
Zuckerberg: Why I stayed CEO even though many people thought I should quit - Adrock
http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-zuckerberg-the-founder-versus-the-ceo-2009-10
======
breck
Remember the good old days when the internet was text and it took 3 minutes to
read an article versus 30 minutes to watch it?

Can someone link to a transcript?

~~~
breck
too bad there's not a transcript. however, i just watched it and would highly
recommend it.

some of the highlights:

\- 3 key values: move fast. be bold. focus on impact(helps attract the best
people; at fb each engineer is responsible for >1M users).

\- the more control you give users over their own information, the more they
will share

\- unless you're breaking some stuff, you're not moving fast enough.

------
mrshoe
I say this with all sincerity: It must have been hard work for him to learn
how to not come across as an arrogant douchebag like he used to.

Kudos to a nerd who learned how to hack his personality and become a positive
PR force instead of a negative one.

He also had some very interesting stuff to say about Facebook. ;)

~~~
MikeCapone
I guess I wasn't paying attention to him during that phase.

Any representative examples you could link to?

~~~
rms
I found this article about a 2005 interview but the video linked appears to
have been taken down. <http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-facebook-
phenomenon>

Edit: OK, here it is.
[http://bambi.blogs.com/bambi_francisco/files/zuckerberg_256k...](http://bambi.blogs.com/bambi_francisco/files/zuckerberg_256k.wmv)

Personally I don't think he sounds that arrogant; the only thing that stands
out is the question/answer "What was your pitch?" "Oh... we didn't do one."

Can someone find examples of Zuckerberg in 2006/2007 for us to compare?

~~~
iseff
This was one that I particularly thought was a little bit of him reading his
own press a bit too much:

“the next hundred years will be different for advertising, and it starts
today. As marketers pushing our information out is no longer enough. We are
announcing anew advertising system, not about broadcasting messages, about
getting into the conversations between people. 3 pieces: build pages for
advertisers, a new kind of ad system to spread the messages virally, and gain
insights. ... Once every hundred years media changes. the last hundred years
have been defined by the mass media. The way to advertise was to get into the
mass media and push out your content. That was the last hundred years. In the
next hundred years information won’t be just pushed out to people, it will be
shared among the millions of connections people have. Advertising will change.
You will need to get into these connections."

[http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/06/liveblogging-
facebook-a...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/06/liveblogging-facebook-
advertising-announcement/)

~~~
unalone
I actually just got out of an advertising class (like, literally 3 minutes
ago), and we discussed this. It's dead on. Television advertising is in many
ways the exact same as radio advertising: New techniques have been developed,
but the philosophy behind it remains the same. Internet advertising is a much,
much different beast.

------
lyime
All i gotta say is that those random ads in the video are super annoying. DO
it either before or after.

~~~
wensing
Out of curiosity, would you rather pay to watch?

~~~
lyime
No I wouldn't pay to watch a 60 second clip.

~~~
wensing
60 seconds? The interview is 30 minutes.

~~~
lyime
Agreed. But It was broken up in too many parts. If it was a single video, with
no ads I might pay.

------
TomOfTTB
The thing that bugs me about the "founders should run the company" line of
thought is that it's not entirely true. Bill Gates handed the business side of
the company over to John Shirley in 1983 and Steve Jobs did the same with
Apple and John Sculley. And both were right to do so (Gates often says
Microsoft might not have made it without Shirley, Jobs is still a little
bitter about the whole "pushing him out of the company thing")

Both realized it would be better to have someone with experience run the
company while they learned the ropes (since both eventually took over their
respective companies though we all know Jobs' road to CEO of Apple was a
longer one)

So it's' not like there's some grand tradition of founders holding onto the
reigns of power and never letting go. Just the opposite. The truly smart
founders got someone who knew what they were doing and used the opportunity to
learn from them.

~~~
icey
FTA: "In this model, the founder remains CEO of the company and surrounds
himself or herself with a strong executive team."

------
gaborcselle
Best part: "If you're not breaking things, you're not moving fast enough"
[...] "The goal of building something is to build something, and not to avoid
making mistakes"

~~~
stevenj
"If you don't make mistakes, you can't make decisions."

-Warren Buffett

------
rykov
Direct link to whole 30 min interview: [http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-
zuckerberg-innovation-20...](http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-
innovation-2009-10)

