Zuckerberg: Silicon Valley isn't necessary for startups
Facebook founder says Silicon Valley has a culture "where people don't commit to doing things" and says if were starting now, he would stay in Boston.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at Y Combinator's Startup School.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg says if he had it all to do over, he would have stayed in Boston.
The Facebook chief executive said during an interview yesterday at Y Combinator's Startup School that Silicon Valley suffers from a bit of shortsightedness.
"If I were starting now I would do things very differently," he said. "You get this feeling when you are out here in the Silicon Valley that you have to be out here."
While he said there were a lot of great resources for beginners in Silicon Valley such as engineers, universities, and VCs, he said "it's not the only place to be, I think. If I were starting now, I would have stayed in Boston. There are aspects of the culture out here where I think it still is a little short-term focused in a way that bothers me."
"There's a culture out here where people don't commit to doing things...I feel like a lot of companies that have built outside of Silicon Valley I just think seem to be on a longer-term cadence than the ones in Silicon Valley, for some reason."
"You don't have to move out here to do this," Zuckerberg said. However, he admits that "Facebook would not have worked if I had stayed in Boston."
During the 40-minute interview, which begins about 40 minutes into the video below, Zuckerberg also describes some of the challenges his company faced early on.
"We didn't expect it to be a company initially," he said. "It was not like in the movie, there was no drinking," he said, referring to the 2010 movie "The Social Network." "We all just lived in a house."
