3 ms·
This is the best explanation I can come up with: Due to the nature of the market, there had to be one winner in that particular social networking space, and it
by time_management 18y ago
This is the best explanation I can come up with: Due to the nature of the market, there had to be one winner in that particular social networking space, and it turned out to be a completely mediocre choice. Facebook had superior competitors who lost because they didn't start at Harvard, and for literally no other reason.
Zuckerberg, to our generation, is emblematic of the successful mediocrity (not a contradiction)-- often the annoying, arrogant suckup who gets into good schools by doing a hundred extracurriculars not very well, the one who gets ahead by exploiting the system. This ties in well to the fact that the absolute only reason any of us have heard of Facebook (originally thefacebook... :vomit:) is that it started at Harvard and was able to use prestige at each level of market growth (first Harvard, then the Ivy League, then the top ~150 colleges...) to progress to the next. It makes him a symbol of the Elite College Mediocrity (ECM), an archetype that all of us hate. Those of us who went to top colleges will never forgive the ECMs for the damage they did to our college experience. Those who didn't go to top colleges despise ECMs because the ECMs have more competitive resumes and stronger rolodexes for no good reason.
Zuckerberg's not an ECM at all, actually, since he's quite bright compared to the average person and even the average student at Harvard. He is, however, an utter incompetent compared to level of success and prominence to which he has been lifted by the sheer dumb force of +5 sigma luck.
He also gave a talk at Startup School 2007 that was absolutely terrible. In fact, it was so awful as to raise suspicions of sabotage.
- omouse 18y agoDo you have a link to the talk he gave?
- DTrejo 18y agoThe world is not all gaussian, though I do agree with your point.
- time_management 18y agoIt's not Gaussian at all, actually. The sizes of businesses tend to follow a power law distribution, in fact. I was just using "+5 sigma" as a technically sloppy synonym for "extremely improbable".
- thinkcomp 18y agoMark's Facebook didn't succeed just because it started at Harvard. It succeeded, so far as I can tell, because he and his roommates lived across the sidewalk from the president of the Harvard Crimson in Kirkland House. I was also at Harvard in 2003-2004 with a cool product for students, but unfortunately I didn't have the press on my side. http://www.thinkpress.com/authoritas/housesystem/trailer.html http://www.thinkpress.com/authoritas/housesystem/trailer.htm...
- Prrometheus 18y agoZuckerberg may be less capable than his success indicates, but I am sure we are all capable of better things than sitting behind a screen and hurling mud at the successful. Envy is an ugly thing. By the way, did you hear Steve Jobs is arrogant? The nerve of the guy, after building the second most successful consumer computer company of all time.
- time_management 18y agoYou should not compare Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg. Steve Jobs has vision, at least, and it's that vision that has brought AAPL back from limbo. Mark Zuckerberg just took someone else's vision and ran with it.
- rgr 18y agoI don't get your reasoning. He and his cofounders built a product that people wanted. The product spread mostly virally by word of mouth. This is the classic definition of succeeding by one's efforts, not privilege. How does an allegedly elite rolodex (at the time when he was 19, no less) factor into the equation? facebook.com was originally owned by someone else.
- pg 18y agoI thought his talk at Startup School was among the best that year, along with Mitch Kapor's.