Facebook Founder on Top 3 Qualities to Reach the Top

Zuckerberg was recently asked what he thinks are the top 3 qualities an entrepreneur should have when starting a successful business.

1. Focus on Making an Impact in the World

“I think if you want to build something great you should focus on the changes you want to make in the world. That to me is number 1. I see too many entrepreneurs decide that they want to start a company before they actually know what it is that they want to build, and to me that seems backwards.”

“In building a company you are going to change a lot and you are going to learn a lot along the way, so it really makes sense to go in with an idea about what the impact is that you want to make and not just that you want to have a bunch of people working for you or that you just want to start a company.”

2. No One Does It Alone

“The second is that no one does it alone. You need to build the best team that you can. There’s this myth in the world of the founder or the individual. For instance, a lot of people talk about me and Facebook and it drives me a little crazy because I think this understates that this is a big team effort. We have thousands of people working on Facebook now and even at the beginning there were a bunch of people working on it.”

“When you look at most big things that get done in the world they are not done by one person. You are going to need to build a team. You go in with the idea of what you want to do in the world and the next most important thing you are going to do is to surround yourself with the best people that you can to learn from.”

“You are going to need to learn over time and you are going to need people with complimentary skills because no matter how talented you are there are just going to be things that you don’t bring to the table. That’s certainly true for me. Our company works because we have a really talented core team of people who compliment me that have different skills that I don’t have.”

3. Persistence!

“The third thing is just persistence. Nothing ever goes the way you want it to. People talk about overnight success and that’s not the way it works. Overnight success only happens after you’ve worked for a long period of time to build something and then one day you wake up and people say, “Oh this is successful,” like it just appeared. That’s never how you experience it when you are actually working on it.”

“When you are building something you go through all these trials and tribulations along the way and I think a lot of people simply give up. And that takes different forms, you don’t push through to what you believe, some people sell their company before it reaches its full potential, some change the direction and some people leave.”

“I think that the biggest things that have gotten done in the world tend to be done by people who primarily believe in a mission and are not trying to just build a company, by teams and not by individuals and by people who just don’t give up.”