Zuckerberg to Harvard students: Eureka moment is a lie, go find a purpose

“If I get through this speech, it’ll be the first time I actually finish something at Harvard,” began Mark Zuckerberg in his commencement address yesterday at the college he dropped out of to start Facebook.

Zuckerberg’s speech was mainly about finding a purpose. For him, it was simply the idea that people need to connect. But that wasn’t enough. “You have to [also] create a sense of purpose for others.”

The idea of a single eureka moment is a dangerous lie. It prevents people with seeds of good ideas from getting started.

This became apparent a couple of years down the line when big companies wanted to buy Facebook. Nearly everyone in his management team wanted to sell, whereas his dream was to make a bigger impact. “We were building the first news feed… and I thought it could change how we learn about the world.”

His advice to the students was to get started on their big ideas – driven by a higher purpose – without waiting for the perfect time. “If I had to understand everything about connecting people before I began, I never would have started Facebook.”

“The idea of a single eureka moment is a dangerous lie… It prevents people with seeds of good ideas from getting started,” he said. “Oh, you know what else movies get wrong about innovation? No one writes math formulas on glass. That’s not a thing.”

The address was peppered with anecdotes from Harvard, his take on the impact of automation, and more.

Watch: Zuckerberg on meeting his wife, Priscilla, at Harvard, and the chat-up line he used to secure the first date

Full transcript of Zuckerberg’s commencement address at Harvard:

(From the text posted to Facebook.)

President Faust, Board of Overseers, faculty, alumni, friends, proud parents, members of the ad board, and graduates of the greatest university in the world,

I’m honored to be with you today because, let’s face it, you accomplished something I never could. If I get through this speech, it’ll be the first time I actually finish something at Harvard. Class of 2017, congratulations!

I’m an unlikely speaker, not just because I dropped out, but because we’re technically in the same generation. We walked this yard less than a decade apart, studied the same ideas and slept through the same Ec10 lectures. We may have taken different paths to get here, especially if you came all the way from the Quad, but today I want to share what I’ve learned about our generation and the world we’re building together.

But first, the last couple of days have brought back a lot of good memories.