Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg Commencement Address | Harvard Commencement 2017

Key ideas

Zuckerberg tells Harvard graduates that finding your own purpose is not enough; you must create it for others through big projects, freedom to fail and local community.

From a machine transcript of the audio. Quotes link to the moment they are said.

1. 1

   Start before the idea is clear

   Zuckerberg calls the single eureka moment a harmful myth, because it makes people with early ideas feel inadequate and keeps them from starting. He says nobody knows how to run something large when they begin, and that he would never have built Facebook if he had needed to understand connecting people first. He recalls assuming a big technology company would connect the world, and tells graduates a change that seems obvious may in fact fall to them.

2. 2

   Expect to be misunderstood

   Zuckerberg warns that anyone with a large vision will be called crazy, even if proven right, and blamed for not fully understanding a complex problem. He adds that anyone taking initiative will be criticized for moving too fast. He argues that fear of mistakes leads people to overlook what is already wrong if nothing is done.

3. 3

   Explain the purpose to your team

   Zuckerberg says he wanted impact rather than a company, and assumed the people who joined wanted the same, so he never explained what he hoped to build. When large companies offered to buy Facebook, nearly everyone else wanted to sell, and he says within a year or so his whole management team had left. He calls it his hardest time leading the company, says he felt alone and doubted himself, and takes the blame.

4. 4

   Failure needs a cushion and many tries

   Zuckerberg says entrepreneurial culture depends on being able to try many ideas, and notes that Facebook followed his chat systems, games, study tools and music players. He says he has not met an entrepreneur who gave up for fear of too little money, but knows many who could not risk failing without a fallback. He credits luck in his own case, proposes exploring ideas like universal basic income, and says people like him should pay for it.

5. 5

   Global change starts in local communities

   Zuckerberg says purpose does not only come from work, and that people open up to the wider world once they feel stable at home. He points to declining membership in many kinds of communities as a loss of purpose that needs rebuilding. He likens this to his own story of connecting one community at a time, and says that giving an hour or two a week can help someone else reach their potential.

In Mark’s words

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