"My friends are people who like building cool stuff. We always have this joke about people who want to just start companies without making something valuable. There's a lot of that in Silicon Valley"

Zuckerberg frames identity around being a builder and underscores the power of peer environments. By surrounding himself with people who “like building cool stuff,” he signals that the core currency is creation: prototypes, shipped features, solutions that delight or change behavior. The social circle becomes a filter and an amplifier, valuing craft, iteration, and the satisfaction of making something real.

The joke about people who want to “just start companies” points to a common inversion of priorities: treating the company as the product rather than the product as the reason for the company. It’s a critique of startup theater, pitch decks, vanity metrics, and fundraising headlines substituting for genuine utility. Companies born from the desire to be founders often chase signals of success rather than the messy, unglamorous work of discovering and delivering value.

“Cool stuff” is not frivolous; it’s shorthand for curiosity-driven innovation that earns attention because it’s useful, novel, or simply better. Builders are pulled forward by problems and possibilities; the corporate shell emerges as a container for value already being created. This focus aligns incentives with users instead of investors, press, or status.

Calling out Silicon Valley is both affectionate and cautionary. The region’s density of capital and ambition produces world-changing products, and an environment where hype can masquerade as progress. Social proof, accelerators, and valuations can create a game where winning doesn’t require solving real problems, at least for a while.

The implied lesson is pragmatic: choose peers who ship. Start with people’s needs, not with cap tables. Measure utility, not applause. Let a company form around traction rather than trying to conjure traction around a company. Over time, the market is an unforgiving editor; substance outlives performance. Builders endure because they keep making, learning, and delivering, until the “cool stuff” is simply indispensable.