Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are now VCs
thenextweb.com
thenextweb.com
This is not a tale of "Rich assholes tell hacker about their idea, then sue him for building it without them."
This is "Rich assholes come to hacker with mostly built site, he agrees to finish it up for an equity stake, and then lies to them for two months about progress to make sure that he can beat them to market."
Do all of you Winklevoss-haters even realize that the site was almost done when Zuck joined up?
That the guy that started building the site worked on it for four months and only stopped because he graduated to get a job at Google?
That the next contractor specifically referred Zuck as a good person to get the job finished when he had to leave?
That if Zuck had said "no" they would have found someone else to finish it, but he didn't say "no" because he realized how important it was to be first to market?
It's not like this was some fucking pie-in-the-sky idea. There was code on the table (crafted by a guy that got a job at Google a few months later, so probably pretty decent code), and they were putting money behind getting it finished. The only reason that Facebook beat them to market is that Zuckerberg lied to them for four months about working on it. Specifically so that he could delay them, from the looks of it - his IMs indicate that within a couple weeks of first meeting with them, he'd already decided to string them along but had no intention of actually doing the work.
Do I like the idea of non-technical founders getting hackers to work for equity? No, I don't. It's their right, and it's the hacker's right to foolishly say yes, but I don't think it's ideal.
But I'm far more offended at the idea that a hacker agrees to take on the task of finishing a project, digests the confidential IP (including code) that they've agreed to flesh out, and then lies to the client to delay them and then crush them in the market. That's disgustingly unethical (not to mention fraudulent) behavior.
If you question whether Zuck's motives were really that sinister, read some of his IMs, like the one he sent to Eduardo, in December (3 months before launch, as he was telling the twins that the site was "almost complete"): "Check this site out: www.harvardconnection.com and then go to harvardconnection.com/datehome.php. Someone is already trying to make a dating site. But they made a mistake haha. They asked me to make it for them. So I'm like delaying it so it won't be ready until after the facebook thing comes out." (http://www.businessinsider.com/how-facebook-was-founded-2010... - there's more sinister stuff there, too)
Shit like this? He should have lost 100% of the business, plain and simple, and (to their discredit) if the Winklevoss twins had played the legal dispute competently (they should have pushed harder, earlier, and they obviously should not taken the settlement offer when they did), he would have.
Here's the thing though. How could the Winklevoss twins get strung along for 4 months? Not that this has any relevance to the ethics of the matter. But their contribution to developing this idea was simply money. They needed technical people to build on that idea. Outside of this one idea they funded, they haven't done anything significant or relevant in business since. And now they're just spending money that they got from the settlement.
I'd much rather take a $5 Starbucks coffee and a conversation with Paul Graham over $1M in funding from the Winklevoss twins. I just don't see what value they bring to the table. Money can be found all over the place.
Yes, technically you were both alive on earth at the time. So was my Nana, my creepy uncle Hank, and about 6 billion other people.
This seems to fit the profile of thousands of people in the valley.
I did feel like the movie was trying to make me empathise with Z over the others which I didn't really like; at the end when the lawyer tells him that he's not an asshole, I found it artificial because I couldn't see what on earth had led her to that conclusion.
YMMV though, it seems to be quite polarising and you may well be right that it's based on existing perceptions; I didn't sympathise with the Ws in real life, but then I wasn't a huge fan of Z either.
[1] http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/jon_wertheim/1...
I mean I could understand 'naive' and even understand dislike for kids who come from old money.
Yet money-grabbig/egotistical is a bit weird to parse. Heck if it was a kid from lesser beginnings and he fought back, he would have been the hero of the movie.
I don't think egos is weird to parse, they didn't just come from money (incidentally I come from money, to a lesser extent, so that doesn't set me automatically against people), they were the type of people that think their coming from money makes them superior in more ways that just their bank account balance.
As to money-grabbing, it's my opinion both from the actual story and also the movie, that they frankly didn't deserve the money they got from Facebook, so yeah they were money-grabbing in their legal pursuits.
In fact in a scene, the Zuckerberg character says 'The winklevoss are suing me only because, first time in their life things are not going as they desire'. That almost means they are used to getting easy money and making others work for their luxury and that didn't happen this time and they met someone far more intelligent, capable and hardworking who doesn't need 'Dad's money and influence' to win in the world. And he can do that on merely merit, while they can't.
It seems to me like they're trying to put the Facebook thing behind them and use their wealth constructively. If you think startups are generally a net positive for the world, then more money going into startups has to be a good thing. And you have to admit they do have some ability to spot big ideas.
I'd be fine with the negativity if that was even what happened. But it's not.
They didn't "fail to execute". They were fairly far along in the process of executing ("the previous HarvardConnection programmers had already made progress on a large chunk of the coding: front-end pages, the registration system, a database, back-end coding, and a way users could connect with each other", according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConnectU), and would have finished up just fine with someone else if Zuck hadn't signed on and lied about progress specifically to delay them (that this was his intention came out pretty clearly in the IM conversations that were leaked a couple years ago, he basically lays out his plan to feign progress so that they don't look for someone else to finish ConnectU up before Facebook launches).
It's one thing to get beat to market because you didn't hire the right programmer, that's a straightforward failure of execution; it's another thing altogether to get beat to market by the very programmer that you hired to beat the competitors to market. That makes you a victim of fraud, and I have a lot of sympathy for that.
Also, there is this quote: "One of the areas of focus for their fund is cloud computing"
So, it looks like EXACTLY that. They will probably end up with lots of "Pets.com 2.0"
I wonder if their money and network will be enough to compensate for lack of (real) operational experience when they court top tier startup teams.
Reading PG or Thiel, or watching Andreesen's presentations at http://ecorner.stanford.edu, there's a world of value beyond money that they bring to table.
For one thing, you'd never get hired at Facebook after that. Then again, Facebook isn't the only game in town.
This is key, we've had "social networks" since the 80's. We called them BBSes. We dialled them up to chat, play online games, etc. Bring some historical perspective to the party and you can short circuit a lot of work - or just pass off something old as new again.
Their focus on enterprise tech is probably a good one too.
But on a serious note: I'm happy for them because they'll see now that business is more than suing someone for the mere idea.
mind. blown.