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I'm a big Mark Zuckerberg hater. He seemingly screwed over a couple people along the way taking the idea and running with it (breach of contract, unethical etc,

I'm a big Mark Zuckerberg hater. He seemingly screwed over a couple people along the way taking the idea and running with it (breach of contract, unethical etc, even if you are doing all the work). But at this point Facebook has made all of those people incredibly wealthy through settlements of cash and even people owning sharers. Those people will only get more wealthy when they IPO. Do they really think they could have made more money if Mark hadn't walked out on them and run built it all himself? You have $150 million dollars now, could you have made a billion dollar business? The idea behind Facebook was not all that unique. Certainly it was bad that he walked out on them and stole it, but would they have built a $50 billion company? Just based on how they have acted since getting the settlement, I think not. You have $150 million now, that is enough money to fund 15 new ventures without ever going to a VC. If these guys thought they could make more money than Zuckerburg without him, then DO IT. You can try 15 times before you are broke. That is a luxury almost none of the rest of us have. Instead by constantly going back to the golden goose and trying to get money they are proving their inability to build a business. Facebook was a lottery win for them and they have no ability to do better. They are probably better off today with Mark having walked out on them ,than if they all stayed in it together and it failed and they owned a larger percent of 0.

chopsueyar 16y ago
Facebook was a lottery win for Mark, too.
geebee 16y ago
While it's difficult to ever really know what's going on in someone else's head, I actually do believe that the Winklevosses are pursuing this out of a sense of outrage and justice, not money. It's the motivation that makes the most sense to me. That said (and again within my very limited knowledge of all this), I think that a $60+ million settlement is an incredibly good outcome for the winklevosses. I think that if they had found a different programmer, they would have produced yet another social networking site that went nowhere. Selling it for a tenth of their facebook settlement would have been an extraordinary outcome. Why? Because startups run by non-programming business guys who hire a string of programmers who eventually quit and leave almost never succeed on facebook's level. Business guys like the winks greatly exaggerate the value of "an idea" and greatly underestimate way an idea can evolve into a new idea through implementation. They are almost always left in the dust. Let me put it this way - if I went to a brilliant programmer with an "idea" - even one I had done quite a bit of implementation on, and he turned it into a multi-billion dollar company and offered me $60 million, I'd consider that a really good deal. Of course, that's not how this went down - the winks feel screwed because as far as I understand it, they kind of were. I'm basing this on the movie, so what can I say, no idea if this is true, but if I went to a programmer and he said, "yeah, I'm working on your site, I'll get back to you" over and over for a month, and at the end of the month he had launched a site that directly competes with the idea I thought he was working on for me, and then he told me bluntly and perhaps arrogantly that my idea was stupid and his was much better, and then used his advantage to beat me to every market, I'd be furious. I might be so furious that I'd be blinded to the truth, which is that I wouldn't have succeeded anyway. I think the outcomes for the winks were 1) screwed and paid 60 mil 2) not screwed and paid probably nothing, maybe a small buyout nowhere near 60 mil.
- emmett 16y ago
  "I'm basing this on the movie". Sigh. You know the movie isn't accurate. It's good story, it's not reality. Why would you make any comment on the motives of the players or the justice of the case using the movie as your primary source? The movie is basically historical fiction that happens to be set in the present day. I knew that when the movie came out everyone would begin assuming that it was the true story of Facebook (despite protestations like "I have no idea if it's true"), but I'm literally seeing it in action here and it makes me sad. You don't get to start from the movie as a "good guess" as to what happens. You don't get to use the movie as evidence at all.
  - geebee 16y ago
    I agree. I can't use the movie as evidence. Even the things presented as facts (for instance, I read an article that said the dilution of shares wasn't as bad as the movie presented). That said, when someone (like me) makes a false statement based on the movie, you should refute the statement itself. For instance, did Zuckerberg agree to work on the site, and give the winklevosses the runaround for a month?
    - geebee 16y ago
      just as another aside - I've made a similar objection to the one you pointed out here. When Oliver Stone made the movie about the JSF assassination, he created some footage that looked like the "real" footage and presented it in the movie, with full acknowledgements that it was just a version of reality. While I'm making no assertions about the truth of Stone's point of view, the controversy made me aware of how stories can become so powerful that they become reality even in the minds of people who are aware that they are stories... this is just another way of saying - I do appreciate your comment, and it's reminded me of the danger of thinking I'm always in control of my own ability to consciously separate fiction from reality... "seeing it", in spite of intellectual awareness that it's "just a story", has a powerful effect on the mind.
- dedward 16y ago
  IT doesn't matter whether they would or would not have been as successful had things gone a different way. It's all about money - if they have a chance to tie facebook up in court for years about ownership, facebook is likely to pay an even larger settlement amount to make the problem go away.

chopsueyar 16y ago

Facebook was a lottery win for Mark, too.

geebee 16y ago

While it's difficult to ever really know what's going on in someone else's head, I actually do believe that the Winklevosses are pursuing this out of a sense of outrage and justice, not money. It's the motivation that makes the most sense to me. That said (and again within my very limited knowledge of all this), I think that a $60+ million settlement is an incredibly good outcome for the winklevosses. I think that if they had found a different programmer, they would have produced yet another social networking site that went nowhere. Selling it for a tenth of their facebook settlement would have been an extraordinary outcome. Why? Because startups run by non-programming business guys who hire a string of programmers who eventually quit and leave almost never succeed on facebook's level. Business guys like the winks greatly exaggerate the value of "an idea" and greatly underestimate way an idea can evolve into a new idea through implementation. They are almost always left in the dust. Let me put it this way - if I went to a brilliant programmer with an "idea" - even one I had done quite a bit of implementation on, and he turned it into a multi-billion dollar company and offered me $60 million, I'd consider that a really good deal. Of course, that's not how this went down - the winks feel screwed because as far as I understand it, they kind of were. I'm basing this on the movie, so what can I say, no idea if this is true, but if I went to a programmer and he said, "yeah, I'm working on your site, I'll get back to you" over and over for a month, and at the end of the month he had launched a site that directly competes with the idea I thought he was working on for me, and then he told me bluntly and perhaps arrogantly that my idea was stupid and his was much better, and then used his advantage to beat me to every market, I'd be furious. I might be so furious that I'd be blinded to the truth, which is that I wouldn't have succeeded anyway. I think the outcomes for the winks were 1) screwed and paid 60 mil 2) not screwed and paid probably nothing, maybe a small buyout nowhere near 60 mil.

emmett 16y ago
"I'm basing this on the movie". Sigh. You know the movie isn't accurate. It's good story, it's not reality. Why would you make any comment on the motives of the players or the justice of the case using the movie as your primary source? The movie is basically historical fiction that happens to be set in the present day. I knew that when the movie came out everyone would begin assuming that it was the true story of Facebook (despite protestations like "I have no idea if it's true"), but I'm literally seeing it in action here and it makes me sad. You don't get to start from the movie as a "good guess" as to what happens. You don't get to use the movie as evidence at all.
- geebee 16y ago
  I agree. I can't use the movie as evidence. Even the things presented as facts (for instance, I read an article that said the dilution of shares wasn't as bad as the movie presented). That said, when someone (like me) makes a false statement based on the movie, you should refute the statement itself. For instance, did Zuckerberg agree to work on the site, and give the winklevosses the runaround for a month?
  - geebee 16y ago
    just as another aside - I've made a similar objection to the one you pointed out here. When Oliver Stone made the movie about the JSF assassination, he created some footage that looked like the "real" footage and presented it in the movie, with full acknowledgements that it was just a version of reality. While I'm making no assertions about the truth of Stone's point of view, the controversy made me aware of how stories can become so powerful that they become reality even in the minds of people who are aware that they are stories... this is just another way of saying - I do appreciate your comment, and it's reminded me of the danger of thinking I'm always in control of my own ability to consciously separate fiction from reality... "seeing it", in spite of intellectual awareness that it's "just a story", has a powerful effect on the mind.
dedward 16y ago
IT doesn't matter whether they would or would not have been as successful had things gone a different way. It's all about money - if they have a chance to tie facebook up in court for years about ownership, facebook is likely to pay an even larger settlement amount to make the problem go away.