few years ago I would have predicted that AR holograms would have been available before kind of like Full scale AI. And now I think it's probably gonna be the other order. So now it's like all right, great, well this is actually a great product because it's got it's got the cameras, so it can see what you see. It's got

18:24 the microphone, it's got the speakers, you can talk to it. I I remember calling Alex Himmel, the the guy who runs the product group that's exactly running it, and I'm like, hey, you know, I I think we should probably pivot this and make it so that Um that meta AI is the primary feature of it. And then like I remember I came in the next week and they built a prototype of it on Tuesday, and it was like, all right, good. Yeah, no, this is good. This is gonna be a very successful product. He told us uh Much more high stakes version of that story.

18:50 I was on the highway with my kids and I get this call on a Saturday from Mark and he's like Those classes Could we put meta AI in them running on device? And like ship that. Soon so we can see if that's a good idea or not.

19:04 Yeah, that's that tracks. That's what I just said. Sounds right.

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21:06 Thank you for opening up with a story. Is why has Meta worked? as spectacularly well as it has. I mean one of the most valuable companies in the world through multiple iterations, multiple technology waves. Fighting off

21:25 You know. Maybe you. And yet That is not the way it looks today.

21:36 Uh my space. Twitter Gen One. Yep. Instagram. Snapchat.

21:43 WhatsApp. Tic tack. Apple app transport. And now chat GPT. That's nine.

21:54 Like there is a widely held public narrative every single time. Snapchat discovers stories or th there's something where people are like, Oh The cool thing that Facebook the company did is just obsolete now and they're gonna go away. You very much haven't gone away.

22:10 What do you think is the through line of the DNA of the company that allows you to keep winning? Um I think it's that we're a technology company. That is focused on Human connection.

22:28 Not a specific type of app. So like we never thought about ourselves as a website or a social network or anything like that. For for me, building this kind of glasses to enable The Future of

22:43 people being able to feel present with another person no matter where they actually physically are. is the natural continuation of the kind of apps that we build today, but it depends on how you define what you are. And then you need to figure out Well how do you build how do you give yourself the competence to actually go do that?

23:01 And that's where I think being a strong technology company comes in. Because You know, a lot of companies I think think about themselves too narrowly in terms of Okay, well were this kind of one thing.

23:13 And The reason why we can build all these things is because We are have a really strong technology foundation. And Some of that is just

23:24 me and how I think about stuff. I'm not I was an engineer before I got started. I mean I Like mostly took like systems engineering type classes when I was in And you talk about like Friendster in MySpace and all the

23:36 scaling challenges they had doing the graph calculations of like all right uh do you know this person should you shoot the friends of friends and friendships can you take us back and like we want to ask you the story of that time. I mean Um It seems quaint now, friendster my space, but Graph.

23:54 Networking social graphs. That is a Very very difficult computational calculation. A product question and a technology question. I think you can define the product in a such a general way that the technology becomes

24:09 Basically impossible to solve. Um so you want to have a smart product definition. But then you want to be competent and better than everyone else at the technology. And I I think that that's something that we've held ourselves to and build a good organization around. It's it's one of the things that I I

24:26 Observed as soon as I came out to the valley. That all these companies that call themselves technology companies were not really set up that way. Right, it's like the the companies I was talking about, it's like they You know, they the CEO wasn't technical.

24:41 The board of directors had no one technical on it. They had like one dude on the management team who's the head of engineering who was technical and like everyone else wasn't. And it's like all right, if that's your team. then you're not a technology company. So I I think one of the things that I've always been pretty careful about

24:59 is I I actually like want Like the a lot of the people on our on our management team, it's like Yeah, splits mostly people running um either these big product groups who come up through different technical pathways of the company.

25:12 And I think that there's like a balance, right? It's like you don't want everyone to be an engineer because there's other things that matter too. But if you don't have enough of your kind of share of the company as engineers. Then you're not a technology company. And I think that that

25:25 Also is important to the board. And and I I think just like in terms of how you weigh decisions and culturally things inside the company matters a lot. But but I I I think that that's one of the things that has been really fundamental. Platform to platform and do these different things because we've invested and cared about the underlying technology. The product experiences that we build on top of that.

25:50 are in implementation and they matter. And for that I think We also I think are a pretty curious and learning focused organization. Um Where

26:00 Yeah, I view the product strategy Less is any one specific thing. And more as How do we iterate and learn as quickly as possible? how to make each thing better for

26:15 for the people we're trying to serve. Right. So I like I define our strategies as if we can learn faster than every other company. We're gonna win. We're gonna build a better product than everyone else because we're gonna get it out first. We're going to

26:27 Uh have a good feedback loop. We're gonna get a bunch of feedback. We're gonna learn what people like better than other people. And then over time, by the time you get to you know whether it's version three or four or five, I mean they're not even discrete versions because we you ship so frequently. It's um You just uh You learn faster. So I'm good, that's basically the formula. Be a technology company.

26:48 Build good foundation. Like learn from what what people are are kind of focused on in the world and learn and just iterate as quickly as you can. In one of my research calls to prep for this, someone uh uh described you as a master strategist, which like I it's we c we all sort of acknowledge that at this point, but that the I mean except for like all the stuff that I just want to do. thought was not gonna be that important that ended up actually being the most important. It's

27:12 Mm. But that's the thing is part of it is like okay, you you want to set up the games so that way you optimize you create your luck. This is what Jensen told us, like the apple is gonna fall from the tree in some direction. And if you just set up The game. That

27:27 You have a hand close enough to catch it. The comment that someone made to me was The reason Mark is such a good strategist is because he 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.

27:45 And he makes sure that he learns more from each turn. than the next player does. Do you feel like that encapsulates like that? But it does kinda feel like the way that you make bets is like I uh well if we have great engineering, then that can kind of take care of the speed part. That's like m you know, many iterations or multiple uh at bats.

28:06 And then the the Well grid engineering and speed and duration are actually two different values. They're not necessarily at odds, but I think like There are a lot of great engineering organizations that try to build things that are super high quality and have good competence around that. But

28:23 I know there's there's a certain personality that goes with kind of taking your stuff. in putting it out there before it's fully polished. And look, I'm I'm not saying that our strategy or approach on this is the only one that works. I think in a lot of ways we're like

28:38 the opposite of Apple and clearly their stuff has worked really well too. Right, but I mean they take this approach, it's like we're gonna take a l like a long time, we're gonna polish it, we're gonna put it out. Um And Maybe for the stuff that they're doing that works, maybe that just fits with their culture. But for us

28:54 I I think that there are a lot of conversations that we have internally. Where You're almost at the line of being embarrassed about what you put out. Um Because you

29:07 Yeah. You know, obviously not not in the sense that it's like You know. You wanna You want to put stuff out early enough so you can get good feedback.

29:17 test things that are reasonable hypotheses. So if it's like so ineffective, then You're not. testing a good hypothesis, that doesn't work. But I I do think a lot of the conversations that we have

29:28 are are like, okay, well we can get this to be a lot better if we work on it for like another couple of months or whatever. I I I do just think that like you wanna really have a culture that values shipping. And getting things out and getting feedback. Um more than needing Always to get great

29:46 positive accolades from people when you put stuff out. Because I I think like if you want to wait until you get praised all the time. You're missing a bunch of the time when Yeah.

29:56 you could have learned a bunch of useful stuff and then incorporated that into the next version you were going to ship. And it's just about making sure that the what the thing that the company's known for or its brand can withstand. All the little damage that you do to it by shipping stuff that's not quite ready. damaging to the brand. Um but it but uh

30:17 innately i it is. Like when you're like, Oh, I feel bad'cause I s I shipped a product that wasn't good enough You're sort of Yeah, no, I I don't want to overstate it. I mean I we don't ship things that we think are bad, but we also don't take we want to make sure that we're shipping things that That are kind of early enough that we can get good feedback to see what they're gonna be most used for. Like I think a lot of the AI stuff that we're building now, for example. It actually You know, it's it's pretty clear that AI is going to be transformative for a lot of different things.

30:45 Yeah. is actually less clear what are gonna be the initial use cases for for a lot of these things that that are that are super valuable. So okay, part of it is like okay, you put something out. you wanna kind of collect feedback and on what people are actually What when it's um

31:00 You know where it's resonating. If if what you put out is bad, then you're not gonna collect good data because people aren't gonna use it for anything because it sucks. So but but I do think that You you have hypotheses for what people might really want to use it for. And they're not all going to be right and you want to kinda go early enough.

31:17 Yeah. So I'm building to this question of uh Uh to you Is

31:23 Product creation. An act of invention or discovery. Like is David always inside that marble and you just need the very best tooling and ability to get things in market and get feedback to discover the statue of David? Or do you conceive of David in your head and I'm like

31:42 I'm going to make this and put it in the world. Does it have to be one or the other? I mean I think it's a combination. I think you're basically taking some kind of values. Either kind of like values that you have or a value for something that you believe should exist in the world. And trying to build something that's aligned with that.

32:01 While trying to Match it up with what is is going to resonate the most with people. But I think if you If you just do the latter, then I think you just don't have enough conviction to see through hard things.

32:16 And if you just do the former, then you probably don't get to product market fit or optimize what you do because you're not focused enough on your customers. So Um I think I think both probably matter. Yeah.

32:31 Uh the I'm like as I pour through all these historical examples, there's uh like the market discovers some other participant in the markets discovers the stories format. And suddenly the whole world is like Oh my god. That is the way that we all that's the social interaction mechanism. And that's like a pretty pure Discovery. Where You have products that have stories, they perform very well.

32:54 Uh that's been discovered. But there's other times it feels like everything you're trying to do in reality labs all you know, fifty plus billion dollars that you've put into it is like We're gonna freaking will this thing into existence because I have an idea of the way that I want the world to be. I'm not really like Asking for that much feedback, I'm putting it in the world.

33:13 What's a combination? I I mean I I think that there's There's certainly a lot of things that we've invented or created for the first time. I mean, like in 2006 when we built the first version of Newsfeed, right, the like before that social networks are basically profiles. And then we're like, hey, like people actually kinda want to get the updates, and let's like show them that. And if we rank them, then we can, you know, there's so many updates that this can help people parse through that quickly. And today It's like hard to imagine any social product without a feed. So I think that that's obviously there's some of these things are sort of seminal. I don't want to call it an invention, but like patterns that we that we basically established first.

33:49 And then some of them are ones that other people did where we Take pride in learning from what is working in in the Yeah. Um you know I d you know, we're not embarrassed about learning from things that other people like discovered that we're good first and

34:06 And then we build the better version of it. And Um I mean

34:12 I think that that's You know, no one company is gonna invent everything. Right. I think if you don't invent anything, then it's hard to to kind of be a successful company. But um

34:23 But I I do think that there's a mix of this. There are more smart people outside of your company than inside your company. If you're not learning from what's going on in the market, then you're missing a lot of opportunities to. get valuable signal from from people in the community and customers about what they want you to be doing. Which Um meta.

34:44 Meta is a technology company. We'll get to that later. Ben and I have been uh having a conversation. I wanna take this uh to open source. Um and open source technology and its importance to you. And Ben posited First to me and then to many other people in our calls over the last couple of weeks.

35:04 That Meta has been the Largest Beneficiary.

35:11 of open source technology in the modern world. And I'm curious if you would agree with that. And If you would comment on Hm.

35:19 Your relationship to open source. 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 I we wouldn't have been able to get built without open source, I think. Probably that's true for any

35:35 new company that's been created since like I don't know, nineteen the late nineteen nineties or something. Um For us, open source has been important and valuable. Um

35:48 I mean you were the first big company built on the lamp stack. Yeah, yeah, no, and it's it's great. Makes it super easy to develop stuff quickly and iterate quickly. But We've also had an interesting relationship this with this because sequentially as a company we came after Google. So Google was the first

36:04 of the g uh great companies that built this distributed computing infrastructure. So they came first, so they were like, all right. Let's keep this proprietary,'cause it's a big advantage for us. And then we're like, all right, we need that too. But we built it, and then we're like okay. Not an advantage for us, because Google already has that.

36:20 So uh we might as well just make it open. And by making it open then you basically get this whole community of people building around it. So you know it wasn't going to help us compete with Google for any of the stuff that we were doing to to have that technology. But what we were able to do with things like open compute.

36:36 where um get it to become the industry standard. So now you have like all these other cloud service platforms that You know, basically use open compute and because of that the supply chain is standard around standardized around our designs, which means that it's like Way more supply, way cheaper to produce, we've saved billions of dollars, and the quality of the stuff that we get to use goes up. So

36:58 All right, that's like a win-win. I I think in order for this to work We do a lot of open source stuff, we do a lot of closed source stuff. I'm not like a zealot on this. Um I think open source is is very valuable, but I also think it sort of makes sense for us because of our position in the market. And the same for AI. I mean it's a long time. Okay. This is where we were going with this. You know similar deal.

37:22 Um we want to make sure That we have access to a leading AI model. I think just like we want to build the hardware so that we can build the best social experiences for the next twenty years. I don't think

37:36 That you know for for us it's like we've just been We went through too much stuff with the other platforms to to fully depend on Anyone else and we're big enough? company at this point that like we don't have to, right? We can build our own core technology platforms, whether that's gonna be AR glasses or mixed reality or AI. So I think that that's somewhat of an imperative for us to to go do that.

37:59 You know. These things are not like pieces of software that are monolithic, they're ecosystems. They get better when other people use them. So For us There's a huge amount of good.

38:10 And it philosophically lines up with where we are, where like I mean look w I I I I definitely you know, firsthand, have a lot of experiences. We are like trying to build stuff on mobile platforms, and the platforms are just like, nah, you can't build that. Okay. That's frustrating. Can we take a real quick detour? What's up? We can we can take a detour. Okay. You took a detour, we're going to take a detour. Help us with our research here.

38:32 Uh The eve of the IPO. Yeah, this is a quite a detour. Wait, quite a detail. Is this connected or did you just decide that it was your turn to talk?

38:45 Mm-hmm. I'm sorry. I was like really like wound up. I think it's related. I do. I really genuinely do. Facebook on mobile is HTML five. Uh-huh. In twenty eight. Yeah, twelve, maybe twelve.

39:04 Yeah. Yeah. I want to ask you what you were thinking going into the IPO with Facebook on mobile being HTML five. And what happened you IPO at a hundred billion dollar market cap over the next three months.

39:18 You have a fifty percent drawdown. Probably because of that. But I've I guess the related question to what we're talking about now is How much is that informing your approach here?

39:31 With. It was a pretty different different technical. Yeah, sure. So I mean our legacy was building on web for websites. And

39:40 We were very used to building one thing and being able to continuously deploy it and it fits with our iteration style and all that. So now all of a sudden this like app model comes along. It's like we have to build like Bone? And like you have to go through s approval to get it shipped, and we have to wait like weeks before it can ship? It's like this sucks.

40:00 So Well, we have an idea. Let's build this platform where we can get A web based platform. So you basically build a native shell and you build this web based platform in it.

40:11 And We'll be able to just update our apps. Every day and we'll ship one thing. once and we'll update our apps across Android and iPhone and BlackBerry and Windows Mobile and all the stuff that existed at the time because it it hadn't gotten consolidated yet.

40:25 And um Like that's gonna be that's w we're like basically whatever downside we are gonna have from not having the most native thing, we're gonna make up for in velocity, and by having like way more Of our energy focused on one platform. Well we were wrong.

40:41 It turned out that You know, having the native integration was actually critical for having the interactions feel good. And And that so we basically went through this period where we had to go rewrite our apps from scratch.

40:56 And That coincided with Mobile growing dramatically. And mobile, we didn't have any revenue. Um because

41:06 It may seem like it's pretty similar, but there's a very big difference on on desktop. You basically have the app. And you have a column on the side that we could put ads. And on mobile, we needed to figure out What does it mean to put ads into

41:19 the experience. Like let's be clear, the feed ad had not been invented yet. Yeah, and it's and like advertisers have like specific formats that they like working with, and the idea that we were just going to be like all right, now your ad is going to look like a feed story. Was a big challenge for advertisers. And the idea that now for people you are gonna have this organic feed that was the most important part of the product, and now we're just gonna start putting ads in it.

41:43 was a challenge for for for the people using the product. So We need to figure that out and we need to get the apps to be better. And

41:53 We basically took I think it must have been like a year or something, where just like look We're gonna pause feature development of the company. Because it's hard enough to do a rewrite. It's if you look at like the history of the tech industry. There are all these examples like Netscape and you know there's things that like they tried to do a rewrite, they needed to reestablish their technical platform, and they also tried to add features. They basically just like never terminated. So that's a real risk, right, when you're like completely changing your underlying platform that there's n you're you're gonna miss it.

42:22 Um I was like, all right, we've got to minimize the chance that that happens. So we're not gonna ship any new features. We're just going to rewrite it. Make it faster. Um But while we're doing this.

42:34 Like basically mobile's growing. So the percent of our traffic that is monetizable is shrinking, because web is basically shrinking and and mobile's your only business model. Yeah, and I was like all right, like it was actually pretty cleared to do Yeah, I think strategically a lot of the time it's um It's somewhat harder to know what to do when you're winning.

42:58 Like when stuff is going well, it's like what is the next move to like go from Winning to winning more. Um But when you're losing, it's usually pretty clear what you have to do. And and I think a lot of it is like Is is just do you have the pain tolerance to go do it. So

43:13 A lot of this was like all right, the team was like okay. Um Well we're going public and you know it's uh investors really aren't gonna like this if we are like not making money for a year and a half and it's like well

43:28 A year and a half is short in the grand scheme of things. Let's do this. We did it. And it was a painful year and a half, and then we came out of that and we were in great shape. So I I I think like people Inside the company it felt a lot better sooner because it was pretty clear to people that we were doing the right thing.

43:46 Um And they they knew that we were executing in a responsible way. um and basically focused and we're doing the right thing. But I think it's actually when I'm going to be able to do

43:56 You have something that's working well. And you're on one local hill and You need to jump to another hill. That's the stuff that's really culturally hard. Um But

44:06 This one I think was it was it was not fun. There have been a period uh a series of periods throughout the company that were not I don't know. Not the most fun periods, but um Although that one in retrospect is you know looks pretty good in retrospect. It's like not that bad. It's like your market cap only got cut in half for a year and a half. Yeah.

44:25 Great. Great. I'll take that. All right listeners. Now is a great time to thank our longtime friend of the show, ServiceNow.

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46:23 Can I follow that thread that you just said, hey, that that one wasn't so bad. Um There's been a lot of amazing things the company has done. There's also been like a lot of criticism if you were to be self-critical of your own company, of your own creation, of all the criticisms that have happened over the years, which do you believe is the most legitimate and why? I mean there's so many things that we've messed up.

46:46 Um that there are many criticisms that are legitimate. Um But if that was a year and a half mistake. Uh I think, you know, one of the things I reflect on over the last like ten years or so.

47:01 was you know the the political environment just changed dramatically. Right? It's like before twenty sixteen there was like not a month that went by except for maybe this IPO period, where the sentiment about the company was Mm. Anything but positive. And then after 2016, after the election, basically there was not a month for a while where the sentiment about the company was positive. And

47:21 We I I think so much of this stuff is Correctly understanding your place in the world and in history. And yeah, so I think you know we talked about before how it's like I I think we understood We are a technology company.

47:37 in that you have to be a technology company to build this kind of thing. I think we understood that we're not a social network company, we're a human connection company, and that will take different forms over time. Um the political environment I think I I didn't have much sophistication around and I think I just fundamentally misdiagnosed the problem. So I I I think that there was this basic Challenge.

48:00 And there are a lot of things. I don't want to simplify this too much. I mean there are there are a lot of things that we did wrong or some things that we did right. But I think one of the things that I I look back on and regret. is um I think we accepted Other people's view of

48:18 Some of the things that you know they were asserting that we were doing wrong or were responsible for that I don't actually think we were. And No, uh that's It's um There were a lot of things we did mess up and we needed to fix.

48:33 But I I think that there's this view Where And someone's

48:40 says that there's an issue. I think the right instinct is to like take ownership for it. Right, say like okay. Like maybe maybe it's not like Maybe it's not all our thing, but we're gonna ful this problem, we're gonna take responsibility for it, we're gonna fix it.

48:54 But when it's a political problem I actually think a lot of the time Sometimes th there are people who are operating in good faith who who are identifying a problem that want something to be fixed. and there are people who are just looking for someone to blame. And I I think to some degree if you

49:10 If if you take responsibility for things Because you think it's a corporate crisis, not a political crisis. Um and your view is like okay, I'm I like I'm gonna take responsibility for all this stuff. Like people are basically like like blaming social media and the tech industry for like all these different things in society and if we're saying okay we're gonna really like do our part to go fix his like this stuff.

49:32 I know there were a bunch of people who just took that and were like Oh, you're taking responsibility for that? Let me like kick you for more stuff. And And honestly, I think we should have been firmer about and and clearer about which of the things we actually Felt like we had a part in.

49:47 And which ones we didn't. And My guess is if the IPO was a year and a half mistake. I think that the political miscalculation was a twenty year mistake.

49:58 And I so it started in twenty sixteen. And I think that We have been working super hard to fix a lot of issues. And to figure out kind of what the right tone is for navigating what is a very kind of fraught

50:11 political dynamic across both the country and multiplied across all these places around the world. I think we've sort of found our footing. And like Like what what the principles are, like where we think we need to Improve stuff, but where

50:24 Um you know, where people make allegations about the impact of the tech industry or our company, which are just not founded in any fact. That I think we should push back on harder. And I think it's gonna take another ten years or so. For us to kind of fully

50:39 work through that cycle before our brand and all of that. is back to kind of the place that it maybe could have been if I hadn't messed that up in the first place. So But look, in the grand scheme of things, twenty years isn't that bad either.

50:52 And we'll get through it. Um and and I think we'll come out stronger. Um but I do think that is one of the kind of more interesting critiques that I think people get. I mean we get critiques on both sides on that. There are people who don't think we've taken enough responsibility. But um But I I think certainly there's one line of critique which is

51:11 You know, you you kind of bought into too much of the stuff that you shouldn't have. And um Yeah, I think it's gonna take us a long time to dig out about. Do do you have a reasonable framework at this point for like, okay, here's the stuff where I feel like we actually do want to take responsibility for it, and here's the stuff where like

51:28 No, that's not our fault. Yeah. I mean at this point I think a lot of this stuff has been studied. Mm. So I mean I don't want to go rehash all the different things, but um But I think at this point there's been like years of academic research on a lot of these things. And you know, part of the thing that's challenging is and one of the things that we've learned is we actually should

51:47 be trying to support more academics and doing more of this research ahead of time because like when you get to a point where you're being kind of accused of something, you're not super credible just standing up yourself and being like, I don't think we did this one. You know, it's like so I but what has worked over time is like you know you do the research in advance and and you get kind of third party academics, respected folks who get to debate all these different issues, and then it's like, oh no, actually like the evidence just does not show that social media is correlated with this kind of harm at all. Hm so I I I think that like Or it's you know so I I think that that's um

52:21 I think that that's it's it kinda cuts it cuts both ways. To me this brings up Another topic we wanted to talk about with you. And you just you know he said, uh twenty years isn't that long. I'm young. Uh we all are. This is the advantage of being a college dropout founder. No, no, no. When you start when you're nineteen, it's like

52:41 Hopefully we have more than twenty years long. And hopefully you have like buffet duration. Yeah. You set up the company. In a Especially at the time truly unique way. Uh Where you can operate the company.

52:55 And Take that, you know, take that approach. Do you mean super voting shares? Supervoting shares is like the technical aspect. We're not going to get into in this conversation, but effectively. you can take that perspective in a way that if you are a

53:13 CEO, non-founder, you know, without a structure that you've set up. You just can't. And I think you know, in doing all the research for this A thesis we've developed is that like that is just one of the core fundamental advantages that Meta has. Um so as you were setting up the company, you know, when you were so young, even when you went public, you were so young. Like why was that so important to you?

53:37 Well In two thousand six, Yahoo wanted to buy the company for a billion dollars, and everyone on our management team wanted to sell it. And the board tried to fire me. And everyone and basically in the next year, everyone else on the management team left because they I hadn't done a good job communicating. I mean I don't want to blame them. I I like I hadn't done a good job communicating the long term vision because I didn't I wasn't thinking about that at the time. I like wasn't thinking in terms of this as a company. I was like, this is a great project, it's awesome. Like a lot of people Like what we're doing, I think this will probably continue for a while. I think it's gonna be pretty important in the world.

54:10 Um but I didn't I didn't like know how to think in terms of You know, like long term financial plans or Um Like make a case to them why it would be worth more than a million. Yeah, yeah. Or or just like look, we're doing this for the long term, we're not planning on selling the company. So it's like w without having made that case, it was understandable. But basically

54:28 Yahoo comes around. A lot of people, it's like this is like all their startup dreams come true. You gotta take this offer. Um because I I like I just wasn't in a place where I had the sophistication to basically Articulate a lot of the stuff around Where we were Going longer term.

54:45 It probably wasn't super confidence inspiring to them when I was like, Hey, I think we should turn this down because We're gonna do this so Um So after that It's like all right, well, I don't want to get fired.

54:58 Mm. for 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. Um So

55:10 Learning through suffering. Well, Wow. very cash generative very early, such that you had a very real going concern on your hands and you just didn't didn't need to cut off your arm and sell it to someone in order to

55:27 Yeah. Build your business. Yeah. I think this is a fundamentally misunderstood thing about the Uh Facebook the startup.

55:36 It is The prototypical. You are the iconic startup founder. of this century. And there's a lot of people that want to start a startup for a lot of the glamorous reasons of starting a startup.

55:49 You hated being a startup and wanted to stop being a startup as fast as possible and be a like going concern. Yeah, I mean I think we're having a lot more fun now.

56:03 But w what is your advice to all these founders who sort of romanticize the idea of of starting a company and kind of losing all this money? Obviously starting a company is not bad. Right, I mean I I think that there's different schools of thought on how to do it. I think some people think, okay, I wanna go start a company, so I'm gonna like go. And I just think that that's a little bit dangerous. Because there's this

56:26 Issue which is you have to be able to be nimble and pivot around until you can like figure out what works. I mean, part of the reason why I didn't think Facebook was the gonna be the company early on was because when I was in school, I built like twelve different things. Right, that I were just things that I wanted to exist. And it was like all right, this is fun, okay, let's build another thing. It's like okay, this one's fun, people are still using that, I'll like help upkeep this one. But I had like a bunch of other ideas for stuff I was gonna build too. So I just like I didn't I didn't like know how to think about what a company was gonna be. Um I think there's something about maintaining flexibility.

57:00 That's that's helpful. Um you know once you hire a bunch of people Yeah, it's a lot easier when you can just have meetings in your own head about what direction you want to go in. Um and it's like and there's a lot less pride and like people dug in when you're just like, okay, I'm gonna change direction. It's like you know people haven't like invested their ego in like, no, we were going in this direction, and like now I must be convinced. It's like nah just So

57:23 I I I do think that that's a thing where you wanna like keep things lean and and and be able to do that. And that's one of reasons why we tried to get the company back to Being you know where uh the leanest version of a large company is that we can we can be. Um

57:36 But I do know there's something to that. Where it's like It's obviously it's not it's not super fun. not having the resources to do what you want to do. But I think it also is problematic.

57:48 To have more people working on something then you should have for the stage that it's at. Because then the people who are working on it don't have the agency to actually like make the changes and do the things that they need to. Which is less fun.

58:01 And then you can attract the best people to go work on those things because it's less fun. And so I do think you've got to you just have to dial it right. You're spending a gajillion dollars on reality labs. It's not making that much money. So I'm gonna I'm gonna play Mark back to you of It's not appropriate to have all these people and resources working on things for more than the stage warrants. I'm being a little facetious here, but I'm curious how you f why you categorize it differently.

58:28 I mean Well I think some of the stuff. By the time you're at the scale that we're at. is also just about like what do you want to do over the next ten to twenty years. And what do you think are gonna be important? And you know, we were talking about like making your own luck and all that, and how you know it's like I think there were some broad strokes.

58:45 That we can have a sense of where things are going. and kind of like holographic presence and AR is going to be a completely ubiquitous product. phone before replaced it with a smartphone and then a lot of more people got smartphones. If all we get is all the people in the world who worry of glasses upgrading to glasses that have AI in them,

59:05 Then like This is already going to be one of the most successful products in the history of the world. Um and I think it's gonna go a lot further than that. So I know there's that.

59:15 There is the thing about controlling our own destiny. Um It's strategically valuable. You know, we did this calculation or estimate at some point where it's like How much money do we lose from our core family of apps? to the various like

59:28 taxes that the platforms have to like When they Tell us we can't run the ad business the way that we think we should be able to, when they tell us we can't ship certain products, so that way people use the things less or like them less. And um I I it's hard to exactly estimate it, but

59:45 I think we might be like twice as profitable if we own the platform or something. So I think from that perspective that's worth a lot. Just from like a pure like dollars perspective, which It's not primarily how I come at this stuff, but even like now I've learned a thing or since the Yachter days. So now I at least am able to like. Like um

1:00:03 I might not be able to convince the all the investors that we should be investing to the extent that we are in reality labs if I didn't control the company, but at least I can sort of articulate a case. For why I am confident that it's going to be good over time. But For me it's always been way more about The product experience.

1:00:20 And What you can enable and build. And You know w one of the shifts and th this is sort of like a values shift. Um over time is you know one of the things that

1:00:32 Um Yeah, one some of the early Oculus guys used to say to me That there's a difference between building good things And awesome things. And

1:00:44 And like good is Good. It's things that people use on a day to day basis because it adds something to their lives. But awesome is different. Awesome is

1:00:57 Uplifting. and inspiring And Just be way more optimistic about the future.

1:01:07 And is is just like this uplifting thing about humanity. And So I I I think a lot of what we've done with social media so far is is very good. Where we've got we've built these products. More than three billion people use them. On a you know.

1:01:23 It's like three point three billion on a daily basis. And they use it because it is useful in their life. Right. In in all these different ways. I mean uh obviously people vary, people use it for different things, but It's useful.

1:01:41 And it helps people and it it helps people stay connected, helps people build businesses, it helps people form communities. It's good. There aren't that many people on a day to day basis who get out of bed and are like Fuck yeah. Social media. So

1:01:59 I I kinda think for the next For my next stage, right? For the next stage of the company, the next like fifteen years. I want us to build more things. That are awesome. In addition to things that are good.

1:02:12 I think that they both matter. Um But kind of the next stage of what I want our company to stand for and be.

1:02:23 And So I think A lot of the reality lab stuff that we're doing is gonna be in that bucket. Um a lot of the AI stuff that we're doing, I think is gonna be in that bucket. There are a bunch of things in the apps that are gonna be in that bucket too.

1:02:37 Um new apps too. But um But I don't know, I think that there's there's just something that's like fundamentally pretty good about that. And that's m maybe it's also just like where I am in my life, right? I'm I'm like to think I'm young, I'm a little older, right? But it's but it's like I I do think that at this point No, it's not just a meta thing.

1:02:59 Also, you know, in my Like personal life. personally value is doing Things that are inspiring with people who I find inspire. Right.

1:03:09 Yeah, so there's the personal version of this. It's like I get to work on You know, interesting science problems with like Priscilla and my wife and like And a bunch of awesome people. Design shirts with like some of the best fashion designers in the world, right? It's like I

1:03:27 Yeah. Sculpture of my wife. Bring back the Roman tradition of Designing sculptures of people you love. Um I'm not at all being facetious, like No, I but I mean I think Daniel Arsham is like a really talented guy and I was like

1:03:43 That's a person who I'd love to work with on something. Let's go find a project. You know, building Now I have one of my side projects is you know, we have this cattle ranch in Kawaii. And I'm trying to

1:03:55 See if we can raise the highest quality beef in the world. And There's like all this stuff. It's like starts with like It's It's awesome. We got We got the steer.

1:04:05 Shank? He's like he's He's just the man. He's the man. We're having a hard time Keeping him on the ranch because We Every time we

1:04:16 put him in a steel enclosure and he sees a female cow, he busts through the steel enclosure. But I feel like that's the kind of bull that you want to make the highest quality beef in the world. And we're just working with you know We're trying to do really high quality, awesome things with awesome people. That's like if if that's what I get to do for the next Fifteen or twenty years.

1:04:40 Then like It's gonna be a good fifteen or twenty minutes. Like What changed? Like when did this become your priority and why? I can't it feels so radical that it f how could it have possibly been gradual? Or was this just like mark all the time?

1:04:56 And we just couldn't see the real mark. I know. I I think that there might have been something around the way the company shifted in operations around Covid. I mean it's like the Yeah, COVID like.

1:05:09 All these tech companies when remote temporarily and It was an interesting period to just like get some more time, like a step back. I'm a pretty introverted person, and I do think It's

1:05:21 Yeah. I I need to be careful where like I get a lot of value and energy and ideas from being around other people, but I also need time with myself. And With Covid I I kinda got that and I it was a time of reflection.

1:05:36 Um where I I was able to think about this stuff. And we were also going through this very difficult political time in the country. and and our company was at the center of a lot of those things. So I think that that that was a cause of a bunch of reflection. And then I think that a bunch of the things that we'd spun up earlier, but it's smaller skin. Right, so

1:05:55 The reality lab stuff that we started In twenty fourteen, really. Um The fair stuff. around you know fundamental AI research.

1:06:05 Um the Yeah. Twenty twelve, thirteen. September and then. These things they they kinda got started. And they were growing

1:06:16 And it was it kind of reached this moment which is like I'm gonna double down on this and do this. Or are we gonna kinda like it? Do this as a hobby. And I was like, No, I think we should do this.

1:06:26 I mean this is I think that this like This is gonna be a really important part of what we do. And we had to make a really important set of decisions, what we knew was gonna be really painful. You know, to go double down on those things and build out the AI infrastructure that we needed to and scale up some of the reality lab stuff and I knew that a lot of the investors would hate it.

1:06:47 At least in the short term before it's Clearly the right thing to do. Um The What I didn't know.

1:06:56 Was that At the time I thought they were gonna not like it. But I thought it was gonna be okay because I didn't think there was also gonna be a recession at the same time. Um So that like really it's like I mean look like

1:07:07 Like you learn who you are through challenges. It's like we we had like a really you know it's like okay, like Losing half of your market cap is is quaint compared to losing Eighty percent of your market cap or whatever it was.

1:07:21 You know, so Um But so I mean these are all intentional decisions, right? It's like I mean there are a lot of conversations that we had which are like should we go forward with this? And the answer that I came out with is yes. I th this is what I believe in. I think this is gonna be important for the world.

1:07:40 I think it's gonna work over time. We're no stranger to going through painful periods. In some ways it makes the company better. Let's do it. Oh.

1:07:51 Well. Mm. We're starting. We're starting to enter uh looking at the clock like

1:08:03 Conclusion Lightning Round Territory. It makes sense to me that you would rebrand the company something that is not Facebook, given how broad the family of apps was, that you've got Let's imagine you were going to rebrand it today. You've got AI going on, you've got AR going on, you've got VR going on. Um Would you pick the name Meta?

1:08:27 if you were going to rename the company today. Mm-hmm. Okay. That's a good name. You know, finding good short names

1:08:37 I mean this actually was a thing that we talked about for a while, because it was pretty clear that Yeah, Facebook is continuing to grow in importance in the world, which I think a lot of people don't appreciate and it's kind of mind boggling at the scale that it's at. But the the others, I mean one. You know, we went through a period where it's like we had Facebook and a handful of small apps. And now we have like Yeah.

1:08:55 More apps that have a billion people or more using them. You know, hopefully in the next few years five with threads if that continues scaling. And um This was a conversation that we had a bunch.

1:09:08 Where it's like does it make sense for the name of the company? to be one of the apps as the other apps as as it's really becoming a family of apps. And It was important to me This was also coinciding with a lot of

1:09:26 A lot of the challenges that we were having, right? The political brand challenges, different things, and a lot of people were proposing that. From the perspective of running away. From the Facebook brand, right? They were like, oh, well, like, does the Facebook brand have issues? Do we need a new brand? And I was like, we don't run away from that. Where it's like it might make sense one day. to not have Facebook be the lead brand for the company because we do so many different things.

1:09:51 But I'm only gonna do this. when we come up with a brand that is going to be evocative of the future that we're trying to build, because we run towards something. We don't run away from things. And when we got to Meta then I was like, all right, we're here. And it was around the time when

1:10:08 We were doubling down on the investment and where there's all the controversy. And it's like look, like if we're doing this. We're gonna lean into this and we're gonna do it. So let's do it. And if I were to make the case to you

1:10:19 I feel the core competency of meta Is You are able to discover products in the world. You have great ideas, you work on them, you discover interesting products.

1:10:32 And you mark are not someone who wants to define yourself by anything. your hands on a bunch of great controls and maximize your degrees of freedom, see where the world's going, and then have the best freaking spaceship possible to go maneuver your way over there. It seems like I would pick a brand that almost doesn't pigeonhole me into a specific future. I I might be looking for something that's more like

1:10:56 Look, I I wanna maximize my uh maneuverability. Yeah. I get it. Um But

1:11:08 I don't know. We align around a vision and a mission of what we're trying to do and we run towards it. That's always been how we've operated. Yeah. And in many ways doing what I just suggested would kind of be running. It's like well we don't believe in it that much. And you're like, no, we don't know. Yeah, no. I I mean we're we're a company that like puts a flag down around what we're doing and we're gonna go do it. It's like

1:11:29 Mark shaped hole in the wall. Mm. Mm.

1:11:37 Speaking of lightning rounds and mark shape holes. Um You are accelerating what used to be your annual challenges. when we were all kids. Uh and we didn't know each other. I mean I was so inspired.

1:11:52 You would do your annual challenges. You would post about them. Yeah. Wow, that's like pretty damn cool. And then we all get a little older and We all have kids on the stage now.

1:12:03 And We all have companies on the stage now. And there's some large, some small. The demands on your time. For me especially I think lots of people that's like

1:12:14 that space gets sucked. And you have expanded it. How? What do you mean? Well you used to do annual challenges, and I feel like you're now doing weekly challenges. You're designing T shirts, you're making sculptures, you're raising cattle. I just like I'm trying to

1:12:31 Trying to do inspiring things. I mean it's uh yeah, I don't know. Um I'm also really competitive.

1:12:41 Ha ha ha. Who's your competition? What do you mean? Oh I was just thinking about pr uh about about other things that I'm doing. I'm like what if I what if I start doing I like Got into all these like

1:12:52 more extreme sports and fighting and stuff and like I don't know, I mean there's um there's w we face a lot of competition and a lot of different aspects of what we do. Um So I mean there's the social media competitors, there's the platform competitors. I think Apple is a bigger competitor than people realize. They kinda think. Hey, they're doing a different type of thing, but

1:13:13 I don't know, I think over the next ten Fifteen 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 gonna be

1:13:25 the closed integrated Apple uh model that Apple has always done which Again, I mean like There's multiple There are multiple good ways to build things. Right. So

1:13:37 I I think if you look at the different generations of computing. Um PCs, mobile, they've all had sort of a closed integrated version. And an open version. And

1:13:50 The thing that I think there's just a ton of recency bias around. is because iPhone basically won. You know I I I know that there are more Android phones out there, but I mean but iPhone is sort of like the intellectual leader and by far like has all the time. Let's take it as a conceived. Um I think there's the recency bias and probably like almost everyone here has an iPhone.

1:14:11 And I think that because of the recency bias. There's sort of this view that's like, oh no, this is just the superior way to do things. But I I I don't actually think that's a given. Windows with the open ecosystem was the leader. And

1:14:26 Part of my goal for the next ten fifteen years the next generation of platforms is to build the next generation of open platforms and have the open platforms win. And I think that that's going to lead to a much more vibrant tech industry. Now there are advantages of Of doing

1:14:44 A close and integrated model. I think Apple will have a place for sure. I expect them to be our primary competitor. And I think it will not be Just a product competition. in some ways very deeply values driven and ideological competition around what the future of the tech industry should be and how open

1:15:04 These platforms, whether it's things like Lama and AI or um the glasses or different things, should be for developers, like an individual, someone getting started in their dorm room like me, to not have to ask for permission. to go build the next set of awesome things. I've got a closing question here. Please. Thank you.

1:15:27 So So we have a lot of builders in the audience tonight, a lot of founders. uh were in probably the most interesting technology environments and the early mobile days in terms of opportunity.

1:15:42 It's been twenty years, you may have to go back a little bit, but what advice do you have for founders today on something that's different? Then trying to pattern match. Mark Zuckerberg from two thousand and four, given we live in a different world today. Yeah, I don't know. I mean just w do something that you care about and I mean if if you're trying to run our strategy, try to learn as quickly as you can. But but I mean if there's like I think well part of what I'm trying to say is

1:16:11 I think there are different ways to build stuff. Right. It's like our way worked for me. And our team you know it's Uh different things have clearly worked for other companies. I don't know.

1:16:25 Went to we went took her to a Taylor Swift concert and She she was like, you know, Dad I Kinda wanna be like Taylor Swift when I grew up. Hell yeah.

1:16:40 I was like but And she and she thought about it and she's like, Alright. When I grow up I want people to want to be like August Chan Zuckerberg.

1:16:50 And I was like Hell yeah. Hell yeah. So I I think that that's um

1:17:00 Yeah, I don't know. I I think it's like look, learning from other people's Successes and failures, but do your own thing. Love that. Well, Mm.

1:17:13 That is the perfect place to leave things. Um Yeah. Mm-hmm. You already have a very amazing well designed shirt.

1:17:24 Uh I hope you have room in your life for more than one. I used to only wear one type of shirt. Now I've got to be a Moved on.

1:17:35 So David and I made you a custom one of one. Sure. that represents tonight. Thank you. It is size Zuck.

1:17:47 So no one else can't. You know. There's they can never be made again. And we've got these coordinates on the back. The first one GPS coordinates.

1:17:57 The first one represents Kirkland House. where you wrote the first line of code for Facebook and the second one is the Chase Center. Awesome. So thank you for joining us here tonight. Wow. What a nice.

1:18:11 Absolutely crazy. I mean Mark has done many interviews this year, both with other podcasts and in in traditional press. But that felt different, if for no other reason than it happened live in front of a six thousand person audience in an arena, but I wasn't expecting it to feel that different. Yeah, I mean it was I I think the wildest experience of my life being up there. I I don't even know what else could compare.

1:18:35 Pretty insane. All right listeners. Now is a great time to talk about one of our Favorite companies, Statsig. Yes, there is a reason why the best product teams rely on StatSig, whether they are iterating on their core product features or shipping AI powered experiences at scale.

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1:19:46 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 I kept thinking, Yeah, he kinda does,'cause he's done all these podcasts this year and he does Facebook Meta Connect, like he's done big events before, of course. Right, and he does a good number of in person press interviews too. It's not like he doesn't talk to the traditional press. Even though that has kind of become a narrative, it's not really true. However.

1:20:10 Mark has not done an external Several thousand person live thing like this. This is a very unusual format and kind of an uncomfortable one, even for you and I. Like we're so used to stopping, starting, being thoughtful in our answers and like this is a show. You're performing. There are no breaks. There's no retakes. Yeah. Right.

1:20:30 But Mark and like all the meta execs really embraced it. A bunch of the executive team came. Like they took off this whole day and actually some stuff we did the night before too. Bunch of the board members were there. A lot of people important to Mark were there. His family came. They made it an event. Right. I thought this was a big deal for us. I was kind of shocked to the degree that Mark

1:20:50 also thought it was a big deal for him. Which is super cool. Totally agree. That's one. I was also surprised and delighted that he was willing to dive into history with us. Yes, we totally did not expect that. He's so like

1:21:04 usually so maniacally focused on the future. And in our conversations To prep with him. Before the event. He was like I think of you guys as a history podcast, you know?

1:21:14 Let's talk about the future. I'm like okay, okay, but We want to ground it in history. And he showed up and was totally ready to go back. And I think that made the talking about the present and the future. Even better. Totally, because you could create these through lines. I mean, as funny as your interjection on let's go back to the IPO moment was.

1:21:29 It opened up the door to have like these comparative moments to is what Meta doing today is that similar to something that you've done over and over. Should we be watching for a pattern here, or are you very different today than you were historically? The way that he was talking about that stuff on stage felt very authentic and uh I just haven't heard him speak in that way before, at least publicly.

1:21:54 I think it was also a great way to let us all get a window into his psyche Which kinda brings us to Another point which is like He is still in it. Oh what other

1:22:07 founders of companies like that. I mean there's Jensen. Who else? You know, it's the two of them. Yeah, I think the casual observer. to Meadow might observe like You know, Mark's been running it for twenty years, and most of the time these founders kind of like go and do something else. They become executive chairman, or they like stepped into a board role, or they own four percent of the companies. There's some

1:22:28 Pattern there. And for Mark. I think it was plain as day on stage. Uh he is more in it than ever. And I don't think he thinks he's like halfway through his journey like

1:22:38 I don't think He's twenty years in. Oh at forty I'll be done. I don't get that sense either. I think Meta is his Vehicle by which he wants to live his entire life.

1:22:49 And he wants to make things with this group of people. that he wants to make, period. And that is kind of the product strategy. I got chills. When he said the twenty year mistake. And then I got

1:23:02 Even more chills when he said. But twenty years actually isn't that long. Yeah, that's a pretty illustrative comment. Totally. I was appreciative that he engaged with us on the be critical of the company,'cause honestly, I was asking that as research for when we inevitably

1:23:18 do our meta episode. I think he gave us a regret, not a criticism, but we were alive on stage in front of six thousand people. And it's it's not really the right format for that. Yep. Totally. That said, obviously a very interesting answer. I think related though back to the he's still in it. In some sense. reality labs you could look at like his blue origin.

1:23:40 A hundred percent. It's just Within meta. I'm glad you caught this too. Other Big tech.

1:23:47 CEO founders. have their moment running the company, they take a board roll. They go do another thing. And oftentimes it's big and important for the world and capital intensive. And Mark is doing that, but inside Meta with reality labs. I think it'll be super fascinating twenty to fifty years from now to reflect back and say what were the

1:24:07 unintended or perhaps outcomes of co mingling. multiple huge swings under one corporate umbrella versus having people who are either CEO of multiple companies concurrently or you know step down from one to run the other. For Mark. I kinda feel like

1:24:22 Again. Meta is his vehicle for executing the things that he thinks are awesome products. And of course, it's not just awesome products, but like things that could let him have more control. over his universe. He's clearly a guy who who values uh having a lot of degrees of freedom and and doesn't like being boxed in.

1:24:42 I loved your uh turn based strategy game of get more turns, learn more on each turn, like Oh man. Starcraft uh Pro Player one oh one there. Yes. But it'll be interesting to see the the knock on effects of having reality labs. in the meta organization versus as a new venture.

1:24:59 Totally. All of that. brings me to, you know, frankly, just my biggest overwhelming takeaway from the whole experience. Which is Ben, you've developed

1:25:08 A really Great. research interview question that you use on all the sources that we talk to now, which is You ask. What is

1:25:17 The one thing that is most misunderstood. About This company, this organization, et cetera. And Everybody at Meta for years.

1:25:26 Always would say Mark. And I never totally got it. Until this evening. He's both a singular individual himself, but it's not just that. It's that

1:25:38 A true superpower of the company is that it is architected from top to bottom. legally financially organizationally

1:25:48 Culturally. Culturally. Two Reflect and amplify. His immense Strength.

1:25:56 Which I think is probably true of like Apple, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates Microsoft, and Vydia Jensen. Yes. But we are right up close to the ways in which meta is a sort of uh an amplifier, almost like it's a way for you to

1:26:13 Take the gain on Mark's output. And turn it up, you know. Ten thousand X. Yes. And I think what was so striking about it to me, versus you're absolutely right, all those other companies. It is generally accepted in the public narrative about

1:26:26 Apple under Steve Jobs. about NVIDIA under Denson that that is the case. I don't think it is about Meta and Mark. I don't think people understand that I didn't understand that until this experience. Are you saying Meta is still very much a Mark Zuckerberg production? I'll see myself out. Well, but there we go.

1:26:45 Uh well, listeners, thank you so much for joining us on this journey. Come talk about it with us in the Slack. acquired dot fm slash slack. Would love to hear all of your thoughts as well. join our email list acquire.fm slash email that will let you basically know every single time a new episode drops or when we are doing something like Chase Center again to be the first to know about that. God, if we ever do something like that again.

1:27:10 We've got a merch store, check it out on acquire.fm. We've got ACQ2, our second show where we are always interviewing. earlier stage companies than Meta, but where we think there are great insightful conversations with founders and CEOs. And David, I know you've got some thank yous. One last thing, final thank yous. Thank you to Mark.

1:27:29 Thank you to basically the entire meta executive team who helped with the evening. Thank you to Hermes for dressing us, which was my favorite Easter egg of the night. Yes, so fun. Thank you to Jamie Diamond, JP Morgan Chase, and JP Morgan Payments for making it all possible. It was truly a dream come true, and that is because of our incredible partnership. Indeed it was. Well. Listeners.

1:27:52 We'll see you next time. Yes, in a couple of weeks with the full show, we are pumped to drop it. We'll see you next time. Who got the truth? Is it you, is it you, is it you Who got the truth now

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