> The marketing team’s plan was not to do anything and the night before we opened Facebook to the professional market (anyone with a @microsoft.com, @dell.com, etc…) I emailed TechCrunch to let Michael Arrington know to publish it in the morning. He ended up publishing it that night (I was at Coachella and will never again attend) before the actual product was released in the morning. I immediately notified the e-team and assumed full responsibility.

I guess the guy disagreed with the marketing strategy and did something he thought would be more effective for the company.

Curious on how others weigh in on this. Occasionally you hear stories of startups in the early stage, where some guy goes against some decision that was sub-optimal and it makes all the difference. Are these stories usually just positive selection bias and its better everyone falls in line? Of course, i'm not saying what this guy did was necessarily the right choice either.