These Early Interviews With Tech Industry Billionaires Are Strange, Prescient and Occasionally Hilarious

Watch a 20-something Mark Zuckerberg joke about your 'privacy'

December 11, 2018 9:00 am

What do Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg have in common, beyond the obvious? Before they became movers and shakers in Silicon Valley, they were tech dreamers with far less money and a lot more hair. (Or, somehow less hair, in the case of Elon Musk.) 

Listening to these guys speak as young up-and-comers is strange not because you know they’re going to make it, but because they seem to know they will.  And thanks to Founder Rewind, you can now access decades-old videos of tech giants (giving interviews, commencement speeches, panels) and other notable personas (CEOs, artists) all under the same roof. It’s nothing that visionary (most of the videos link straight from Youtube) but it is edifying, entertaining and certainly worth an afternoon or two. 

Below, we’ve rounded up five videos you really ought to give a look, from a cocky Elon Musk buying his first McLaren in 1999 to Jeff Bezos explaining why he chose books for his first product on Amazon.com. Get the popcorn ready. 

Jeff Bezos talks about the founding of Amazon and why he decided to start with books, 1997

Mark Zuckerberg discusses Facebook’s early-stage growth and how to get people to “share information that they probably wouldn’t be comfortable sharing otherwise,” 2005

Elon Musk prepares for the delivery of his first McLaren, 1999

Steve Jobs presides over an employee brainstorming session, 1985

Bill Gates theorizes about the future of the nascent software industry, 1977 

To see the full library of videos, head here

Main image from Wikimedia Commons

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