These articles are always a guilty pleasure, because all of us reading them can point out countless mistakes the author made that we, of course, would never make. All the time failing to consider that we would simply make different mistakes.
Completely agree. But if you read something like this, you notice there will be a failure...
> but all the stories of success from Techcrunch, the accelerator Y Combinator, and the Facebook movie combined and fed in to my fantasies that somehow through sheer will and my own brain power I could achieve similar success
Maybe just me, but getting inspired by Mark its the first mistake you could do.
That's not how I read it...more like "watching a movie about facebook and building my hopes and dreams on this being me in x years" is what you should avoid.
FB/GOOG/etc are the very rare outliers. Don't hedge your business (or mental-wellbeing) on the expectation to replicate their success.
It's good to have high ambitions but have a plan B & don't expect to be the unicorn. It would be analogous to starting a band in the hopes of becoming the next Beatles.
Facebook has had major ethical issues every step of the way and Mark himself has made some serious mistakes over the last year or two. Plus, arguably the most innovative part of Facebook was the go-to-market strategy.
Indeed. I'll see stuff and be like "that's idiotic" and them I'm like "Ryan, with your last company you did a 9/11 sale and got ripped apart online for it because you don't have a high EQ and didn't even think how it would be received, go stand in the corner".
