Being “First” Versus Being “Best”

Like many people today, I read Jose Antonio Vargas' 6,000-word profile of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in The New Yorker. Unlike some, I found it neither boring nor damaging , but rather, thought-provoking . But actually, the thing that stuck out the most to me about the piece (beyond The West Wing stuff, which I still find humorous/interesting ) wasn't about Zuckerberg at all. Instead, it was something Chris Cox , Facebook's head of product, said towards the end of the piece. “ Getting there first is not what it’s all about. What matters always is execution. Always ,” Cox told Vargas for the piece. This was in response to the idea that Facebook had copied Quora's (a company started by a bunch of ex-early-Facebookers) idea with Facebook Questions. But it's actually something I was thinking about quite a bit this weekend, entirely unrelated to Facebook.