Mark Zuckerberg has been understandably very busy in the months since he took Facebook public — closing and integrating the billion dollar Instagram acquisition, overhauling Facebook’s mobile strategy, jetting to far-flung places to build the company’s international presence, and such — that he has spent remarkably little time giving interviews and speeches. In fact, his talk with Michael Arrington last month at Disrupt was his first official on-stage interview since Facebook’s initial public offering way back in May.
So attendees at Silicon Valley startup incubator Y Combinator’s annual Startup School event tomorrow are in for a real treat: Zuckerberg is slated to appear as a speaker, kicking off the day-long program being held at Stanford University in Palo Alto.
Co-sponsored by YC and the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), Startup School is aimed at giving programmers who are thinking about starting their own companies the motivation and know-how to make the leap into the startup life. We can expect Zuckerberg and the other speakers (including Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, and more) to talk about their own personal entrepreneurial experiences. It’s an event by hackers for hackers, so the speakers tend to be especially relaxed and candid about what it takes to build a business.
Applications for this year’s YC Startup School are closed and the event is completely sold out, but if you’re not already on deck to see Zuck in person don’t despair: TechCrunch will be there issuing reports from the event. You can also watch the livestream of it all from www.startupschool.org.
This will be the fourth year in a row that Zuckerberg is speaking at Startup School, so his attendance is a tradition of sorts at this point. In his appearance there last year, he famously said that if he were starting Facebook today, he would have kept it headquartered in Boston, saying, “If I were starting now, I would have stayed in Boston. [Silicon Valley] is a little short-term focused and that bothers me.” Now that he’s put Facebook on what is meant to be the ultimate long-term track — the public stock market — it will be very interesting to hear what his perspective is like these days.
Embedded below is the video from Zuckerberg’s appearance at YC’s 2011 Startup School, courtesy of YouTube user John Davi:
Mark Zuckerberg is the founder and CEO of Facebook, which he started in his college dorm room in 2004 with roomates Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. Zuckerberg is responsible for setting the overall direction and product strategy for the company. He leads the design of Facebook’s service and development of its core technology and infrastructure. Mark studied computer science at Harvard University before moving the company to Palo Alto, California. Earlier in life, Zuckerberg developed a music recommendation system called...
Y Combinator is a venture fund which focuses on seed investments to startup companies. It offers financing as well as business consulting along with other opportunities to 2-4 person companies looking to take an idea to a product. Y Combinator looks for companies with “good” ideas over companies with experience and a business model. The company made its first investments in Summer 2005. Y Combinator selects companies to finance and consult with twice a year. They are located in...
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Berlin, Germany
San Francisco
