The Uncomfortable story to the Background of Facebook | Hacker News Reader

The Uncomfortable story to the Background of Facebook

rollingstone.com

52 pointsidjit43 comments

Here's what I'm reading from the story - Mark Z. has an ambition to grow the company as large as the sky, and those around him didn't have the dedication, drive, or capacity to enact that dream.

How do you deal with people who you start with that just don't have what it takes to grow or move the company forward? How do you deal with people who haven't contributed as much work as you have, who don't take initiative to do work on their own, and who don't 'get/grow the idea' as fast as you do? (some of these are gleaned from the article, some I just ask for myself).

Mark Z's actions, if his coworkers were to fall into these categories, are acceptable, and probably the only way to do it properly. And, considering the majority of his coworkers were college students who just happened to be nearby (not hired or specially picked), it is very likely that they didn't have the capicity or willpower to bring the company along as much as Z. did.

I was just gonna post a reply but then I read this. My thoughts exactly.

You might be right. On the other hand, the article does paint a picture of a greedy, evil asshole with no respect for other people or for his own word. Who do you know with a business card that says "I'm CEO... bitch."?

There are ways to gracefully push people out, and then there are ways of posturing yourself by forcefully and publicly kicking people out. He obviously does not know how to do the former.

He is a Nietzschean superdork for the digital age — a college student who gamed the system, propelled by a primal understanding of how to program computers to serve human needs.

What a bad writer.

On reflection, that was a pretty mean thing to say. I should have said, "What a bad choice of words that writer made in that instance."

Seems like facebook is going through the trough of disillusionment of the hype cycle. I'm sure last year it could do no wrong.

Did Zuckerberg pull some douche moves or was he savvy? Would you have acted similarly?

I think it's both.

He's an incredibly bright person who cares only about being a success. He's making some incredibly savvy moves that I think are best for his company, but at the same time he's being quite a bit of a douche.

Is it him that is being the douche or is the system rigged where douchebaggery is a requirement to success of this type?

Taking away that 1/3 share of his partner Saverin (who seeded facebook) by transfering verything to another company was kinda lame. But I guess, if you want to be a good business man, you have to be greedy after all.

"Ideas" are not property. You are allowed to steal them. Who makes the money depends on business savvy and luck (probably more on luck). Greenspan just comes across as bitter that the dice didn't fall his way, and that he is not being compensated for having a similar idea earlier.

If someone tells you an idea and you personally do it, great. If you tell me you are going to help me, then without my knowledge turn around and take all of the information I have been feeding you to help me and you do it, then that is a level above just hearing a "good idea".

Also, if someone has an idea, who'd be the first person you want on your team if you like the idea? The person with the idea. Without knowing the facts, the onus would have been on Zuckerberg to be upfront and try to include Greenspan as much as possible, I think.

"Hey, I like your idea so much that I actually want to execute on it. Sorry."

At least Z's guilt can dissipate if it turns into a success.

Personally, I've seen people use my ideas and thoughts. Their error is not to include me.

Blog Nation I think could've started on the back of my prototype site (I'm not totally sure), but it has now crashed and burned, and I emailed the founder with a link before BN started. At first I was somewhat peeved, and now it's somewhat amusing.

People with ideas and executive ability are rare perhaps. Some people can spot a good idea but not generate one, and they are always on the lookout for ideas. Others generate but can't separate the wheat from the chaff.

For the former, one might want all the credit and glory and leave the latter in the cold and isolated as much as possible. Both need to reconcile with each other as best as possble, as is happening now in the Facebook saga.

Greenspan has learned the hard way perhaps. Sometimes you have to know when to move on.

This is just plain wrong. Ideas certainly are property. Ever heard of a patent?

You are wrong; a patent is the _rights_ to exploit an idea, but it is not the idea itself, and one of the explicit purposes of the patent system is to ensure that the ideas behind the patent are made public.

I was wrong about this; a patent is the right to _exclude others_ from making, building, using or otherwise developing an invention.

Subtle but important difference.

I like the "pitched Sequoia in pajamas" story. That takes some balls.

Also might shed some light on why Sequoia never got in on Facebook...

The scuttlebutt is that Facebook actually passed on Sequoia because of Peter Thiel.

Yeah, but is that really true? If so, why'd Zuckerberg even show up to pitch?

I don't think anyone except the parties involved can know if that's true, so there's not much point in speculating. But I will note that nothing is better for getting term sheets than already having other term sheets, particularly a Sequoia term sheet. I wouldn't pitch a VC that I knew from the outset I didn't want to work with, but I'm sure some companies do.

This stood out to me:

"In his senior year at Exeter, Zuckerberg and his roommate, Adam D'Angelo, wrote software for an MP3 player that was able to learn a user's listening habits and build a digital library based on previous selections. Several companies showed an interest in the application, including an AOL subsidiary, but D'Angelo and Zuckerberg had no intention of selling. They didn't care about money. They cared about code. "They were the most advanced computer-science students at the school," recalls Kristopher Tillery, a classmate who set up a site with Zuckerberg that allowed Exeter students to order snacks online."

And this: "The way he talked, the way he dressed, everything about him screamed immature," Greenspan recalls. "He seemed unprofessional. I had run a company since I was 15. It just didn't seem like he got it. That whole persona just didn't impress me." Although he was congratulatory at the time, Greenspan now says he was put off by Zuckerberg's original venture, Facemash. "You can spend time writing software for good or evil, and that was pretty close to evil," Greenspan said. "It wasn't that he inflicted harm because he enjoyed it — it was because he didn't care. Which I thought was almost worse."

Claire used my book as a source for a lot of the article. In turn, you can see my sources here:

http://www.thinkpress.com/authoritas/resources.html

The real Aaron Greenspan?

Can you give your analysis on the capabilities of the students surrounding Facebook at the time? They were probably all bright and talented, but did they have the drive, dedication, analytical skills, and abilities to do what was required to succeed? I'm curious because Harvard has the best and brighest in the country (arguably), and I'm wondering exactly what that means in a quantifiable way.

I am indeed real, but if you want my full analysis, I hate to say it, but you should really consider buying the book. One of the reasons I wrote it was to offer that analysis in detail.

The short version of my answer to your question is that you really already answered it--you have to define success first. Mark has succeeded at things I've failed at, and I've succeeded at things that Mark has failed at. Does that make one of us "better" than the other? In monetary terms, maybe eventually, but even those terms haven't been strictly defined yet for the time being. In moral terms, I think there's a clear answer to that question, but it's not going to yield a number for you.

Besides, who says that everything has to be quantifiable? Some things in life just aren't.

> I'm wondering exactly what that means in a quantifiable way.

What does would a quantifiable way be?

> a dentist's son worth an estimated $1.5 billion

If they can't monetize Facebook, is he really worth anything?

Until the cash (not stock) is in your account, you have nothing. Considering the finicky audience and the trouble monetizing it, FB could very well pull a Friendster.

He cashed out as part of the second rounds of investing. I've heard numbers ranging from 50 mil to 200 mil.

The second round of funding was from accel and jim breyer.

He cashed out ~ $1 million, according to Sarah Lacy's book which she interviewed him for.

"There aren't very many new ideas floating around," he said. "The facebook isn't even a very novel idea. It's taken from all these others. And ours was that we're going to do it on the level of schools.

>Posted Jun 26, 2008 2:25 PM

scared the hell out of me.

This is actually pretty common. The pre-post-date is the shelf availability date of the magazine.

What really annoys me is when I buy a book and the copyright date is listed as the next year. I don't understand how that can possibly be legal.

That's a sneaky trick with plenty of scope for abuse. If I postdate the copyright on a book by five years then, after 20 years or so, it will be harder to determine the true copyright expiration date.

I'm not a lawyer but I've got a countermeasure for this type of legal abuse. Copyright is intended to be for a fixed term but I don't recall any details that allow or prevent this period to be deferred. Therefore, if a book has next year's copyright then it may not yet be in copyright.

That's not how things work.

Well, how does it work if people postdate copyright?

In the US, copyrights are automatic. You can register pieces of work as a way to prove that the work was created at a certain date and time so that you can sue somebody in civil court for damages but the central office is not the mediator for copyright disputes.

It is that registration date that's important, not so much what the author put down as the copyright year. So people that post date copyrights will have a hard time convincing a court that they truly own the copyrights without any other supporting evidence (such as registration, notarization, or other means of proving a date).

And I'm not aware of anyone post dating copyrights years ahead. That would make no sense as copyrights firstly last decades after the person's death and secondly can easily be extended. So delaying the "start" date of a copyright has no particular advantage.

Copyright is automatic and enforced when you register it. Having the (C) notice is actually optional once you register it.

you know you're there when you have that many enemies

In the cold light of day, Mark has done nothing more than anyone else would, there are sharks everywhere 1) waiting to steal your idea 2) to claim you stole their idea. What counts is ideas first then a whole lot of other skills and elements but in the end, what happens in the market is the only law there is. The moral of the story is, if you have the idea and the skills to make it happen, do it. Don't for one second rely on legal tenets to protect you after the fact. They don't work and never have. This is the cold sober fact. If you have what it takes prove it.

Mark did nothing wrong here. There was nothing really novel about FB, it was clean and doing what others do. FB does not claim Ning and everyone else are coping them... The only thing that is wrong is the assumptions that others made about how the real world works and that they are now sour grapes is absolutely no surprise. It won't be the first nor the last case where someone strikes gold and the rest of the world claim they helped hold the torch and then want a cut.

This comes from someone who has had millions in ideas 'directly' (drawings off the desk) stolen from him...

I don't cry about that, I play by the rules of the world, it's tough out there and to play you do so by the real ruthless rules of survival of the fittest or you will be a looser in a court claiming your owed a living.

Sure I had loads of ideas stolen, but I'm also a realist and know that I also borrow from others whom I stand upon their shoulders when I make my way in my ventures.

Next time if you have a good idea, don't talk about it do it....

I would agree with you on the surface, however the problem in my book arises when he was contracted to perform services and intentionally delayed production. It's sabotage, not savvy. Very poor taste and does not constitute a smart business man nor worthly competitor; a weasel's move. Had he heard the idea and walked away lacking confidence in their ability to execute, well... that's a completely different story.

Regardless, I still think he's a genuine entrepreneur and the success of Facebook is a reflection of his ambition. I only wish I had not heard this side of the story, it contradicts a more positive image I associated to him. It also sounds like success has gone to his head, a discount to fortune that makes it lonelier at the top.

The assertion that he intentionally sabotaged them seems just a touch far-fetched. They made an (it sounds like) informal contract with a procrastinating college sophomore, in the middle of a busy school term. Occam’s razor would suggest the delays were caused by disinterest, procrastination, and the busy-ness of his schedule, not malice or greed.

These guys were supposedly working on their site (of a relatively simple and obvious idea) for a year, with nothing to show for it, and their conclusion is: “'That's supposed to be us.' We're not there, because one greedy kid cut us out."” As if the 10 hours of work Zuckerberg didn’t do on their site was the only thing separating failure from unbelievable riches.

Yeah, its inconsistencies like these in the article that make you question just how much of the article is a good depiction of Z and how much of it is just pure spite.

There are plenty of other successful companies that weren't founded on fucking over everyone who helped in the early stages. Google for example. They didn't transfer the IP to a new corp after they realized it was a good idea.

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