Will Mark Zuckerberg become another Gutenberg?
Entrepreneurs who claim they see the future, see it through their own lenses. Mark Zuckerberg literally sees it through the lens of his imagined smart glasses.
But a vision based only on intuition usually turns into fantasy.
800 guilders and the most important invention in human history
Spring of 1450, Mainz, Germany. Johannes Gutenberg, an engineer, struck a deal with his namesake, Johannes Fust.
Fust lent Gutenberg 800 guilders at 6% interest and promised another 800 each year to keep the business running. In return, Fust got 50% of the venture.
Neither Johannes kept his side of the bargain. Fust stopped handing over the yearly 800. Gutenberg couldn’t pay the interest.
Fust sued. Gutenberg lost the business and had to start from scratch.
But that didn’t stop his invention — mass printing, made possible by those first 800 guilders. Gutenberg built the first printing press. Before him, people wrote books by hand. Many call it the most important invention in human history.
Will Mark Zuckerberg become another Gutenberg?
Spoiler: probably not.
Devices that will replace smartphones – or won’t
Malcolm McLean invented the shipping container. Ted Hoff came up with the microprocessor.
Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, The Beatles, Steven Spielberg — all shaped the world we live in. And a 19-year-old kid, Mark Zuckerberg, who launched FaceMash (the precursor to Facebook) just for fun in 2003, played his part too.
And he’s going to do it again. Meta’s product road map envisions screens built into the lens to allow for a visual user interface.
Recently, Zuckerberg said,
“Personal devices like glasses that understand our context because they can see what we see, hear what we hear, and interact with us throughout the day will become our primary computing devices.”
This bold vision is going down the same road as Metaverse – Zuckerberg’s big idea we haven’t heard about for three years. And that’s not because it’s technically questionable.
Progress just doesn’t work that way — it takes a different path.
Progress as Moving Backwards
We often picture progress like this:
- An innovator creates something new.
- The world goes “wow!”
- People start using it — reading it, watching it, eating it, etc.
In reality, progress goes the other way.
We honor those whose creative drive changed the world—who gave us air conditioning, television, or the internet. But we remember them only because they created what people truly needed.
For instance, Malcolm McLean saw the problem — slow, cumbersome loading — and came up with the shipping container.
Thousands of other inventors — gifted and purpose-driven — created things that seemed groundbreaking, but humanity remained indifferent to them. That’s why so many startups fail. According to Forbes, “of today’s 2.1 million active patents, 95 percent fail to be licensed or commercialized.”
This is a great example of survivorship bias. History remembers only the winners.
Successful inventors aren’t simply the talented ones, but those who know, or at least feel, what people really need. These needs may be unconscious, but they’re always at work.
- Faster travel? Henry Ford built the car.
- Easier communication? Hillebrand and Ghillebaert came up with SMS.
- Need to store knowledge? Gutenberg invented the printing press.
Facebook became so popular because users liked to brag and compare themselves with others — very human traits.
Paid subscribers to this newsletter can read more about the 16 basic human needs here.
What do you want to see through AI glasses?
Do people need a display that can see what they see and interact with them throughout the day? What makes Mark Zuckerberg believe that people will be happy about something that intrudes so deeply into their personal lives?
Google played this game with Google Glass in 2013 and failed. People didn’t want to be recorded, and they even called those who wore Glass “Glassholes.” But more importantly, Google never really answered why ordinary people needed it.
What I need—help, info—changes all the time: mood, moment, time of day. How are the glasses supposed to know? If Netflix and YouTube can’t even guess what I want to watch, AI lenses will just turn the world into one of those trashy news sites—ads everywhere, real content buried somewhere underneath.
Zuckerberg dreams of a world where smartphones leave our pockets and smart glasses take their place. But many studies have shown that people like the traditional size and shape of a smartphone — it just feels convenient to use.
What needs will AI glasses actually meet? Has Mark Zuckerberg made sure people actually want what he’s about to offer? He’s never said that.
It looks like he dreams of being a creative inventor — like the Beatles or Gutenberg.
But people are conservative. Many are happy with what they have. For instance, print books still hold an 87% market share in the US. I’ve seen this myself: most people who buy my book prefer the paper version.
It’s human needs that drive progress, not technical innovation. If I owned Meta’s shares, I’d sell them.
Do you know what it really means to think strategically? Download my free PDF, discover my take — and then let’s discuss yours!
The problem and its solution
When a CEO or startup founder comes to me for strategy advice, they often say they want to create a product that will turn the world on its head.
And they’re always surprised when I ask them about customer needs. They see product development as an act of pure creation.
When I bring up customers, they object, waving around names like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, or Sam Altman. They also recall Henry Ford’s famous quote: ‘If I had asked my customers what they needed, they would have asked for a faster horse.’
My answer is always the same: developing a product like a poem or a painting is the most expensive and risky way to do business.
If you’ve got endless time and unlimited money, sure, you can try that too. For every Jeff Bezos, there are thousands of forgotten founders who tried the same path — and crashed.
The ones chuckling at the horse joke? Same mistake Ford made. They still don’t see that the point was ‘faster,’ not ‘horse.’
Start with customers.
And if you want to learn how to build growth around real customer needs — without wasting years or millions chasing the wrong idea — join my course, Architects of Business Growth. It’s designed for CEOs and founders who are ready to stop guessing and start creating products people truly want.
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