Zuckerberg Is A Good CEO On His Way To Being A Great CEO

Chamath Palihapitiya, one of Mark Zuckerberg's most trusted lieutenants in Facebook's formative years, just shared his thoughts on his former boss.

Zuckerberg "is a good CEO on his way to being a great CEO," Palihapitiya said in an interview at the Launch Festival conference in San Francisco.

Palihapitiya left Facebook in 2011 to start a venture-capital firm, the Social+Capital Partnership.

So what makes Zuckerberg a strong leader?

"Zuck is unemotional," Palihapitiya said. "He doesn't get influenced by ego. It's a huge learning."

There were plenty of egos in Facebook's early days—including Palihapitiya, who said he came into Facebook with a "huge chip on his shoulder."

"I didn't think coders were engineers," said Palihapitiya, who has a degree in electrical engineering. "I was like, 'I'm a device physicist! These guys are just scripting!'"

He got over that.