2009
Facebook motto: "Move fast and break things"
FacebookThe social network founded by Mark Zuckerberg — grew into Meta and reshaped online advertising.'s early internal motto encodes shipping velocity over stability — later retired as the company matured.
Quote
“Move fast and break things.”
What it was for
The phrase summed up 2010s growth-at-all-costs culture: hackathons, A/B tests, and apologizing later. FacebookThe social network founded by Mark Zuckerberg — grew into Meta and reshaped online advertising. dropped it by 2014 for 'Move fast with stable infrastructure' as outages and privacy scandals mounted.
People
- Mark Zuckerberg — founder
Companies
- Meta
Why it's here
The most quoted — and criticized — Silicon Valley ethos of the decade.
Why it mattered
It named a product culture that prioritized iteration speed over caution.
What it solved
Fast-growing social products needed permission to ship experiments without paralysis.
Media
ImageMark ZuckerbergThe White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons