The MOST IMPORTANT SKILL To Learn For The FUTURE! | Mark Zuckerberg on Impact Theory

I always believed that like if you think that something is going to be important, find a way to start working on it. There's only so much that you can really learn by thinking about something in the abstract. You you really learn by like putting an idea out there and seeing how people use it. Mark Zuckerberg, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Dude, I'm very excited to have you. So, as I was saying before we started rolling, I am obsessed with the metaverse and about a little over a year ago, we pivoted our company to be entirely focused on Web 3. Um I don't use the word metaverse a lot just cuz I worry that it's quite a ways off. Um but the core principles of what you're doing, I think really align with my vision of where this goes anyway. And so, looking at the massive investments that you guys are making into the space, it seems like a no-brainer that you guys, even though the metaverse obviously will be built by a lot of people, that you guys will be arguably the largest individual contributor. There's a lot of parts and pieces of So, how do you think about the metaverse? What is it? And what are the steps to make it real? Yeah, so the way I think about this, I mean, I think you're right. I think the metaverse and Web 3 are related concepts, but are also distinct. Uh the metaverse I I think of as an immersive internet, sort of the the next chapter of the internet after the mobile internet, the successor, if you will. Um there's always a platform that comes next and and I think that the metaverse is is going to be that and I think that the defining characteristic of it is that you'll be able to feel um like you're present with other people in it. And if you're designing social interactions and and kind of uh platforms for people to to interact with each other, which is basically what I spend my life doing, um the ability to help people feel present with another person and all that goes into that, right? It's, you know, feeling like you're there, feeling like like you can see people's expressions clearly, like you can make eye contact, like you can kind of physically interact, you know, hear where they're coming from, spatial audio, you know, be able to express yourself in three dimensions. All All of these things that go into a feeling of presence, I just think it's going to deliver way better social experiences and a feeling of togetherness than any other technology that we've had before. And we try to kind of simulate that on phones and and other screens that we have. You know, we're we're doing this, you know, and right now and I can I can see you on a screen and it's it's nice and functionally I can I can see your face, so that's nice, but I I don't think you know, neither of us is under any illusion that we're we're you know, we don't feel like we're together. Mhm. So, I just think in the future, whether you're in virtual reality or augmented reality and you know, maybe we do a version of this conversation in the future where, you know, I'm a hologram on the couch next to you and and you can see that through your glasses. Mhm. Or any of the other platforms that are getting built. I think that that's just that's going to be just unlock a lot of new social experiences. And then on top of that, you're going to be able to do all kinds of new forms of entertainment, new types of hanging out, more physical types of computing, like things around fitness that don't really make sense on mobile phones or or computers today. And and I think it's going to transform work, too, right? So, you'll just be able to walk anywhere you want and snap your fingers and have your perfect workstation up. And then if you want to collaborate with someone, they'll kind of show up as an avatar or a hologram next to you and you have that, too. So, um So, that set of things is is how I think about the metaverse. And and I think you're you're right that we're certainly investing more than anyone else is in this. There's a lot of science that needs to still get solved. A lot of this isn't just, you know, engineering questions around, all right, let's go build stuff over the next few years. They're actually unsolved questions that need to get worked through and we have kind of hypotheses on how that might work, but for a lot of the hard questions we have, you know, five, six, seven teams, you know, trying to take different bets on it and we'll see see what works. So, that's an important part of it and I do think that that will end up being an important contribution to the whole field and I'm excited that we're doing that. As a builder in the space and the space is moving so rapidly, I'm constantly asking myself, am I focused on the right piece? So, as you develop these, you know, six or seven teams, how do you decide which problem you're going to tackle? So, obviously you're starting with your thesis, you're about bringing people together, so presence plays a huge role for you, but like how did you decide how to balance VR versus AR or AI? Like how how do you know in what order to attack this multitude of problems? Yeah, I think that that's a a really great question um and you know, we're taking a fairly first principles and maximalist approach to this of um of basically saying what are all the things that we think need to exist in order to build this software experience. I mean, at the end of the day, we we are a you know, software company. We build technology that that helps people interact with each other that way, but you know, we feel like we've run into all these limits in terms of what you can do on a phone or on a computer or just a flat screen. Um so, from that perspective, I think that these immersive platforms for hardware or virtual or augmented reality are going to be really fundamental and then there's all these different technologies that need to be advanced there. So, in order to get holographic displays, I mean, no one's built anything like that before, you know, with with the um you know, at the level of quality and kind of field of view that you need and resolution much less in in the form factor, which is like a normal pair of glasses. So, there were just all these different parts of that that you need to work on. So, it's not just one problem at a time. I think, you know, when I was getting started and and building Facebook, you know, 18 years ago, um when you're a small team, I think you you do things one thing at a time. Um you know, now, if if I had to say, "What is the the part of what we're doing that's the most important?" It would it would probably be the social platform work, the Horizon work that we're doing, and the avatars work to help people express themselves. Um but fundamentally, I don't think that that stuff will reach its full potential without also a lot of um invention that needs to happen in virtual and augmented reality to to be able to experience this. So, we're also working on display technology and um and, you know, things like eye tracking and face tracking so that when you're in VR, you can actually make eye contact with someone, or when you when you smile, or, you know, move your your face around, that gets translated to your avatar automatically. And those are things that are going to be in the the next VR headset that we're releasing. Or hand tracking so that we don't have to, you know, carry controllers around with you everywhere that you go, which I think is um you know, controls are good for some things, you know, just like how on your iPad you have a stylus, it's good for precise input, but but I don't think we're going to, you know, in the in the future version of your glasses that you're wearing, where those can produce holograms in augmented reality, I assume you're not going to be carrying around um uh controllers with you all the time. Right? So, so you need some combination of a kind of hand tracking, um which is an you know, advanced it's you know, some combination of of AI and computer vision um to basically be able to in real time track where each of your fingers are and and be able to interact that way. But there are other types of inputs, too, because you don't also want to walk around through the world and kind of have your hands in front of you all the time. Um so, we're working on stuff like these neural interfaces, where you just have this wrist band. I mean, this I think is actually one of the wilder things that we're that we're working on, where um and there are a lot of we we could go pretty deep on neural interfaces if you wanted to. I mean, there's a there's there's a whole different ways that you you can you can kind of get at how can you make it so that your your mind can kind of speak to a computer? The the solution that we've sort of come to is um it it's called EMG and you do it on the wrist, which is the the basic idea is that, you know, we all have extra motor neuron pathways to communicate from our brain down to our muscles. Right? So, there are actually all these different pathways that you could be using to communicate to control your hand, but they're redundant or unused for different reasons and you can train yourself to basically use them to communicate to a um a wristband or a computer typing different letters or different things like that. So, eventually you'll just kind of have this little thing. It looks like a you know, a little Fitbit or or wristband and and and you'll be able to you know, type quickly by you know, barely even moving your fingers when they're in your pocket or something like that. So, there there all these different things. So, it's you know, going back to your question, I don't think it's just like one thing or another. It wouldn't be that useful if we made a lot of progress on um on holographic displays, but then you had no way to tell the glasses what you wanted to do. Um so, it really is this um this pretty open-ended thing, which is you know, why we're I mean, why we're investing, you know, 10 or 15 billion dollars a year in this at this point. That's so crazy. Just like the internet changed the world forever, Web3 is going to change the world forever as well. And if you're interested in learning about the blockchain, cryptocurrency, NFTs, and what all of this actually means and how it's going to make for a brighter future, I have created Web3 University to teach you exactly what's going on and make sure that you aren't left behind. Registration is free, everything is laid out in sequential order, so even if you aren't fully sure what a blockchain does or why people are so excited about all of this, then you can go through step-by-step and you'll be well prepared to get started. You can go to web3u.io to register. It's completely free and we'll be updating the content there regularly as things change. I'll see you guys inside. Take care and be legendary. Peace. I'm I'm just I mean, I'm grateful that we you know, that the that the social media and social networking business that we have is you know, is that sufficient scale that we can fund all these investments and this you know, wild and and futuristic type of work, but I don't know. Honestly, I wish more companies did that, right? Because there are a lot of profitable companies in the world and I'm just glad that we can kind of keep on innovating on the on the core social network part of what we do, but also kind of funnel a lot of that into helping to hopefully define the the next generation of of what computing and social interactions going to be. Mhm. No, I totally agree, especially about the idea of hey, it'd be wonderful if more people did it. I think there's a couple, you know, things going on here. So, one, if we step back, even just trying to give a really succinct definition of what the metaverse is, I think it's very hard. And the reason I think it's hard, and I'd love to hear your feedback on this, but the reason I think it's hard is that when you talk to somebody who's really visionary in this space, what they end up keying into is that the virtual world sheds the need for obedience to physics. You can do anything. You've talked about, you know, you won't need a TV, a physical TV anymore cuz I can just project a screen that will appear as if it's on your wall, or it could surround you, or it could start being on your wall and then surround you. And so, we're no longer beholden to what we can mount on the wall, what can be manufactured in the manufacturing space. And so, when people talk about this, they start with okay, we need glasses and we have to, you know, make things smaller so that they fit, and they end up talking about, you know, eventually we're plugging into your brain in some fashion, whether it's, you know, on your wrist and just reading the electrical signals or actually doing like a neuralink style thing. So, to to begin to narrow it down, because what I what I know in my own business is eventually I have to translate that grand vision into what I'm going to do with the next 15 minutes. And so as I look at where you guys are going and you've broken things out into product lines, obviously keying off of the mission of helping people communicate and connect better, but you have a lot of different strategies that you're pursuing. So I want to start to understand like what are the the near-term horizons? And then I said there were two things. The second thing is and we'll take these individually, but the second thing is overwhelm, man. Like I I want to spend some time later in the interview just talking about how the hell you look at this massive problem and figure out one, how to sequence those 15-minute blocks so that you're actually doing something intelligent with your time, not being overwhelmed when the world's like, "This is never going to work, Mark. You're crazy." Um so starting with the first one for a second, how do you begin to um what do you think is the nearest term? What's going to be the first one to pop? Is it Horizon? Is it AR glasses? What's going to be that that immediate thing that hooks us? Yeah, sure. But but even before that, just to you know, you you you made this comment about how it's hard to define what the metaverse is. I mean, I would just offer my definition of this is an an immersive internet where you can feel a sense of presence with the people who you're with and the the things or or places that are that are around you. Um I'm going to push on one word in that definition that I think will help people. Yeah, sure. Internet. What do you mean? Like when you say an immersive internet, meaning that everything's interconnected, that I can shop, I can talk to a friend, I can listen to music or something else? Well, I I mean that is in the sense that, you know, we have this mobile internet today that you can access from phones wherever you go. But the way that we experience the internet today is that you're looking at it, right? It's on screens in front of us and I I think that this next generation you're going to be in it. Right, so instead of basically looking at a document, um you know, maybe you'll have a hologram in front of you that has a screen and um and and and you're going to be able to be editing it with someone who's sitting next to you and it'll feel like you're in the scene rather than you just kind of have have a phone or have a computer and and and kind of the internet is something that's on a screen in front of you. You're going to be immersed and present with the people who are there. Right, so at the point where you're at your dining room table and someone is a hologram next to you, are you looking at the the internet or are you kind of in that scene at that point? I think that that's the the sense of presence that I that I'm talking about. And then all this other stuff about breaking down physics, um I think comes from that, but this the sense of presence is really the fundamental defining characteristic of the metaverse, I think. It's you know, the and and that is I just think in our in our personal in directions, um that's the thing that just creates a lot of magic and it is so unique compared to every other form of communication that we have. So, I think having a computing platform that can deliver that is just really meaningful if if, you know, the the vision of what you're doing is to is to try to help people connect better. So, you know, going going back to your question around you know, what pieces are we we're going to see first, I I think you know, it's it's an interesting question in that I think when you're kind of a startup, your framework of doing something for 15 minutes and then doing something for 15 minutes after that, I think that sort of hyper-prioritized serialization is the right way to think about things. I think somewhat of the art of running a a larger enterprise is parallelism and being able to do a bunch of different things. So, I think that that's that's been a a big change in terms of how I I think about running a company or what we're doing that I've needed to adapt to over time because there is something that's just really fulfilling about being able to do a thing and then get feedback that it's done correctly and then then kind of go do the next thing. And whereas parallelism, it's so abstract. You're like working on a handful of different things and they're each sort of on a longer time frame and you don't necessarily get as much feedback. Um so, you need to be be a lot better at finding signals that show that the work is either on track or not so you can say, "Hey, this one's not going well. I need to go check in on that." Um in terms of, you know, what are what are people going to see first? Um the Quest VR headsets are getting quite popular, right? So, that I think was the first thing that we shipped as part of Reality Labs that has had some some mainstream success. I mean, it's it's not as big as, you know, a phone or or a or or a, you know, computer yet, but um but, you know, the jump from Quest 1 to Quest 2 in terms of sales was very big. We're going to continue um shipping devices at a at a pretty fast cadence. Um the the basic way that we're thinking about this is we want to have a uh a like a basically a consumer device um in the price range of where Quest 1 and and Quest 2 have been, but then we also want to have a work device. Uh you basically something that will eventually replace your laptop or your workstation at work where you'll be able to do productivity in it where it's that gets to the experience of like you're at your desk and you can just kind of open your your arms and get your kind of perfect workstation, get the the as many screens as big as you want laid out. Um collaborations that way you can kind of feel like you're there with people you're working with and they can either show up as avatars or holograms or, you know, one of the screens in VR can be screen to access Zoom and you know, people who aren't in VR can basically just show up on your desk or the head of the table when you're in a conference room meeting with um with other people in VR. So, I think you're going to get productivity, collaboration, a bunch of that kind of stuff. So, you're going to have the this consumer line for VR and you're going to have this work line. We're going to ship the first version of this work line later this year. This is basically what Project Cambria is. I talked about it at Connect last year. It has a lot of new features in it from, you know, color mixed reality to eye tracking and face tracking like we talked about before for being able to make eye contact and have your facial expressions translate to your avatar automatically. So, I think there you're going to be a bunch of things that are big step forward. But, I think the bottom line is you kind of need to because um I think the a person who's going to use the device mostly just for hanging out or playing games I don't know. Maybe they probably wouldn't want to pay necessarily $1,000 for a device. But, if you're replacing your workstation with it, then, you know, I I know a lot of companies would be willing to pay that amount or even more to to have something that increases, you know, I mean, if if if if I could increase the productivity of every engineer at our company by 2%, that would be worth a lot of money, right? So, you're just going to be able to pack more technology into that. And then we're kind of going to alternate where, you know, one year we'll do the consumer version and then the next year we'll do the work version and then the next year we'll do the next consumer version and so on. So, that's kind of what you're going to see on the on the VR side. In terms of metaverse software, Horizon is really I think that that's that we're we're putting a lot of energy into that. And Horizon is really starting to get quite built out. The creator tools are are starting to get a lot better. And now a big part of the focus is going to be just growing the community because if you're if you're building a social tool, then obviously having people there is is an important feature for that once it's at a certain level of maturity. So, you know, we're going to focus a lot for the rest of the year of not just having it on Quest, but also making it so that you can jump into a world in Horizon from Facebook or or Instagram or when you're in a a video call on WhatsApp or or Messenger, you know, it's it doesn't just need to be a a kind of video call with your camera. You can sort of be embodied as your avatar and and be in in a virtual world in Horizon interacting with people. So, I know those kind of experiences will be pretty cool, too. And because a lot more people have phones than VR headsets now, for the for the foreseeable future, I know that's going to be important for getting that off the ground. But that's that's a big next step, too. And I would I would guess that over the next you know, 12 18 months, we'll see really quick growth in the Horizon community and and and for creators. And I'm pretty excited about that. And then on the AR side, um you know, we shipped this the Ray-Ban Stories product um partnering with with Luxottica. That was sort of the first smart glasses product. And we're basically taking two approaches on on AR. We're we're basically trying to say take a normal pair of glasses at a reasonable price point and on the one hand put as much technology as you can into it. So, for Ray-Ban Stories first version, we were able to get cameras and um and speakers and microphones, so you can you can capture photos and videos and you can take phone calls on it. You can go out for a run and listen to music with it and you have an assistant in there. Um and then, you know, for for whatever we do next, we'll try to, you know, pack even more technology into it while keeping a kind of classic form factor and and a good price. The other approach that I think is helpful to take is basically starting from what you're really trying to build with with AR, which is, okay, you don't just want cameras in it, you want holograms, right? So, um for that you need like a a kind of laser, you know, projector that's in the the arm of the glasses. And then you need, you know, the holographic wave guides with big field of view that can basically show, uh you know, whether it's another person, like like we've talked about, maybe a future version of this we're doing this where you're a hologram on my couch or I'm a hologram on your couch. But in order to do that, you want a pretty wide field of view. Um you want that to be in a great form factor. That's a lot of new technology. That's I mean, it's just a lot to pack into the glasses that are maybe 5 mm thick, you know, basically a projector, wave guides, computer, like a chip, um you know, batteries, microphone, speakers, um tools to basically cameras and sensors to to be able to do hand tracking, things to have an understand where your eyes are and where you're looking so we can render things correctly. Just it's just a ton of stuff. So, the first version of that, I think it's you know, maybe it's not going to be quite as small as the smart glasses or quite as affordable, but I think over time these two things are basically going to converge until you have one set of products there. So, you already have the smart glasses. At some point in the next few years, I I hope we'll we'll basically have the first kind of full AR glasses, and then it'll just be this race to combine those together. But that's sort of the road map. Um I don't know, long answer your question, but um but that's that's a you know, a lot of what we're building on. Makes sense. Now, so one, as somebody who is So, I'm as an entertainment company, I'm approaching all of this from I need the problems that you just listed to be solved. I don't have the budget to solve them. Very happy uh that you're in there solving a lot of these problems. Now, I have a thesis right now about where I think NFTs fit into all of this, that right now I feel a bit like an outsider. I'm certainly not the only voice, but I feel a bit lonely. I want to run it by you, see what you think. So, right now, I think NFTs are being treated by a lot of people as a financial vehicle, and it's primarily attracting the attention of people that treat it much like they would treat an investment or a stock market portfolio. And my thing is that it's a signaling molecule, and that it's never going to go where it needs to go until we can get past the where you know, the vast majority of the energy is financial in nature. And so, the way that I look at it is it becomes a you hold things in your wallet that signal affinity to me as the creator, right? So, if you come into my what I'll call a metaverse archipelago, my little island, which I'm hoping you'll deliver the APIs that we need for people to bounce around, which I think is absolutely critical. But for now, you're going to be in my little corner of the metaverse. But I can create experiences, which is how we think of it, and the NFTs queue me as to what experience you would want. So, maybe you bought a t-shirt, and it has like we have one of our shirts has a heart symbol on it. My wife and I actually teach on relationships. So, if you have the heart symbol, we can give you a custom experience where we've motion captured ourselves, you can come in, hear us talk about it, ask questions, whatever. And somebody that doesn't have that shirt is not going to see that experience. Or if we partner up with we're fiendishly trying to partner with different anime companies. And so, if you have one of their NFTs, that now unlocks access to an island, let's say, within our space. And so, we look at the the NFTs is a way for you to signal. And then obviously, as this gets more complex and people have a thousand NFTs in their wallet, that we've got AI that goes in and goes, "Okay, people that have these three NFTs like this kind of experience, they stay longer, whatever." And now you can create something. Is that how you guys are approaching NFTs? I know that you have some pretty big plans for NFTs. Yeah, so first let me just say that I really agree with your point around expression. You know, I think we're our whole thrust as a company is around you know, helping people connect and communicate. So, we tend to think about these interactions that people have as I mean, part of communication is you're exchanging information, but a lot of it is just signaling and expression and saying something about yourself and you know, trying to find like-minded people and form communities and express your values and you know, I just think we have such a deep need to be understood as people and so much of what we do from you know, how we communicate to you know, what our hair looks like, to the clothes we choose, to to all this is goes towards sort of expressing those values and and what we care about and what type of communities we're part of. And I think that there's no reason to think that that will be any different in um digital spaces. Right? That that's a lot of what, you know, early social networks started off as and and I think that they've become more sophisticated in terms of helping people express and and and share the expression that they want. Um but when I think about NFTs in the metaverse, I think, you know, people are going to If you're spending a lot of time, um you know, whether it's working in VR if a fair amount of your meetings now are are kind of happening in in virtual reality in the metaverse or, you know, as as a hologram, you know, sitting there with someone, then you're going to care about what you look there. And um and you're probably not going to want to wear the same thing every day, right? So, you're you're probably going to, you know, have a collection of clothing and and digital objects just like um you have clothing in the physical world. And um and you're going to want that clothing to be meaningful and express something about you. So, you're not just going to want it to be like generic like a lot of these early systems. Okay, what what color what color shirt do you want? But, you know, which designer made it? Which creator made it? That's going to be meaningful. And I think that that needs a whole format for commerce. And I think NFTs are going to be a really important part of that. And then, of course, the other part of this is around it interoperability. And if you buy a shirt or a sweatshirt, um you're not just going to want that to work in one app. You're going to want to be able to go to another place and and have it work, too. Um you know, it'd be pretty annoying if um you know, your your whole kind of physical wardrobe um I mean, I I guess there are some parts of this. It's like, I don't want to wear a suit most of the time, but I guess if I'm going to meet with someone in the government, I do or something like that. But, um but in general, for the things that we want to express about ourselves, you kind of want to be able to do that in um in in, you know, wherever you want. So, interoperability is important. And I think NFTs and the blockchain will hopefully unlock that. What do you think about when people push back on that and they're like, "Look, you you're never going to be able to bring a game character from one game to another." Um how do you respond to that? Well, I mean, I think it's probably pretty extreme to say you'll never be able to do that. I I think Look, I I think it is true that some things only make sense in one context or another. Right? For example, I'm not going to be a person who wears a suit casually. I mean, some people do that, but um but you know, like I was just saying, I will do it if I'm going to a formal meeting, but it it is true that like that's a context that only, you know, makes sense for me as part of what I do. Similarly, if you're, you know, if you're playing a, you know, military simulator game and you're, you know, someone who is is sort of in all this military garb, it probably won't make sense to to kind of um to bring that into some other experiences that you have. But I think it's a pretty big leap to say that just because some things won't transfer between experiences, to say that nothing will. Um and I think it's really important to build out the infrastructure and the rails so that way developers can have things transfer between if they want to. So okay, maybe if you're building like a, you know, military game, um you don't choose to let people wear casual clothing. You say, "Okay, you have to be dressed as a soldier." Fine, that's the choice that the developer, the designer can make, but I I I think in a lot of experiences, especially social ones where people are getting together and want to express something about themselves, you're going to want these things to transfer. And I would imagine that if we make this pretty easy for it to be interoperable, then a lot of developers will choose for that to be the case even if not everyone does. Yeah. I mean, there's there's a lot of information, I think, um and sorry, and infrastructure that needs to get built just to get to this place where the default for developers is that they can easily enable that interoperability. Um and that's one of the reason why, you know, we're starting building for NFTs not just in our metaverse and reality labs work, but also across our our family of apps. And, you know, I mean, one of the new things that I wanted to to announce and and share today is that we're starting to test digital collectibles on Instagram so that creators and and collectors can display their NFTs. And you know, a huge part of this I think you know, goes back to what you're saying. It's about expression, right? It's saying something about yourself. What do you want on your profile? What's the collection that you want to show? You know, maybe there's a financial component about that and and that you know, people bought these things and maybe they want to sell them at some point, but a lot of it is about expression and certainly in the context of a social network that makes sense. So I'm I'm really excited to start testing this. We're going to bring similar functionality to Facebook soon, too, and then maybe to to other apps in our in our family. And we're also, you know, going to work on augmented reality NFTs, basically 3D NFTs that you can bring to Instagram stories using Spark AR. So that's our our kind of software AR platform. So you can put this kind of digital art into 3D spaces and and kind of project it onto onto physical spaces as well. So what what all this sort of adds up to is you know, for the foreseeable future there going to be a lot more people using things like Instagram and Facebook on their phones than using virtual or augmented reality glasses. Maybe by the end of the decade that starts to shift, but you have eight years until that. So so in order to kind of help establish some of this infrastructure so that way you know, more people get used to it, they get used to seeing it, they get used to interacting with it. Developers get comfortable with the fact that hey, this is really in a lot of different experiences. So I can bet if I'm building something that people are going to understand what that interoperability is and want to be able to take things and bring them from one place to another. I think just as as kind of a whole ethos and norm of how this stuff gets built. If we can start helping to push the world towards that now, that's something that I think we should be working on over the coming years. So that way by the time the the metaverse becomes this ubiquitous thing that that we all spend a lot of time in, um it can be done in an interoperable way. All right, my friend, I have a big announcement. My incredible and talented wife, Lisa, is about to launch her new book, Radical Confidence. In it, she has managed to perfectly capture the process of how to go from feeling lost and insecure to taking control of your life and doing amazing things despite feeling fear, sometimes a lot of fear. Now, let me tell you, nobody knows Lisa better than me, but when I read Radical Confidence for the first time and heard her describe what it was like for her to go from having these big, exciting dreams as a kid to then as an adult scheduling her life around the TV shows that she wanted to watch, or how lonely and isolated she felt instead of pursuing her dreams, it was brutal for me. I would never say, though, that it was worth it for her to go through all of that just so that she could write something down that allows others to avoid it, but I will say that at least she was able to capture the strategies that she used to break out of that rut, find her voice, and begin doing incredible things despite her insecurities and fears that she wasn't going to be good enough to achieve great things. Pre-order your copy today because if you act now, you can claim the bonuses that Lisa has created for you at radicalconfidence.com. They're only available if you pre-order, so act now. Then, once you've done that, we'll get back to today's episode. All right, guys, read the book and get ready to be the hero of your own life. Peace out. Yeah, man, that gets really exciting for me. So, my obsession, even though we're building something that I I have referred to as a game-like experience, my emphasis, at least in the early phases, is the experience side. And I think the the big thing I want people to understand about the metaverse is it is a long walk to get there that will be done in these steps. And so, introducing the ability to bring an NFT into your Facebook or Instagram story, like that's one of those steps where that will be fun in and of itself. So now I'm guessing, but like I can imagine a world where people can edit that within, they can get the character to move, to dance, to whatever. They could change clothes in their story all virtually. And but tied to the NFTs that they have. I could see a store owner modeling their own NFTs that people could buy in their store, you know, doing some sort of swipe motion and their clothes change. Obviously that's pure speculation, but that kind of thing like as that infrastructure begins to take place, people focused on "Oh, you'll never be able to bring one character from one game to another." But you'll be able to bring them from experience to experience to experience. And there's going to be so much that's experiential versus gaming. Yeah, I mean for this first release, we're more focused on digital art and digital collectibles more than clothes. Clothes have a lot of additional challenges for interoperability because the the clothing interacts with your avatar and your your body type and the physics of the environment. And I mean we have whole teams just working on realistic physics models for clothing as you move around having it bounce appropriately. And if if you're designing clothing for one environment, you also want it to behave consistently. So there's there's a bunch of kind of open formats that I think need to get developed in order for clothing to really be interoperable. And that is, you know, as you say a part of this longer journey towards getting towards the metaverse. But the the part where I think is is quite possible to build out today is is our own digital art and digital collectibles and displaying that on your Instagram profile. And I mean you're certainly right that this is this is just step one. I mean it's a it's a test, it's on the path towards where we want to go, but fundamentally we believe that this is going to be an important technological direction for the world and for the work that we're doing. So you know, I always I always believe that like if you think that something is going to be important, find a way to start working on it. There's only so much that you can really learn by thinking about something in the abstract. You you really learn by like putting an idea out there and seeing how people use it and then we'll we'll get feedback on what we should build next and we'll just keep on keep on iterating on this and you know, like a lot of stuff in web 3 or or probably any area of development, you know, it's not the first or second versions that end up being the biggest thing that you do. It's it's, you know, by the time that you get to V3 or V4 and you've gotten a few rounds of feedback that things can really blow up and be um and be a lot more meaningful. So, you know, we're committed to this. We're going to keep focusing on it um and it's it's I I just think part of an important technolo- technological direction overall. Do you guys have anything on the road map that would allow people to like in a Facebook group use an NFT as a gating mechanism? So, you can only be in this Facebook group if you have this NFT. Yeah, I mean, that's that's certainly I I think it'll be an important part of this. I mean, NFTs as a mechanism for proof of ownership or proof of authenticity um you know, people are already experimenting with with this on with a bunch of NFTs outside of our our services and and um yeah, certainly I think that that um that seems like one important use case to support over time. So, yeah, I mean, I did mention that we're we're starting on Instagram. I mean, the news today is that we're I mean, I've been talking about how we've been building something. Today, we're actually shipping it right and and getting started with that. So, that's exciting. It's um and it's always fun to go from talking about something and building it to getting it in front of um of of real people and getting feedback. Um but um but yeah, the Facebook integration is is is coming soon and I think I think use cases like what you're talking about are going to be pretty important there. I I think that there are probably uses for that within Instagram, too. Not just not just Facebook, but but I I think groups is is one where that would make sense. Yeah, I think people are going to be surprised when you really sit down and think about all the different ways that you can use an NFT as what I call a signaling molecule that it it offers some instruction, whether it's something simple like letting somebody into a group or it's something more complicated of show a video but only to this person or um if you have that you get this for free. I mean there's all kinds of things that people can do and you know right now partly because of gas on Ethereum and things like that you get people making like they want every NFT to be worth a fortune but I think as people begin to rethink them and as they can be sold more affordably that a whole like world of options will open up in terms of how people can use this stuff. Now as I start thinking about that it inevitably takes me to AI and how we use AI to discern patterns as people have more and more and more NFTs. What's the role that AI is playing for you guys in what way are you investing in it? Well, I mean AI is probably one of the I mean it's one of the technological trends that we see that continues to make even faster progress than than I predict on a kind of consistent basis. So that's been really awesome to see and it it powers so much of what we do. I mean on the in the social network part of what we do um you know the ranking of what you see in Facebook and Instagram is is largely an AI problem. I mean that's like a state-of-the-art um implementation there. I mean our business ads showing you the the best thing out of the millions of possible ads that we could show you. Like what is the thing that you're going to care about? That's a big AI problem. um Keeping people safe on our services is is a is a big AI problem. Um within the metaverse I think that there's a a handful of these too. So you know we we talked a bit about avatars before and um you know I think people are going to have a range of avatars. Right? So on the one hand um you might want a photorealistic avatar that really like looks exactly like you do um for more formal meetings or um you know work or things like that. And then I think we'll have more stylized avatars that are a little more expressive and fun but still on the on the spectrum of being an expression of of kind of your authentic identity. And then I think there's this other dimension which is more about fantasy. So, I think you'll want a a maybe expressive cartoony style avatar, but maybe you want to be a dragon one day. Um you know, and so you have all these different use cases for for avatars and and kind of have these things show up and and and how you'll show up in these different experiences. But now let's say um you know, one of your favorite designers and creators makes a a sweatshirt that you love and you you buy it as a virtual good. How is it going to work between those those different use cases? Well, I mean, I think one of the solutions is you can build an AI system that can help adapt the piece of content so that way, okay, here's what the sweater would look like on a photorealistic version of you, here's what the sweater would look like on the stylized kind of cartoon version of you, here's what it might look like on the dragon version of you. Um and I mean, that I think is going to be really powerful for the whole metaverse economy because now all of a sudden, if you're a creator, you just basically design the thing once and the AI helps scale it to to how you want to express yourself in these different modes. Whereas without that, um you know, maybe um you know, this is sort of a form of interoperability too because without that maybe the the designer or the creator makes one thing and you can use it for, you know, just your photorealistic avatar for example and then it doesn't work for the others and now if it's if it's less valuable, if you can't use it in as many cases, then you're probably not going to be willing to pay as much for it, which means that now the the creators either not going to, you know, have as many sales or people aren't going to be as interested in it. So, the the AI I think is going to unlock a ton of use cases like this. Um I mean, here's another example. We we showed this uh prototype of something called Builder Bot which is basically a helper for people creating worlds in Horizon. And the idea is instead of and we have this whole scripting language where you can be in VR and and you can kind of drag things around and lay out the world um the way you want, which is pretty wild and fun. It's like the first creation tool where you're like in the thing that you're creating as you're building it, right? So, you're not you're not writing a script and compiling it and seeing what it looks like um or drawing something on a screen um in Photoshop. You're you're like in it and building it. Um but now with AI we we also have the tools so you can just say, "Okay, put a tree over there. Um actually, I want a tree Can you maybe make that tree have more branches? Um all right, maybe it's fall, so make the make the tree um maybe the branches should be the the the leaves should be turning red and yellow instead of green. Um it's like, "Okay, uh put a waterfall there." What you know, whatever. However you want to design this thing, um being able to script it or or kind of put it together with your hands is one thing, but also being able to use AI to just describe the world that you want to create and have um an AI help build it. I I Do you have to load the assets or can the AI actually construct the trees, the clouds, the whatever? Um I mean I think over time it'll get even more generative, but I mean, there's a whole road map here as well. Right now, we're mostly focused on, okay, it knows a certain number of things and and we want you to be able to express those, but I mean, in one of the demos that I did, it was like, "All right, here put some clouds in the sky." It's like, "Actually, make them cumulonimbus clouds." And like new you know, it you know, we were able to make it so that it kind of had a sense of what that what that was and it and it made clouds that that were that were accurate to that. So, over time um I mean, obviously, it's going to need to know what the concepts are, but being able to be generative even for things that it it doesn't have, you know, a texture for or something like that. I I I do think is where we want to go with that, but there's there's a long road map on that on that, too. Hm. How do you think about ownership in all of this? So, even as you were describing that scenario where the the AI if the AI isn't procedurally generating it, can people create items that they contribute to that, but they put a price tag on it? Like how do you think about that? That seems to be in Web3, people that are hardcore Web3, they love themselves some decentralization, and they definitely love ownership. Where do you come down in those two really big ideas? Yeah, I mean one of the things that we're working on for Horizon is basically the ability to just import anything that you make outside and and have have an asset store around this that that people can exchange or buy things. And I think some people are going to want to just help create an open source set of assets just because they want to see the community thrive and they they want there to be a good set of basic stuff. You know, as a company we're also incentivized to put a lot of general stuff in there so that way people have good building blocks when they're building a world that they can that they can use. We're investing many millions of dollars just in in kind of basic kind of open source free content creation as building blocks for these worlds. But look, I mean a huge part of the goal is to enable creators and to grow the metaverse economy. And in order for that to work, people need to be able to sell things, right? And and and that means that you you need a sense of ownership. So we're we're absolutely going to be very focused on that. I mean we have this goal where we're not going to build the vast vast majority of the the worlds that people build or or use in in the metaverse. So someone has to, and the people who are doing that need to be able to make a living doing that. So they they need to you know, whether that's you know, designing things and then selling them or designing experiences and then having people access them for free, but then you know, being able to sell experiences within that. There are all these different business models that I think will be possible, but you know, fundamentally if we're going to be able to support millions of creators making a living helping to build out the metaverse, then then yeah, I mean, I think this concept of ownership and and and the commerce that that enables is just going to be really critical. What about decentralization? So, obviously, it's a mixed bag for the Web3 community as like this sort of renegade pirate attitude starting things up to be working alongside of really established companies. And how do you think about that tension and yeah, how do we navigate that forward? Yeah. I think any movement like this has people who are just very ideological and then people who are more practical as well. And and look, I think every version every evolution of of technology so far has had some things that are centralized and some things that are decentralized. There's an equilibrium between those. So, I I think the idea that you're going to get to some world where everything is decentralized and you don't have any large companies that are playing any centralized functions, that seems highly unlikely to me. But what I do think, you know, there's this old saying that there are two ways that value gets created in the world, by bundling things and by unbundling things. And it's um and I do think that what we're seeing is Web3 through decentralization means that things that were previously bundled or bundled is maybe another word for centralized can now be unbundled or decentralized, which I think frees up space to maybe take some things that were chaotic before and now do and now centralize things in different ways while having other parts of the ecosystem be decentralized and basically express different values um that may be more relevant for for where society is today and the needs that people have. So, I I I think that we're we're going to see decentralization of a bunch of things. Um but I mean I don't know. Here's another analogy that I that I think about here. There there are are certainly parallels I think between Web3 and the open-source movement. They're they're not exactly the same, but I think that there are interesting parallels. And a lot of um people who were early in the open-source movement, you know, through the '90s, um you know, a lot of them sort of saw they looked at Microsoft as this kind of kind of like centralized closed-source company and they were like, "That's the you know, they they they said that's the enemy." Um and I think for a while Microsoft got this got this wrong. I think that they had this leadership message internally um for a while where some people were even saying open-source is cancer, which I I think just really set back Microsoft in terms of being able to um being able to integrate there. But, you know, if you look at what Satya has done now, um you know, they they they bought Bit GitHub. Um they they support open-source on all their cloud business with Azure, which is now the the kind of biggest growth part of what they do. They embraced open-source. So, even though, you know, in a lot of ways Microsoft obviously still a fairly centralized company, by kind of embracing open-source, they've been able to grow their business um and actually done quite well. So, it's it's sort of an interesting example um of of how you can you can have a centralized thing that benefits and serves this open community um and the two have an equilibrium. So, that's kind of I mean there are a lot of lessons from that that I try to take to to to inform Meta's approach to Web3. Um where, you know, there's some people in the Web3 community who just say, "Hey, you know, everything needs to be decentralized. The fact that there are these centralized social networks at all, um you know, that's that's some people think that that's bad. Um But but I just think we should lean into this, right? I think that there are things that can be more decentralized. And um and if we can help enable that, um just like Microsoft sort of found this equilibrium where the open source movement's growth actually contributed to their success as a company over time, um I actually think the same should be true for us. So, you know, rather than trying to fight against this and and and assume that just because some people in the community, you know, uh draw contrast with what we're doing today, I I just think that there's a huge opportunity for everyone here, and that's why I'm so committed to to Web3 and NFTs, and even though, you know, a lot of the use cases aren't necessarily all sorted out yet, I I believe that a lot more will get sorted out over the next 5 years. And um you know, there always it's there always naysayers with technology who say, "Ah, this doesn't do something yet, so therefore it's not going to amount to much." But, I don't know, I kind of think in order to build one of these companies, you need to be fundamentally optimistic about technology in the world. So, when I look at a new technology that doesn't do something yet, my instinct is, "Oh, it probably just doesn't do that yet, not it can't ever possibly happen." So, let's like try to be a part of the solution and help that be a be a thing. Um but that's that's kind of the approach that I'm that I'm trying to take towards this. How do you navigate that internally? So, I imagine uh look, you're no stranger to criticism. You've been in the face of it for what, 18 years now? 17, 18 years? So, obviously there's a survivorship bias to look at you and just say, "Well, he's the kind of person that can deal with that, keep a vision, keep moving forward." But, how do you articulate that inside the company? Like, when you've got such a big vision for where you're going to rebrand one of the biggest, most successful companies on planet Earth, you know, give it a totally new name, signal internally that we're doing something differently, have the world go, "This is crazy." To some extent, there's other people that love it, but to some extent have people be like, "Yo, this is nuts." And you've got to deal internally with people that might not have your same fortitude. How do you message that and help them stay focused and excited? Yeah, well, I mean, I think this gets back to some of the questions that you asked before about, you know, what are the wins along the way? Uh I think it's okay for something to take a long time as long as you have exciting milestones and things that you're working on that are tangible in the next few years, too. It's it's pretty hard to ask people, I think, to just like go underwater for 10 years and after some period it's like, okay, well, the end of this is going to be all amazing, but I have you're not going to see anything and any kind of clear milestones along the way, which is why I think it's really important that, you know, every year or so we're shipping a new, you know, VR device and you're seeing Horizon get a lot better and we're seeing the neural interface research make progress and the avatars are getting more realistic and more expressive and um we're able to make things more interoperable and you're seeing the number of developers grow and the number of people who are using all the stuff is just growing really quickly. So, there's a lot of indicators that I think are are quite positive right now and I think that, you know, people are pretty good at looking at the um the trajectory of things and not just um whether they're whether they have succeeded yet or not. Um In in a lot of cases, if you're if you're paying attention, I think looking at the trajectory is is um which, you know, for you know, the people at our company, I think that, you know, they're obviously paying a lot of attention to to how we're doing and and kind of and and pay attention to the trajectory that we're on. So, I think that that's That's a big piece of this is just making sure that we can we can um you know, that the things that we're doing are are um are actually helping people and there's new use cases that we can unlock. With Quest 2, for example, it wasn't just that, you know, a lot more people have bought it and use it than Quest 1, it's that there are completely new use cases now. Fitness just kind of came out of nowhere, right? It's you know, you have people using Quest now as as if it's their Peloton, right? You know, where it's same basic thing where you buy the hardware, whether it's, you know, a treadmill or the bike in the case of Peloton, but then you buy a subscription, and um and and you can take lessons through it or or or kind of have workout sessions. And then you can do that with boxing or dancing or or all kinds of different cardio with FitXR and Supernatural and um and and a handful of other experiences on Quest, and that's pretty powerful. And that was just like, okay, it's I don't know, it's pretty exciting when you're on the the early part of a curve and just completely new use cases emerge that you hadn't even really thought were were were going to be ripe for a while. Um you know, those are those are good are good signs. But but I'm going back to your question. Um I I I mean, surely, I mean, like you said, a lot of people, you know, joined our company or invested in our company or or um you know, however they came to us because they loved and believed in the social network and social media part of what we do. So, I also think it's really important that we continue to show that we're making progress there. And clearly, there's a lot of evolution in that space, too. Um where, you know, I mean, you mentioned I've been doing this for 18 years. When I got started, um most social networks were text, right? It's I mean, the your first Facebook profile was primarily text. You had one photo, but it was, you know, mostly mostly a text description of kind of signaling and expressing things about your identity. Um and you know, then we got mobile phones, and they had cameras, and, you know, most of how we shared and expressed things about ourselves started to be on phones and started to be visual through photos. And then a set of years later, um the mobile networks got good enough so that way if you want to watch a video, it didn't have to buffer, right? So, now you can just start watching videos instantaneously. If you want to upload a video, it's pretty quick. So, now video is really the main way that people share online. So, there's these these big evolutions um in what we've done, and we've we've had to go through some very large changes, right? From from desktop to computers to mobile, from text to photo to video. Um And we're continuing to make those those evolutions. I've been we're in the middle of a big one now in Instagram and Facebook with Reels, right? In short-form video. Um which is, you know, I I I just shared the other day, you know, Reels are already now, um I think it's more than 20% of the time that people spend on Instagram. So, I I think that that's that's important work to do, too, to show that we're we're continuing to innovate on on kind of what people have historically thought of as the core part of what we're doing. But, you know, it's it's also, you know, a lot of this metaverse work, it's um it's a natural continuation of some of this work, too, where, you know, you go from text to photos to videos, and that's not the end of the line. There's going to be something more immersive and richer after that, and I think that's where the metaverse fits in. And similarly, if you look at the computing platforms, we went from computers to phones, and then I think we're going to go to these more immersive devices that you can have um a lot of the time, you know, if you have glasses, you can have that around, you know, with you all all all day long. So, um so these devices I think will also get more natural, and that's a that's a kind of natural evolution of our work, too. So, I think helping people see those connections while making progress, um and uh and and also just continuing to to innovate on on the kind of the core things that got you there, I think are are probably the big pieces. And then a bunch of it is just not giving up. I I don't I don't know. I mean, it's I mean, that's not really a communication question, but um I mean, you asked kind of what's the message. How do you even How do you How do you kind of help people have faith? But, um I I I do think that a lot of entrepreneurship is just you're going to get all these setbacks, and um I I I just think like a lot of it building any of these things is just like a crazy amount of pain and um times when I think most people would give up, and um and you just kind of have to not give up. And that can be tough, but, um, you know, fortunately I think I've I've I've, you know, we've been through this a few times now that I I also just have a feeling for what that's like, and I feel pretty confident that we can we can push through some of the challenges, um, and that that we'll encounter along the way and and just have the fortitude to do that. Yeah, that I think is critically important. So, when I'm going through something like that, the big thing I'm always asking myself is people fear change, right? So, it might be my employees, it might be the people that I'm trying to serve, and I'm trying to give them something in a new way. Um, but I know they fear change, but ultimately if you give them something that's better, that you can oftentimes get that adoption, not always, but oftentimes. And one thing I've noticed is that there there's a very split camp with NFTs right now. And as somebody who makes NFTs, I mean, that's a huge part of our business, I could not be more pro NFT if I tried, but there is a an almost violent reaction against NFTs on behalf of a large swath of the gaming community. But when I think through to human nature and what awaits them on the other side, it seems obvious to me that the the desire to own something, if handled well, like that will trigger something in them that will be far stronger than their initial, you know, negative reaction. What is it that gives you confidence in NFTs in the face of the split camp? Like some people love it, but some people hate it. Well, I I guess I would just take a step back and talk about why it's important to grow the metaverse economy more broadly, because even if, you know, someone even if not every person cares about, you know, what their avatar looks like, um, or what the what digital goods they have, um, you know, gamers do care about what games are available, right? And and making sure that the best content is there. And, you know, if you're, um, and if you want to, you know, hang out with friends, you want to make sure that the best worlds and experiences are available to do that. Or, you know if you're into fitness you want to make sure that you know all the sports that you want to do are supported and someone needs to build all that stuff and the way that they build that and the way that they build a team of engineers and artists and folks in order to bring that together is um is is basically through commerce and and being able to you know have a a business model that that they can make a living from and that hopefully can support you know not just a few people in in making content but millions of people in building all of these different stuff. So I I just think you know I I kind of we're not just building technology, we're trying to also help foster this ecosystem. Because at the end of the day we're not going to build most of the content. We're not you know by by a long shot. The vast majority of it are going to get created by by creators in the ecosystem and so I think a big part of what we need to do is really lean into all of the different ways that creators could make money. So you know some of that will be you know things like supporting commerce part of that will be NFTs and and ownership around that. Um part of it will be about making it really easy for people to pay for things. Um part of it will be advertising, right? Because I mean in in worlds I mean there's you know advertising that can help support creation too. Um but I just think the more different tools that creators have to be able to make money um the more they're going to be able to do their work and hire people to join their team to build out even more use cases and that will propel all these platforms forward. So I don't know. I mean maybe in the future some of the people who are skeptical will still not actually like the use case that they're complaining about but I think that they'll like all the additional content that is now possible because there is a robust um economy around the metaverse. That makes sense. Mark, this has been incredible man. Thank you so much for taking the time. I imagine everybody knows that they can find you at Facebook or Instagram. Is there anywhere else uh that you want people to seek you out? I mean the those are probably the two the two main ones for now and um and I I guess when we when when um more people are are in uh virtual reality and augmented reality, then then um I think Horizon's going to be the next one, but let's um we'll we'll we'll build that out over the next year or so and um and hopefully, you know, we'll we'll we'll make that community a lot more robust, too. I love it, man. Guys, everybody watching, I'm telling you the amount of investment that they are making at Meta into building the metaverse is really extraordinary. As somebody who believes so strongly in where this is all going, could not be more grateful for that investment. I think that getting standards is going to be a huge part of what makes this work. Showing people how cool it can be is going to be uh an absolutely necessary part of adoption. So, Mark, not only thank you for being on the show, but thank you for those investments that all of us will get to be able to take advantage of. Uh I think it's going to be an amazing future. Yeah, I'm super excited about it, too. Thanks for having me on. Um it's always always fun to talk about this stuff. So, thanks. Dude, same. You got it. All right, guys, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. Well, I think this is maybe the most important thing to know about living right now in the 21st century, that we are now hackable animals, that we have the technology to decipher what you think, what you want, to predict human choices, to manipulate human desires in ways which were never possible before.