We learn wisdom from the gurus, the philosophers, the scholars. Business wisdom, however, is not necessarily learned from the sages, but from people who have walked the entrepreneurial path we wish to trod.
Talk about the young successful entrepreneurs of the world and the name of Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook social network creation, with its billion active users, come to mind.
The Facebook social media success Zuckerberg achieved has been phenomenal, but it has not been achieved without difficulty and struggles which the young entrepreneur hurdled. There were legal complaints filed against him, many of them on intellectual property rights of Facebook and his other creations. But he was unfazed. And here he is – acknowledged King in the IT realm and the youngest billionaire in the planet, with plans for more enterprises to create.
Here are some of the most amazing Zuckerberg quotations, coming from the wealth of his experience, building up the IT phenomenon known as FB (as compiled by Zoe Henry of Reporter, Inc.).
1. “In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” –From an October 2011 interview at Y Combinator’s Startup School in Palo Alto, California.
2. “The question isn’t ‘What do we want to know about people?’ It’s, ‘What do people want to tell about themselves?” —From a November 2011 interview with Charlie Rose.
3. “I literally coded Facebook in my dorm room and launched it from my dorm room. I rented a server for $85 a month, and I funded it by putting an ad on the site, and we’ve funded ever since by putting ads on the site.” –In the same Charlie Rose interview, Zuck spoke about the social media giant’s humble beginnings.
4. “A squirrel dying in your front yard may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.” —From a speech given to his colleagues at Facebook about relevance, as reported by The New York Times.
5. “Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.” –In an interview with Business Insider’s Henry Blodget, Zuck opened up about innovation, management, and more. Recently, however, he announced that Facebook would be changing this motto.
6. “This is a perverse thing, personally, but I would rather be in the cycle where people are underestimating us. It gives us the latitude to go out and make big bets that excite and amaze people.” —The entrepreneur offered his thoughts on dealing with skeptics, in an interview at TechCrunch’s Disrupt SF conference in September 2012, as reported by Forbes.
7. “People can be really smart or have skills that are directly applicable, but if they don’t really believe in it, then they are not going to really work hard.” —From a Stanford University speaker series on hiring the right people, given October 2005.
8. “People don’t care about what someone says about you in a movie–or even what you say, right? They care about what you build.” —From an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer in July 2010.
9. “In Silicon Valley, you get this feeling that you have to be out here. But it’s not the only place to be. If I were starting now, I would have stayed in Boston. [Silicon Valley] is a little short-term focused and that bothers me.” —Also from the October 2011 interview at Y Combinator’s Startup School in Palo Alto, California.
10. “The question I ask myself like almost every day is, ‘Am I doing the most important thing I could be doing?’ … Unless I feel like I’m working on the most important problem that I can help with, then I’m not going to feel good about how I’m spending my time. –From Marcia Amidon Lusted’s biography Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook Creator.
Photo credits: www.inc.com/zoe-henry/mark-zuckerberg-move-fast-and-break-things