The Greatest SUCCESS comes from having the freedom to FAIL
– Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg at Startup school gave a wonderful speech to the young startup founders and innovators.
Dear Entrepreneurs, so many things go wrong when you starting a new company or building a new idea. More often people ask me “What mistakes should we avoid making to build a successful enterprise or a company?” My answer to the question is “Don’t even bother to avoid mistakes, because you are going to make tons of mistakes.” The most important thing is learning quickly from whatever mistakes you make and not giving up. There are things every single year Facebook’s existence teaches us, we make lot of mistakes and we just bounce back and learn from the mistakes. Nothing is impossible.
During my early days I felt alone, and worse, it was my fault. I wondered if I was just wrong, an imposter, a 22-year-old kid who had no idea of how things actually worked. Now years later, I understand that that is how things work when there’s no sense of higher purpose, so it’s up to all of us to create it, so we can all moving forward together.
One of my favourite stories is when JFK went to go visit NASA Space Centre and he saw a janitor holding a broom and he asked him what he was doing, and the janitor replied, “Mister President, I’m helping putting a man on the moon.” Purpose is that feeling that you are a part of something bigger than yourself, that you are needed, and that you have something better ahead to work for. Purpose is what creates true happiness.
Facebook wasn’t the first thing I built, I also built chat systems and games, study tools and music players. And I’m not alone. JK Rowling got rejected 12 times before she finally wrote and published Harry Potter. Even Beyonce had to make hundreds of songs to get Halo. The greatest successes come from the freedom to fail. Ideas don’t come out fully formed, they only become clearer as you work on them. You just have to get started.
Mark Zuckerberg is an American computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur. He’s best known as one of five co-founders of the social networking website Facebook. He’s the chairman and chief executive of Facebook, and his personal wealth, as of June 2019, is estimated to be $62.7 billion. He receives a one-dollar salary as CEO of Facebook.
Together with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, he launched Facebook from Harvard University’s dormitory rooms. In 2007 at age 23 he became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. As of 2018, he is the only person under 50 in the Forbes ten richest people list, and the only one under 40 in the Top 20 Billionaires list.
Since 2010, Time magazine has named Zuckerberg among the 100 wealthiest and most influential people in the world as a part of its Person of the Year distinction. In December 2016, Zuckerberg was ranked 10th on Forbes list of The World’s Most Powerful People.
Making Mistakes in Life
Here’s the thing about mistakes. Sometimes, even when you know something’s a mistake, you gotta make it anyway.
Sometimes you have to touch that hot plate even though you know it will burn your hand.
Sometimes you have to get a hair color or a hair cut we know will look awful, but you get it.
Sometimes you have to taste the disgusting food to make it better the next time you cook.
Sometimes you have to forget your purse in a restaurant so you can learn to be less forgetful the next time.
Sometimes you have fall for the wrong person in order to find the right person for yourself.
Sometimes you have to make the mistake in order to avoid making it the next time around.
A mistake is simply another way of doing things.
Someone gave a very good analogy: What do you first do when you learn to swim? You make mistakes, don’t you? And what happens? You make other mistakes, and when you have made all the mistakes you possibly can without drowning – and some of them many times over – what do you find? That you can swim? Well – life is just the same as learning to swim! Do not be afraid of making mistakes, for there is no other way of learning how to live!
You know, there are certain things in life where you know it’s a mistake but you don’t really know it’s a mistake because the only way to know that it really is a mistake is to make that mistake and go, “Yup, that was a mistake”. So really, the bigger mistake would be to not make the mistake because then you’ll go about your whole life not knowing whether it was a mistake or not.
Got it?
Inspired by: How I Met Your Mother 