Zuckerberg Says He Was Too Afraid Of Taking Facebook Public

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said today that he was previously too afraid of taking Facebook public. ”I’ve been very outspoken about staying private as long as possible”, Zuckerberg said on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt. “I don’t think it’s that necessary to do that.”

He added that he was worried over the past year that employees would get demoralized by the down stock and would leave the company, but found that people kept their heads down and focused on building Facebook products.

“That’s funny on the surface,” Zuckerberg said after TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington asked Zuckerberg if he had advice for Twitter as it heads towards an IPO. ”I’m the person you would want to ask last to do a smooth IPO. It’s actually a valuable process. Having gone through a terrible first year as It made our company a lot stronger. You have to know everything about your company. It took us to the next level and we run our company much better now.”

The duo talked about their interview at Disrupt a year ago, Zuckerberg’s first since the IPO. The young Facebook CEO said he laid out Facebook’s vision and mobile strategy, and noted that mobile now accounts for 40% of Facebook revenue.

“Your mobile products a year ago really sucked,” Arrington said. “I think you deserved to have no revenue from them a year ago.”

Zuckerberg chuckled and agreed, noting that, ”We took a lot of shit for not making the mobile experience good.”