Popular VC Paul Graham on his first meeting with Mark Zuckerberg that he says was before "Meta CEO learned to imitate a normal person"

Popular venture capitalist and Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham has now shared a candid memory of his first encounter with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, describing the young Facebook founder as socially awkward and usually quiet. According to a report a Business Insider, speaking on The Social Radars podcast, Graham said the meeting took place around 2007, when Zuckerberg came to speak to a Y Combinator founder class. “This was before he learned to imitate a normal person,” Graham recalled, noting that Zuckerberg often left long silences in conversations. “If there wasn’t anything that he felt like saying, he would just go like this,” Graham said, widening his eyes to mimic Zuckerberg’s stare.Graham also explained that Zuckerberg’s lack of small talk was ‘surprisingly disconcerting’, and that he also realise how important conversational filler was until he met “the lack of it.” He further added that venture capitalist Ron Conway had even warned him beforehand about Zuckerberg’s conversational gaps. Despite the awkwardness, Graham said Zuckerberg was well-liked by the Y Combinator crowd because he was close in age to many of the founders and didn’t seem like “a different species of animal” despite his fame and wealth.Zuckerberg himself has acknowledged his early struggles with communication. In a 2024 Threads post, he wrote: “When I was 19, I didn’t know anything about running a company, communicating publicly, etc. Being awkward and getting negative feedback on how I came across definitely made me more careful and scripted. Still not my best thing, but getting a bit more comfortable just being me as I get older.”The recollections highlight Zuckerberg’s transformation from a socially awkward Harvard student into the polished public figure who now leads Meta. Graham’s anecdote underscores how far Zuckerberg has come in adapting his communication style, while also offering a glimpse into the formative years of one of tech’s most influential leaders.