Every Apple fan is likely familiar with Steve Jobs’ pilgrimage to India, during which he formulated some of the ideas that would serve him so well in the future.
But did you know that, years later, Jobs would suggest that fellow entrepreneurs follow in his path by visiting the same mountain Kainchi Dham Ashram temple that he once had?
According to a new story told by Mark Zuckerberg, that’s exactly the advice that Jobs once laid out for the then-green Facebook CEO. And Zuckerberg was pleased to take him up on his advice.
Speaking during a stage appearance with the visiting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Zuckerberg said that:
“This is a story I haven’t told publicly, and very few people know. Early on in our history, before things were really going well, we hit a tough patch and a lot of people wanted to buy Facebook, and thought we should sell the company. I went and I saw one of my mentors, Steve Jobs, and he told me that in order to reconnect with what I thought was the mission of the company, I should visit this temple that he had gone to in India early on in his evolution of thinking about what he wanted Apple and his vision of the future to be.”
Zuckerberg says that he took Jobs’ advice and, based on his experiences, had the future of Facebook more clearly laid out in front of him.
Apple was, in fact, one of the first big tech companies to show an interest in Facebook. Back when Facebook was still Thefacebook, Apple agreed to sponsor a dedicated Apple Facebook on the social network to the tune of $1 per user, and a monthly minimum of $50,000. At the time, this was the biggest financial development in the company’s history.
We guess it pays to follow Steve Jobs’ advice. In all sorts of ways.
