So I’ve been trying to better myself during this quarantine, and one of the things I’ve decided I want to learn more about is computer science. I’ve realized that although I’m on the internet all the time, it’s still a mystery to me how any of the websites and apps I use were made. So, last week I signed up for this free introductory course on EDX through Harvard University to see if computer science was for me. But, I’m the type of person who needs to research everything I do. So, I looked up YouTube reviews on the course, where I stumbled upon the following video of Mark Zuckerberg circa December 2005 giving a lecture to a handful of Harvard students.
I proceeded to spend the next hour and five minutes watching an extremely awkward 21-year-old Zuck talk about Facebook in its adolescent years. I realize this may sound extremely nerdy of me, but it was one of the most interesting things I’ve watched in some time, and that’s coming from someone who just finished the first season of Devs. This was before the lawsuits, before the movie, before it was publicly traded…he was still just some young guy who started a website. Sure, they already had fifty employees and the site was supporting 450 million page views PER DAY, but he was nowhere close to being the $70 billion man he is today. The most hilarious thing about his video is that there were no more than twenty people in the audience of this giant lecture hall at Harvard. These kids have literally zero idea how big of a deal this guy would be in the future…which is part of my intrigue about this lecture.
Sure, there are plenty of reasons to hate Zuck. I, myself, am not a fan, but I can’t help but be impressed with his genius even in the earliest stages of Facebook. In 2005 social media was still in its infancy, highlighted by the professor calling Facebook “a social networking program…whatever you want to call it”. This guy basically just brushed off a website that in 11 years would go on to influence a presidential election. At one point, someone in the audience tells him that she’s not that familiar with Facebook…definitely a freshman. But that isn’t the only thing about this video that has aged poorly.
Pretty sure Zuck has spent almost every day since this lecture apologizing for things he’s done at Facebook…(22:40)
This is by far the worst cold take. Ever heard of Cambridge Analytica? Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election? Young Zuck had no idea what was to come. (41:00)
However, believe it or not, he honestly said some pretty good stuff too. He was dropping some major entrepreneurial advice for someone who only had roughly two years of business experience (may i remind he was only 21 at the time).
One of my favorite things he said was that he “started off as someone trying to make something cool and not someone trying to make a company.” So many people go into business just for the money, but it seems that most of the truly successful businesses were made by people that truly enjoy what they do. Not that doing something you hate won’t make you rich, but it’s sure as hell a lot harder to dedicate your time to something you don’t enjoy doing. (21:50)
As someone who’s trying to build a business (if you can call a relatively unsuccessful blog a business), I can definitely appreciate the business advice Zuck gave in the earliest days of Facebook. At this point in time, Facebook was still only available to college and high school students…now look what it’s become. After hearing him talk about the future of technology in 2005 and knowing how much the industry has grown since then, it should be inspiring for all of the young entrepreneurs out there.