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> also had to make a lot of promises. Some of those promises were even enshrined in the acquisition agreement: If Facebook imposed “monetization initiatives” li
by rdtsc 8y ago
> also had to make a lot of promises. Some of those promises were even enshrined in the acquisition agreement: If Facebook imposed “monetization initiatives” like advertising onto WhatsApp, its founders’ shares would vest immediately, and they could leave without suffering any kind of financial penalty.
That's pretty interesting. They foresaw it of course and put a claim in the contract about it. Though when trying to trigger it FB fought back so Acton left the money on the table.
> Acton gave up some $900 million; Koum gave up about $400 million. You need to be really unhappy at work if you’re willing to quit a job that’s effectively paying you some $60 million per month, and from which you basically can’t be fired.
A new type of "fuck you" money VC style - you can have your dirty stock options I am out of here.
> or was he talked into breaking his promise by Sandberg and other executives looking covetously at WhatsApp’s unmonetized userbase? Either way, he has clearly failed a key leadership test.
The leaders tend to aggregate around them minions who are an exaggerated version of themselves. If they are liars they will surround themselves over time with even bigger liars. If they are narcissists they'll end up with minions who are narcissists. It's mostly natural selection. Well it happened in this case, there was a clash and those who don't agree leave. Over enough years it "distills" the company culture into whatever characteristics the top leaders have.
- bsg75 8y ago> The leaders tend to aggregate around them minions who are an exaggerated version of themselves Is there a term for this behavior? It explains a number of situations.
- jessaustin 8y agoI don't know the answer to your question, but the proposition seems related to Conway's Law?
- pmorici 8y agoBirds of a feather flock together.
- notacoward 8y agoOn the dark side of this, "a fish rots from the head"
- fjsolwmv 8y agoWhy would someone walk away from over $100M just because they don't want to pay a legal team under $1M to argue their case? Seems like they just didn't care.
- amarkov 8y agoIt's not obvious that they would have won. Zuckerberg hasn't actually forced ads into WhatsApp yet, and WhatsApp remains ad-free today. He just (allegedly, according to anonymous sources) is suggesting that WhatsApp leadership should do it.
- fjsolwmv 8y agoThen what's the problem? They don't like their co-workers so they quit their job. Unless Facebook staffers were effectively creating a hostile environment specifically to lusb out the WA guys to claw back their unvested equity. Which frankly seems compatible with Zuck's style, even if it's more of his buddy Zynga-CEO's trademark style.
- sunstone 8y agoConsider this situation from the perspective of a biological person. A biological person has resource limitations in terms of effort, concentration and resources. When you're already worth say 10bn each, your primary limitation is time and effort, which doesn't scale. Do you really want to squander your personal time and effort on increasing your net worth by 5%? Not likely. You have the next horizon to conquer and you have plenty of cash. Let Zuckerberg have his measly $750m, which means F all to either of you and get on with your next project. This is entirely a pragmatic and reasonable decision on the part of the whatsapp founders.
- jessaustin 8y agoMaybe the 'bergs promised some sort of horrible countersuit, aimed at clawing back the billions? Some sort of breach of contract or duties to shareholders or something? Even if the claims were obvious bullshit, why take a 30% chance of losing one's ginormous fortune? In fact the whole thing could have been a way of extracting some further, more-recently-dated agreement that FB and the WA founders are square...