PG about to speak at Facebook, partnership announcement to follow

(Disclaimer: I loathe facebook)

Sure, but there is a risk/benefit analysis to be done here. If you bet your business on one big company like that, you not only are you betting that the company won't choose to squish you, you are also betting that the company will remain strong enough to support you for as long as it matters.

If you are aiming to build a modest company whose service is fundamentally tied into a currently dominant big player and probably looking for an early exit, that might not matter all that much. On the other hand, if you have a neat general idea and the big company just happens to be the dominant platform in a relevant field today, that doesn't mean they will still be so tomorrow, and your idea might fit with competitor platforms just as neatly.

Personally, of all the companies in the world I would not build my business around today, Facebook is one of the top three. The others are Google and Apple. All three have a demonstrable history of trying stuff and then backpeddling, so if you get taken over, you might get a bit from your options but your idea and future development are hardly secure. All three have a track record of screwing the little guy, sometimes without even noticing, so if you're just building on their platform independently, you're highly vulnerable. And worst of all, I expect all three to take a severe legal and/or market-driven beating within the next couple of years.

For Google or Facebook, it will probably be on privacy grounds. You just can't go around making the arrogant statements their execs keep making, and presuming to collect and sell that kind of personally sensitive data, in a world where the public is increasingly concerned about these things and serious crime built around data loss and ID theft is rising fast. Both companies have already been hit hard by privacy watchdogs in several countries.

For Apple, it will probably be because the walls around their garden aren't strong enough but their corporate arrogance makes them think they are. Steve will probably just wake up one morning and suddenly realise that Android phones or a resurgence from a player like Palm or Blackberry has taken most of his market share, without even noticing how it happened.

Plus of course there are always the basic business threats. Facebook only needs enough people to start leaving that it can no longer function as the de facto standard way for friends to share stuff and it's toast, just like other social networks before it. Google only needs someone else to come up with a better way to do search and it's toast, just like other search engines before it. Apple... Well, they have a prestige brand in the middle of the worst financial crisis in two generations, so you do the math.

To avoid going down with the ship, if I were building a new on-line tool today and needed to work with a big player for platform support, I would definitely want to be working on portable, open standards as much as possible. That is exactly what big players like Facebook do not have, and will try to their dying financial statement not to introduce since it would be anathema to their business model.

Facebook is a business. They'll do whatever is in their business interests. If it is "block and copy such and such app" and they can do it without significant reputational damage (which is really the only protection YC startups will have), they will do it.

At some point the stability, openness, and size are enough to reduce the risk to a very low level. I'm sure it's safe to bet on: Windows, OSX, and Google. I really don't think Facebook is there yet. Not given how quickly we went from Friendster -> MySpace -> Facebook.

When I say "not a jerk" I'm thinking a strong respect for liberty (individual rights / respect for the rights of others). However, and a lot of this is influenced by allegations, Mark has done the following wrong by my reckoning, enough to question whether he is safely "not a jerk":

1. Been trusted with source code and market insight from a group he worked with, told them it was useless and then used it to develop his own site.

2. Shown little respect for privacy or IP concerns of users until market pressure forced him.

3. Been dishonest with users by changing terms and using the data of users for Facebook business purposes without explicit permission (now largely rectified).

4. Copied the look, feel and features of early competitors while litigating those who attempt the same with Facebook.

5. Allegedly (unlikely perhaps) given away a share of the company as part of overdue project complications and not advised future investors.

While a lot of this is probably untrue, it's enough for me to question the man's integrity, honesty and ability to be trusted.

However, founders don't have 100 companies they are investing, so the risks are not felt the same by founders and angels.

Angel conf presentations say a lot more: http://justin.tv/ycombinator

2) That was a joke. Though I definitely would have rather coded in Arc than PHP when I was at Facebook.

PS: You need to chill out.