Mark Zuckerberg on the importance of engineers if you’re building a technology company

“We never thought about ourselves as a website or a social network or anything like that.”

Mark believes many companies define themselves too narrowly:

“It’s one of the things I observed as soon as I came out to [Silicon] Valley. All these companies that called themselves technology companies were not really set up that way. The CEO wasn’t technical. The board of directors had no one technical on it… And it’s like alright, if that’s your team, then you’re not a technology company.”

He believes there’s a balance:

“You don’t want everyone to be an engineer because there’s other things that matter too. But if you don’t have a high enough share of the company as engineers, then you’re not a technology company.”

This makes sense when you view it in the context of Mark’s strategy for Meta:

“I define our strategy as: If we can learn faster than every other company, we’re going to win. We’re going to build a better product than everyone else because we’re going to get it out first, we’re going to have a good feedback loop, and we’re going to learn what people like better than other people.”

He concludes:

“I think that’s basically the formula. Be a technology company. Build a good foundation. Learn from what other people are focused on in the world. And iterate as quickly as you can.”

Full video: Acquired “The Mark Zuckerberg Interview“ (Sep 2024)

P.S. We’ve put together a YouTube playlist with every Mark Zuckerberg insight we’ve ever shared. You can watch it here: "Best startup advice from Mark Zuckerberg"