Mark Zuckerberg at Startup School 2013

TL;DR

Zuckerberg recounts building early Facebook precursors (Course Match, a Rome of Augustus study tool) and emphasizes that success came from caring more than competitors, not from superior resources. He advises founders to ignore strategic competitors but watch clones, to hire people they would work for, and to overcome fear by throwing themselves into uncomfortable situations.

Key insights

• The first code for Facebook was not written during reading period; Zuckerberg had built many small projects for himself (games, a music player) before college, then moved to tools that required other
• Course Match proved that people were more interested in browsing other people’s profiles and connections than in the utilitarian function of the tool – a pattern that informed Facebook’s focus on real
• The “Rome of Augustus” study tool crowdsourced class notes by letting students contribute their interpretations of art images; the site was populated within an hour after being emailed to the class li