
Zuckerberg: If I Were Starting A Company Now, I Would Have Stayed In Boston - llambda
http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/30/facebooks-zuckerberg-if-i-were-starting-a-company-now-i-would-have-stayed-in-boston/
======
nhangen
I saw the talk, and felt his point was hypocritical. He said that FB couldn't
have made it outside of the valley, but that knowing what he knows now, it
probably could were he starting it today.

In other words, he needed the valley when he was young and inexperienced, but
it's not necessary if you have the experience and connections already.

[Edit: The reason I'm saying it's hypocritical is because his point was
initially obfuscated, and if you took that statement at face value, you
wouldn't get the whole point.]

~~~
grandalf
I don't think his point was hypocritical, just a bit illogical. He realized
he'd contradicted himself right at the same time he and Jessica both realized
he'd said something mildly insulting about the valley, which was a bit
awkward. Jessica tried to make a joke (by saying that the press would have a
field day with the comment) and Zuck bore down and restated his comment, in
the process inadvertently de-emphasizing the original comment's counter-
factual nature.

His point was that the valley was critical to FB's success, but that if he
were starting a new company _today_ he'd do it in Boston b/c he no longer
needs what the valley has to offer and his perception is that in Boston long
term value is preferred over short term exits.

I think Zuck's answer started out as a clever non-answer intended to
communicate his appreciation of building long term value... probably 100% on
message for Facebook's current growth strategy... but went slightly awry.

~~~
redcircle
I don't agree with his point that employees stick it out for long-term success
in other places, while they don't in the Valley. Just because people stay with
a company for a longer time doesn't mean that they subscribe to a different
culture. I've worked in lots of places, and I got the impression that many
people hold onto their jobs due to insufficient opportunities in the local
area. If they had those opportunities, and a feeling of better security, I bet
that they would move around more.

In a way, it sounds like he wants to have employees hang around longer without
the company having to invest in a culture that makes them want to stay. The
best way to keep employees onboard is a culture in the company that attracts
the employees to want to stay. So many startups have compelling cultures at
first, then bring in professional management, or excessive growth, and then
the original employees seek their desired culture elsewhere. I sure don't want
to hang around at a company that brings in traditional management techniques.
I care about who I work with, and the conditions --- these days I think I
prioritize those criteria over what I work on (and renumeration is a pretty
low priority), because I can make lots of things that I work on interesting,
but I can't change the management's attitudes (well, I'm trying to write a
book to do so, but I wouldn't want to as a leaf node).

------
staunch
It's probably the most damning and valid critique of The Valley.

How many Twitters/Facebooks/Dropboxes/Airbnbs don't exist because the founders
sold them for $15M in 18 months?

Sometimes it's because the founders aren't really passionate enough about what
they're working on.

Other times it's just financially insane to say no. A great example is
Mint.com. How do you tell Aaron Patzer not to sell, when he's going to make
$40M personally? That's more than he might have made in an IPO after many
years.

~~~
pg
It didn't seem to me that he was complaining about founders selling companies
quickly so much as employees flitting from one to the other so fast.

In my experience, founders in the Valley are more likely to have the
confidence to turn down acquisition offers than founders outside it. All the
examples you list are Valley startups.

~~~
ghshephard
He's absolutely correct about employees flitting from one to another quickly -
that is a valley culture thing. Part of that is because there are so many
opportunities in the valley - There are probably a hundred plus companies that
I could reasonably expect to find gainful employment as an network
infrastructure manager in the valley. It's also considered completely
reasonable behavior to work at a company for 3-5 years, and then move onto the
next one. It's not so much about employees being short sighted, it's about
enhancing your experience base, contacts, and chances to find at least one
company that does well in the stock market and bring some value to your
options.

It's a catch-22 for technology companies - on the one hand, they have to work
pretty hard (or offer a lot of money) to hold onto their employees past that
five year mark. On the flip side, the reason they have to work so hard to do
so, is because there are so many employees ready to change companies -
including coming to work for theirs.

~~~
GFischer
"It's also considered completely reasonable behavior to work at a company for
3-5 years, and then move onto the next one."

I believe this is the norm outside the Valley as well.

I'm trying to find a blog post about how, after 3 years at the same job, the
challenge diminishes and it makes more sense to switch (if management doesn't
recognize the need for growth).

------
jrockway
One reason to live in the Valley is the opportunity to exercise outdoors in
shorts and a t-shirt 365 days a year. That's why I want to move out there,
anyway.

Winter is highly overrated.

~~~
timsally
I would imagine you're being downvoted by people who don't know what winter in
Chicago is like. ^^

~~~
ComputerGuru
I, and many other true Chicagoans, am very much proud of our winter weather,
thank you very much.

~~~
mobileman
Why??? How can you be proud of something you dont control? Its irrational.

~~~
dschobel
I'm sure there's some psychological term for what long-time Chicagoans feel
for the winter there... you'll find it amongst the chapters concerning victims
who identify with their abusers. (I did my five years in Chicago and gtfo).

~~~
philwelch
The term is "Stockholm syndrome", for the record.

------
socratic
I get that it is expensive and challenging to keep the best engineers in
Silicon Valley for years at a time. However, it seems really odd to conclude
from that that the solution would be to start a consumer web startup in
Boston.

I can name almost no consumer web startups from the past decade that weren't
built in Silicon Valley. Stack Overflow? MySpace? Some fashion startups in
NYC? Anything else?

For most of its early life (and perhaps still), Facebook had less than one
engineer per million users. Is that kind of talent available outside of the
Valley? How many people that have worked at the scale of
Google/Facebook/Yahoo!/Twitter (with all that it entails in terms of coding
standards, infrastructure, and so on) exist outside of the Valley? Maybe the
Seattle area has enough ex-Amazon/ex-Microsoft people to launch a big consumer
web startup, but even there, a substantial part of Bing seems to be based in
Silicon Valley.

~~~
harryh
> I can name almost no consumer web startups from the past decade that weren't
> built in Silicon Valley

foursquare, tumblr, groupon, spotify, meetup, kickstarter

~~~
socratic
Do those startups have technical or other infrastructure problems that compare
to a big Silicon Valley web startup?

(Groupon obviously had to scale sales, but that's not what I mean here.)

Here's tumblr.com vs blogspot.com on Google Trends:

[http://trends.google.com/websites?q=tumblr.com%2Cblogspot.co...](http://trends.google.com/websites?q=tumblr.com%2Cblogspot.com&geo=all&date=all&sort=0)

Here's foursquare.com vs facebook.com on Google Trends:

[http://trends.google.com/websites?q=facebook.com%2Cfoursquar...](http://trends.google.com/websites?q=facebook.com%2Cfoursquare.com&geo=all&date=all&sort=0)

Here's etsy.com vs ebay.com (from another comment):

[http://trends.google.com/websites?q=ebay.com%2Cetsy.com&...](http://trends.google.com/websites?q=ebay.com%2Cetsy.com&geo=all&date=all&sort=0)

Here's the other four you list vs facebook.com:

[http://trends.google.com/websites?q=facebook.com%2Cgroupon.c...](http://trends.google.com/websites?q=facebook.com%2Cgroupon.com%2Cspotify.com%2Cmeetup.com%2Ckickstarter.com&geo=all&date=all&sort=0)

~~~
samirahmed
I dont quite understand your reasoning here.

Please explain how moving any of these companies to Silicon Valley would have
made them better than Facebook?

I would are that Foursquare in NY and Foursquare in SF would still have the
same premise and penetration that it has if it were build in SF, I think many
of these companies are limited by their concepts and not their location.

However if you feel as though Foursquare etc would have been better if they
were based in Si Valley, please explain why.

~~~
socratic
The success of a startup is commonly viewed to be a combination of the concept
and the execution. Of course, the "concept" is rarely a singular thing---a
company often needs an initial niche product to score desperate early
adopters, and then it may need a more general vision to break into larger
markets. Was/is Facebook a social network for college students? A social
graph? A platform for social games?

Silicon Valley seems like a good multiplier on execution, as well as a place
where it is easier (and more expected) to increase the original product
vision. VCs insist on the team trying to take over a $100B+ market, many top
infrastructure engineers, mobile developers, UX people, and so on won't stay
if they don't think the equity will be worth anything, and there is a huge
amount of highly mobile web talent. More talent breeds more ideas, expanding
the concept and improving the execution.

Could Facebook have scaled their engineering team to handle 2x-5x the number
of users every year (with maybe 1m users on day one of the company), with a
huge portion of those users viewing the website every day, without being in a
place with (a) tons of web talent and (b) a culture where leaving an
established job to work at a web startup was reasonable?

In terms of upper level management, half of Facebook's C-level executives
appear to be ex-Google. Could Facebook have gotten that level of operational
and advertising expertise in Boston?

To answer your question directly, I suspect there are huge recruiting,
operational, and business development challenges to running a large scale
consumer web startup outside of Silicon Valley. That said, it is hard to know
how that would impact any particular company, or any particular space (e.g.,
location-based services).

------
biggitybones
I'm not sure if anyone else caught Jessica trying to follow up about the
serendipitous meetings of people like Sean Parker in the Valley. I think he's
completely discounting some of the experiences and chance happenings that
acted as a catalyst to Facebook's success.

It goes back to what PG said at YCNYC that apparently he caught a lot of flack
for - these types of occurrences, while they happen, are just far too
infrequent in other places with less vibrant tech communities.

~~~
dbul
I don't think Mark was discounting it; I'm sure he appreciated Sean's role. He
was just saying if he had the kind of knowledge he now has (maybe top HN
articles, avc.com would suffice?), he would have stuck around Boston or New
York.

Paul's example would better be supplemented by other stories like the telecom
startup which was having a rough time, got in touch with Ron Conway who was an
investor or FoF, Ron replied that he knew a telcom exec, and the company was
saved.

You can absolutely create a scalable startup elsewhere but you have to be the
right person with the right business.

------
rsingel
Zuckerberg's answers were really bizarre (though I appreciate what he was
saying about Silicon Valley, which is a reaction to his belief there are too
many tech employees who don't commit to a long term vision.)

But bizarrely, he said 1) he had no intention of forming a company when he
came to Silicon Valley, even though, 1) they brought interns and 2) had
already incorporated badly.

Even more odd was his assertion he started with the idea of building a social
graph identity system and then built Facebook. I'm not knocking either of
those innovations, but I seriously doubt this narrative. I think the graph
grew out of watching what people did on Facebook and then realizing,
brilliantly, how he could build an extensible social-identity service that
would turn Facebook into internet infrastructure, instead of a MySpace
replacement that could be jettisoned by users when the next cool social
network (Google+, for instance) came around.

~~~
Jarred
He also said that there was no drinking.

This video shows the opposite: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--APdD6vejI>

~~~
bialecki
He said there was no drinking during the programming contest to choose
interns, unlike what they depicted in the movie.

~~~
Jarred
Oh that makes sense

------
jeffreymcmanus
If Zuckerberg really thinks that Silicon Valley VCs are short-sighted (and I'm
not saying that they are or they aren't), why doesn't he put his money where
his mouth is? He's in a unique position to be investing in companies that
could achieve success on a timespan that exceeds the five to ten year horizon
that VCs are constrained by.

Also, which of these Boston investors are investing long-term? I want to meet
some of them.

~~~
alexwolfe
Good points. It seems he certainly has an interest in startups in the tech
industry. It would be great to see him work with or invest in companies he has
a lasting interest in.

------
mrmasa
My biggest concerns on this article is "He explained that he had a
conversation once with Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos about this, and the
average time someone stays in job at Seattle is twice as long than it is in
Silicon Valley. "

Could we say "higher liquidity in labor markets empowers disruptive
innovation" or "disruptive innovation needs higher fluid labor markets."? If
someone knows the report about this issue, please share with us.

Actually, the labor market in Japan is very lower liquidity. The reasons will
be that most Japanese prefers stability in their life, and that recruiters in
big firms prefer lower number of career changes in a specific period, 5 or 10
years. Concurrently, we have experienced social slumber, so-called "Lost
Decade".

But, for reference, here is the interesting point about Japan History.

When we experience drastic social change, such as The Meiji Restoration and
The Defeat in WW2, most Japanese suddenly abandons the preference for
stability and drastically drives themselves to creative destruction. Sony and
Honda were born right after WW2.

3.11 Tohoku Earthquake might have been a good trigger for drastic social
change in Japan.

------
mrleinad
His Q&A at Startup School was not so good as the rest of the speakers that
were invited. The girl that was making the questions was not so good at it
either. There was no consistency about what he wanted to say. Many times he
lost his own trail of thought. Maybe you need such an article to extract some
meaning out of everything he talked.

[EDIT] Well, someone doesn't like that I speak up my mind. So I can't make an
opinion about this now without being downvoted?

~~~
nhangen
I'm guessing the reason you are being downvoted is because "the girl" is
Jessica Livingston, a partner at YC, who has earned a lot of respect here on
HN.

I agree that Zuck seemed unprepared and rambled, frequently forgetting what he
was talking about, but that's not something the host can control.

~~~
pingswept
Also, typically "girl," like "boy," refers to a child. Ms. Livingston is
obviously an adult, so to many people the term "girl" comes across as
belittling.

~~~
acangiano
The correct term would be "the lady" or even better, "the interviewer".

~~~
mrleinad
I apologize, my native language is Spanish. Thanks for the pointer.

------
vlad
It's important to remember that Zuckerberg kept saying 'I don't know', because
he was thinking out loud, not speaking from a script.

Zuckerberg said he would stay in Boston or move to New York, in consideration
with moving to Silicon Valley, if he was starting Facebook right now, and knew
what he knows already. He would start a company in a location where it was
commonplace to build sustainable businesses, with employees who grow within a
company. He admitted that six or seven years ago, when he didn't know anything
or anyone, he could not have done Facebook without being in Silicon Valley.

My thought is that if a big consumer-facing/social tech company like Facebook
was successful in Boston (now or in the future), many more companies like
Zynga and other startups would be based in Boston as well. Facebook's and
Google's success (and their willingness to buy startups that may or may not
have a viable business at the time) causes a side effect where highly paid
employees save up money and quit these and similar companies in order to
create startups just a few miles away.

After all, Zuckerberg also stated he believed that the next wave of
applications will have to integrate with social networks or else will die. If
this is true, he must expect that a ton of startups would be started in
garages and incubators all around where such social networks are based
(Facebook and Twitter, which happen to be in Palo Alto and San Francisco.)

It would probably be more accurate to believe that Zuckerberg means that
Silicon Valley is the best place to start a company, but he wishes it had a
startup culture that he believes other cities like Boston and New York have
right now (while they don't have very many giant web properties headquartered
there).

He doesn't realize that a Facebook in Boston would mean that 1) investors were
more likely to invest in startups than they really had been and 2) the built-
to-flip companies of ex-Google and ex-Facebook employees (and those of other
companies) would now be based in Boston or New York, both factors changing the
startup culture of that city.

------
alexwolfe
Although I agree there are plenty of people who want to start a company before
they have a product or passionate area of interest I don't agree this is a
reason for him to have stayed in Boston.

Zuck is not appreciating the fact the one of his most valuable assets (Sean
Parker) was out here and help him raise a tremendous amount of capital for
facebook. The story could be much different if he was in Boston without Sean
Parker. I certainly think they wouldn't be doing better, and he might not have
control of the company anymore. I just think its silly to rewrite history in
your mind and assume you would have the same success.

------
Jkelly555
Also for non-web companies, I think it's better to be outside the valley --
it's just such an echo chamber there. We're doing a biotech startup and I
think locating in Boston was the right choice.

~~~
rdl
I thought Boston _was_ the Silicon Valley of biotech; i.e. the "echo chamber"
or dense ecosystem of entrepreneurs and experts.

Saying you'd put your biotech company in Boston probably supports the
"consumer web startup in SFBA" argument.

------
jorangreef
There are first-order consequences to things and there are second-order and
n-order consequences. For anything, especially chess, the first-order
consequences may well be attractive, but that's not enough to make a decision.

Sometimes, it's better to be an outsider than an insider, you can be
advantaged through being disadvantaged, and sometimes, the best way to find
milk and honey is to wander the desert.

The Beatles listened to American music from another continent over radio,
completely in the dark, working in Hamburg, Germany.

Daniel Lanois, producer of Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, spent years in Canada,
working in a basement, honing skills, plenty of solitary confinement.

Warren Buffett, made it a point to work from a small converted bathroom in his
house in Omaha, rather than on Wall Street.

Mark Shuttleworth ran Thawte from a garage in Cape Town, at a time when South
Africa had amongst the worst Internet connectivity. Broadband is still an
order of magnitude more expensive.

Amazon, Microsoft, and 37Signals were founded and remain outside the Valley.

------
dr_
The problem with this way of thinking is that it works if you are successful,
but it doesn't allow much room for failure. And failing can be as important as
succeeding. In the Valley if you fail, despite having investors and solid
employees, it sucks but you basically close up shop and move on. There may be
some short term resentment, but basically you are forgiven and allowed to try
again. Zuckerberg criticizes the shorter term employment of most people in the
Valley - but that's because better opportunities come along. If a company
fails, you don't have to feel as bad cause the employees you've let go should
find work elsewhere in a reasonable amount of time. That's not as easy in
other cities. But it's important for the ecosystem to thrive.

------
Finbarr
Having watched the event live in person, I think this point has been taken out
of context. Mark's point was that there's no way he could have succeeded with
facebook without the valley as he was young and inexperienced, but knowing
what he knows now he could have been successful back in Boston.

My interpretation of his comment was that it is easier to be successful
through getting noticed in a place where there is less noise from everyone and
their dog starting companies, but being in that situation is invaluable if you
don't know what you're doing.

------
dmix
Just like most sound bites this one needs context to be accurate. But I'm sure
it will continue to make headlines elsewhere.

He said that the valley was very helpful for him early on as a fresh
entrepreneur. He also said he could probably have done it in New York as well.

Also the headline mixes present and past tense, "If I were starting a company
_now_ " and "I would have". This doesn't mean in retrospect he would have kept
Facebook in boston back in 2005 or whenever he moved to the valley. It means
right now.

------
capkutay
You should also keep in mind that Zuckerburg is originally from the east coast
so he may be biased against SV.

What I find mildly offensive is that he's generalizing everybody in the valley
as go-getters with short attention spans and no interest in long term value. I
guess I've never been anywhere else, but the majority of the people I meet out
here have a passion for creating things of value.

------
reidbenj
The Boston comment may get the most press, but I think the most important
thing he said is the next 5-10 years comment, that it will be about what we
build now that connections are mapped and, importantly, available to tap into.
It's not a secret and not the first time he's said that, but to me it
reinforces that FB will keep doing app-friendly things like Open Graph.

------
davidblondeau
The main reason employees do not stick with companies as long in the Valley as
in Seattle (or most likely anywhere else for that matter) is because a lot
more people that work here want to start or join their own startup. And if
they did not think about doing it initially, they will eventually get there
since it is so much in the local culture.

~~~
tikhonj
I think it also helps that there are more options. You're much more likely to
find somebody working on something you're really passionate about here than
anywhere else, even if you're not actively looking. Not only are there more
small companies, but (at least in my experience) everybody talks about
interesting ones all the time.

------
bmahmood
I think people are blowing his words out of proportion. I found his comments
were delivered casually, with a pretty straightforward message: he wasn't
discounting what SV has to offer, he was simply stating it has more to offer
to those who know don't know what they're doing.

He didn't know what he was doing when he founded FB (by his own admission),
and so moving to SV was immensely helpful for him. He knows how to run a
company now, and was simply stating that for those who live outside SV and
know what they're doing, there's nothing intrinsically holding you back from
success by locale.

------
iradik
I think he was just being off-the-cuff and flippant like a conversationalist.
It wasn't some big statement. The q&a format lends itself to this style. He
also said he hadn't really thought about it much.

~~~
zackattack
I agree. I also think he was trolling. Though he may have used it as an
opportunity to set social pressure against people leaving Facebook.

