2) Once Mark Zuckerberg gave personal blessing, he shouldn't have changed his mind. I have an interesting email thread along these lines.
I recently had an issue with a local group of 'investors' / tech people, and after learning more details I was clearly mislead into presenting to them.. What they were looking to invest in was absolutely not a match to what I am doing. Sure, it was under confidential and private settings, though I know I taught them a lot and exposed a lot I rather would not have - simply because I don't think these people have good intentions or are honest people - and I don't want to support that as a human being, because I don't think that's good for society.
I am no fan of facebook, but it seems like they offered to compensate you for your time. In fact, it seems like that entire meeting was designed to demonstrate to them that you'd actually built something that worked so that they could buy you off.
They didn't have to do that, they could have just squashed you. In the end, I think you should have taken their offer (perhaps all in cash and then leave ASAP , as someone else suggested) and then built something else.
The key point here is that you seem to value your autonomy, and a surprisingly few people on this board seem to see that. What I'm trying to say is that there was a way for you to exit a situation that was going to deny your autonomy in such a way that it could set you up for the next thing. Who knows? Perhaps it's not too late for that.
But he could, and he did.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.194596-Faceboo...
You story also reminds me of a gentleman agreement I had with Don Dodge. His "blessing" and interest in my idea made me work days and nights to deliver asap, and at the end he totally backed out. It was painful and disappointing, but one cannot do nothing about it.