Mark Zuckerberg at Startup School 2013
Key ideas
In conversation at Startup School, Zuckerberg says caring more than better-resourced rivals, learning quickly from mistakes and picking the one thing that matters carried early Facebook through.
From a machine transcript of the audio. Quotes link to the moment they are said.
- 1
Build what you want for yourself
Zuckerberg says his first code was games and tools he wanted himself, and that a small site for seeing what classes other students were taking drew far more attention than he expected. He says people spent a lot of time clicking through each other's course lists, which fed his theory that people were missing from the internet. He treats these side projects as building blocks for what came later.
- 2
Care more than better-resourced rivals
Zuckerberg says he assumed a large company would build a network for the whole world, since they had more engineers, servers and money. Looking back, he concludes that those companies treated it as a hobby and doubted it could be a business, while his team felt it was the important thing to do. He tells founders to expect someone with more resources in whatever they start.
- 3
Learn fast from inevitable mistakes
Zuckerberg says every year of Facebook's existence held something that could have killed it, and that he thinks determination is probably the biggest piece of what suited him to the work. He says he knew nothing about business at 19. His example is not having heard of vesting when splitting equity with a founder who never moved to California, a mistake he says probably cost him billions of dollars.
- 4
Pick the one thing that matters
Zuckerberg credits Peter Thiel with the view that only one or two of the many available options matter as a company grows, which helped him weigh competing advice from reasonable people. For early Facebook he names that one thing as connecting everyone as quickly as possible. He describes 'lockdown' periods against competitors, and while he grants it is possible to over-rotate on them, he warns that clones can be hard to dislodge, citing Russia.
- 5
Hire people you would work for
Zuckerberg says he learned management by trial and error and settled on simple heuristics. His test for a really good hire is whether you would work for that person, and he defines a good team as one that decides better together than its members would individually. He also describes desensitizing himself to a fear of public speaking by accepting talks without preparing.
In Mark’s words
“The reason why I think we actually ended up being the ones doing it is because we just cared way more about it than everyone else.”
Mark Zuckerberg·Mark Zuckerberg at Startup School 2013·Watch at 15:13(opens the original in a new tab)“Don't even bother trying to avoid mistakes, because you're gonna make tons of mistakes, right? And the important thing is actually learning quickly from whatever mistakes you make and not giving up.”
Mark Zuckerberg·Mark Zuckerberg at Startup School 2013·Watch at 17:44(opens the original in a new tab)“Every day you're going to be faced with a hundred things that you could potentially go do and your job is to pick the one thing that actually matters.”
Mark Zuckerberg·Mark Zuckerberg at Startup School 2013·Watch at 29:35(opens the original in a new tab)About this entry
- Published
- Oct 26, 2013
- Channel
- Y Combinator
- Type
- Video
- Length
- 36:22
- Language
- English
- Added
- Nov 2, 2026
- Source last checked
- Nov 2, 2026
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Draft. Written by us with AI from a machine transcript of the video’s audio (Whisper) and checked against it. Machine transcripts can mishear; each quote links to the moment so you can hear it. Not yet rights-reviewed.
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