'Move fast and break things' was one of Mark Zuckerberg's early leadership principles

Mark Zuckerberg credits some of Facebook's success to constant evolution

Before becoming the head of OpenAI, Sam Altman was the president of Y Combinator—a startup accelerator company that supported companies like Airbnb, DoorDash, and Coinbase. In 2016, Altman interviewed Zuckerberg about creating Facebook and its growth over time. Zuckerberg said that, unlike other companies (think: CourseMatch), Facebook kept growing and adding new features, which prevented the app from becoming obsolete.

Mark Zuckerberg's 2024 rebrand was dubbed the 'Zuckassaince'

Zuckerberg, like Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, wore the same, simple T-shirts and outfits for most of his early career to decrease the decisions he'd have to make on a daily basis. In 2024, Zuckerberg started wearing chunky gold chains around his neck and oversized T-shirts with slogans on them. Some say the "Zuckassaince" is an effort to rebrand Meta as a futuristic company, not just an old social media company for millennials.

Mark Zuckerberg has been a huge advocate for open source technology

Open source technology is software, hardware, or code that's publicly accessible for viewing or editing. Zuckerberg has been an advocate for open source since 2003 and said he wouldn't have been able to build Facebook without open source code.

In November 2005, Mark Zuckerberg officially left Harvard

Mark Zuckerberg enrolled in Harvard in 2002 and studied computer science and psychology. He officially dropped out in 2005 to run Facebook, now Meta. When he returned to campus to officially drop out, he met with professors and students to recruit programmers for the company.

Mark Zuckerberg said some of the details in 'The Social Network' movie were spot-on—but most of the story arcs were inaccurate

Zuckerberg said many of the story arcs and plot details in "The Social Network" were inaccurate and harmful. In particular, the movie portrayed Zuckerberg's motivations for starting Facebook as a ploy to get a girlfriend, which Zuckerberg says is untrue, as he was already dating his now wife when he started Facebook. However, he did commend the movie for paying close attention to details about Zuckerberg's clothing and the layout of the Facebook office.

Mark Zuckerberg was nearly fired from his own company after refusing to sell Facebook to Yahoo for $1B

In 2006, Yahoo tried to buy Facebook for $1B. Despite enthusiasm from nearly all of Facebook's management team and board (which included PayPal cofounder and famed investor Peter Thiel at the time), then 22-year-old Zuckerberg turned down the offer, insisting that Yahoo undervalued the company and didn't have a clear vision for the future. Zuckerberg has since said he regrets not being clear about his intentions to grow the company with his team before the Yahoo bid, as almost all of the company's management team left after he turned down the offer.

Meta disclosed Mark Zuckerberg's interest in martial arts as an investment risk

During the pandemic, Zuckerberg began practicing Brazilian jiu-jitsu and even won gold and silver medals at his first tournament in 2023. His interest in martial arts and water sports, like wakesurfing and hydrofoiling, prompted the company to disclose those hobbies as risks for potential investors, given they pose a threat to Zuckerberg's health and he retains a significant amount of control over Meta.

Read Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan Zuckerberg's $45B letter to their daughter

After giving birth to their daughter, the Zuckerbergs launched the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in 2015. The pair announced the charitable organization's creation in a letter addressed to their daughter. The Zuckerbergs pledged 99% of their earnings from Facebook over the course of their lives to advance education, cure disease, and transform public policy, something the letter says is a commitment to their daughter's future. The organization has since shifted its focus to artificial intelligence and science.

Mark Zuckerberg's dad is a dentist—but he originally wanted to work with computers

Mark Zuckerberg grew up in Dobbs Ferry in Westchester County, about 25 miles north of New York City. His father, Ed Zuckerberg, owned a practice connected to Mark's childhood home, but he was always fascinated by computers. Ed's family was the first in his neighborhood to have a color television, and Ed was an early adopter of computing technology—something that he passed on to Mark. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

The 'Facebook papers' revealed the company prioritized profit over public safety

A whistleblower came forward with internal documents showing employees warned leadership about the company's role in fueling political unrest and misinformation. Systems like XCheck shielded high-profile users like President Donald Trump from normal content rules, often to avoid PR backlash.

'Founder mode' is the idea that startup founders should take a hands-on approach to running their businesses

In 2024, Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham popularized the idea of "founder mode" when he wrote a viral manifesto in response to a talk that Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky gave about leadership styles. Graham positioned the concept of founder mode as the opposite of manager mode—when founders hire executives and middle managers to run their companies and make decisions that Graham says are better left to founders.

The values espoused in 'Lean In,' a book by a female Facebook exec, was part of the girlboss movement's doctrine

Sheryl Sandberg, a top executive at Facebook, published "Lean In," her career-advice book for women, in 2013. The book would go on to spend more than a year on The New York Times Best Sellers list and contribute to a cultural movement.

Elon Musk is known to sleep under his desk during intense periods of work

The tech company founder and CEO has a wide variety of leadership principles he has kept consistent while building multiple different companies, including eschewing middle management and using the "idiot index," a formula he uses to identify manufacturing inefficiencies.

X's quirky culture clashed hard with Elon Musk's extreme leadership style

Investigative journalists have written that social platform X's open, sometimes chaotic workplace stopped when control shifted irreversibly from Jack Dorsey to Elon Musk. They claim the stark contrast in personalities left little protection for existing employees, culture, or users.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos emphasizes worrying about customers rather than competition

In a 1999 shareholder letter, Bezos wrote, "I constantly remind our employees to be afraid, to wake up every morning terrified. Our customers have made our business what it is, and we consider them to be loyal to us – right up until the second that someone else offers them a better service." Motivated by fear, the entrepreneur advocates consistent innovation, experimentation, and improvement to create a better customer experience.

Listen to Ray Dalio break down his most valuable principles in life and work

Dalio's now-famous principles started out as a collection of rules the finance behemoth set for himself. Since then, the list has expanded, becoming required reading for all Bridgewater Associates employees. In 2017, Dalio published an expanded version of these rules called "Principles: Life & Work," which has sold more than 5 million copies worldwide.

Burning Man’s countercultural messages have influenced Silicon Valley’s work culture

Burning Man is famous for attracting tech leaders like the CEOs of Tesla, Meta, and Google. Some experts believe the festival's ethos and principles of participation, communal effort and radical inclusion have given rise to Silicon Valley's communal work culture.

'Slow productivity' as a humane approach to work

Work is increasingly encroaching on every part of our lives, while digital technologies enable supervisors to micromanage every part of an employee’s day. “Slow productivity” is a movement to alter the pace and quality of one’s work to avoid burnout and provide a more humane approach to work.

Political sloganeering is often downstream of memes

In 2018, #JobsNotMobs morphed from an internet meme into a conservative slogan. A video clip of angry protesters mixed with news anchors discouraging the use of the word "mob" posted on October 11, birthed the phrase. By October 19, it was adapted into a Republican party slogan.

Steve Jobs introduced Apple’s 'Think Different' marketing campaign

Jobs introduced the now-iconic “Think Different” marketing campaign. It won numerous awards, symbolized Apple’s new era under Jobs, and showed off his understanding of branding.

X (Twitter) started as a way to share short updates via text

What began as a way to share 140-character updates quickly grew into a vital platform for activism, politics, and pop culture. Hashtags, trending topics, and retweets—now common across the internet—originated on the platform.

Later in life, the clock in Grace Hopper's office ran counterclockwise

Acknowledging that most people have "an enormous tendency to resist change," Hopper's clock served as a reminder for the computer scientist that just because things have been done a certain way does not mean they should forever remain that way: "They love to say, 'We've always done it this way.' I try to fight that." (Some users may experience a paywall.)

Read about how one of Palantir's cofounders explains the company's founding

Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale described the company's driving principle as fighting terrorism in a blog post marking its IPO. Lonsdale also said Palantir's software was developed with a keen focus on privacy, despite many allegations that it enables government surveillance.

Tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson's mission to live forever

Johnson has invested millions of dollars into developing a biohacking program he believes will extend his life beyond typical expectations, relying on medical professionals to reduce his "biological age." Most notably, he drew significant public attention with reports of blood-swapping with his teenage son.

‘Moshing,’ an aggressive style of dancing, was initially called 'mashing'

The style, which involves audience members thrashing their bodies into one another, evolved from “pogoing,” a style popular in England where listeners jumped up and down in place. The term “moshing,” sometimes called “slam dancing” in California, is believed to come from HR, the lead singer of Bad Brains.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the SC Johnson headquarters in Wisconsin, aiming to make a cathedral-like workplace

US housing costs have risen by roughly 175% between 1991 and 2026—but a growing number of Gen Zers are becoming homeowners anyway. In 2025, 4% of homebuyers were Gen Z, up from 3% the year before.

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

Domino's Pizza's 30-minute delivery guarantee was responsible for the chain's 1980s surge, but it was discontinued after the company was found liable for delivery driver accidents.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

Budweiser stores yeast derived from the original 1800s strain in a secret bunker, which only the Head of Yeast Management can access—not even the CEO

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

Fear or disgust related to clusters of holes and cracks, called trypophobia, may stem from evolutionary processes to help us avoid pathogens.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

Mark Twain spent decades feuding with the US Postal Service, convinced its costs and regulations were bureaucratic overreach.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

The animatronic shark from Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws,' the first modern blockbuster, was a complex underwater apparatus called 'Bruce.'

Astronauts have repaired genetic damage in space using CRISPR—a molecular tool that can make precise changes to DNA and is used in single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses.

Cultural norms about how to handle the bodies of loved ones in communities in West Africa have hampered Ebola responses.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, but became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

The US Constitution is widely regarded as the longest-standing written national constitution still in force—see how it has influenced rights worldwide.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.