5 ms·

Mark E. Zuckerberg ’06: The whiz behind thefacebook.com (2004)

34 points by jasonlbaptiste 17y ago

jasonlbaptiste 17y ago
“I don’t really know what the next big thing is because I don’t spend my time making big things,” he says. “I spend time making small things and then when the time comes I put them together.”
jacquesm 17y ago
I'm not too impressed with Mark Zuckerberg, there has been way too much smoke around the origins of Facebook. The settlement (65 million) regarding the ConnectU case is prett much an admission of guilt. So, to take this 'whiz' as a role model basically glorifies the personality of a character that started his meteoric career by stealing designs and businessplans. See here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/feb/12/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-ex-classmates http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/feb/12/facebook-ma... for a lot more info about that.
- hyperbovine 17y ago
  Let's face it: in this (capitalist) world, cutthroat assholes get ahead. Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Ballmer, Rupert Murdoch--the same story could have been written about any of them. I'm not saying it's necessary to lie, cheat, and stab one's friends in the back in order to become filthy rich, because there do seem to be some very principled billionaires (I'm thinking of Larry & Sergey, Warren Buffet, Pierre Omidyar). But it certainly seems to help.
  - gojomo 17y ago
    Whereas in the noncapitalist world, cutthroat assholes get ahead -- often by imprisoning or slaughtering their political opposition.
- TriinT 17y ago
  He's a Harvard College alumnus, what did you expect? ;-) Though the origins of FB are shady, Zuckerberg still deserves some credit IMHO. I will be blunt: building a social networking website is piece of cake. Designing it so that the users like it enough to use it on a regular basis, maintain it, and scale it are much harder. History is full of stories of people taking advantage of other people's ideas. It sucks, I know. Let's face it: scientists, engineers, hackers are the tip of the spear, the guys taking all the bullets and all the risks. Business people are the smart ones coming in the 2nd wave, when the beach has already been secured, to reap most (if not all) the rewards. Some people, myself included, actually enjoy being in the trenches... and cannot imagine being a rear echelon pussy. To each his own. I probably won't ever be rich, but hopefully I will spend my life working on interesting projects...
  - gr82 17y ago
    I'm sorry, but to me the notion that an idea for a website site is something you can steal sounds absolutely ridiculous. Did Larry & Sergey steal the idea of a search engine? Did Hacker News steal the idea of a news site where stories are rated by recency + popularity? Did Etsy steal the idea of an online marketplace? I can't believe that on a site like hacker news, where virtually everybody is trying to do what somebody else has done only a bit better, people would be whining about the notion that one can own idea that others could steal through better execution.
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
    - jfarmer 17y ago
      That's not really what the FB vs ConnectU issue is about. ConnectU wasn't upset because Mark took "their idea." By all accounts he was actively working on their product. So it's not like the Winklevoss brothers approached Mark, pitched him, and he thought, "I can do this better." He actually went to work on their product and then, later, while he was ostensibly working on ConnectU, launched a competing product. That is, it's not "he stole my idea!" It's "he took our code and confidential information and used the opportunity we gave him to harm our business."
- gwern 17y ago
  Some of the quotes are interesting in that light: > “I do stuff like this all the time,” Zuckerberg says in his relaxed tone. “The facebook literally took me a week to make.”
- gojomo 17y ago
  HarvardConnection (later renamed 'ConnectU') looked a lot like the classic "3 business guys hire a part-time coder to implement their 'vision'" startup antipattern. That Zuckerberg, who was already creating social web apps before the 'oral contract' and engagement with HarvardConnection, concluded he didn't need that overhead was his own independent discovery of the YC gospel. I'm sure the ConnectU crew thinks their special snowflake vision of a social-networking utility that starts on college campuses was a uniquely world-beating idea, but that sort of delusion is common. There are thousands with similar delusions who didn't luck into a brief collaboration with someone who'd eventually make the vision happen, and the accompanying lucrative settlement. (And a settlement is not an admission of guilt, but a calculation that the costs of fighting exceed the costs of settling. For Facebook, the costs of uncertainty in their fundraising far dominate the potential legal costs/risks, so a settlement says more about the peace of mind wanted by investors than the facts of the case.)
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    Sorry, I don't buy the 'he didn't need that overhead'. When you are hired as a programmer to make something that does not give you license to make off with the business plans and designs of your employers. Imagine a contractor making off with the architectural drawings and other details of a building he's supposed to put up because he 'doesn't need that kind of overhead'. It is absolutely without honour. The settlement was likely because there was a fair chance of it sticking in court, the other party decided that 65 million / 3 is good enough for them to not risk losing in court. The costs of fighting were probably a lesser consideration than the cost of losing.
    - gojomo 17y ago
      Of course you can't make off with someone else's preexisting detailed plans. But what if you brought as much or more to the planning as others? If your multitudinous 'partners' want vast credit for concepts and feature requests while you handle all the details and execution? If they're treating you like a 'contractor' (your analogy) when you know you're the prime mover? If there's nothing but vague oral agreements about future possibilities? I see it as: Zuckerburg realized he could better do what he wanted to do -- indeed wanted to do even before meeting HarvardConnection -- on his own. They parted ways after barely 3 months of informal collaboration (while also full-time students). No doubt both sides fumbled a lot of the communication. They were undergrads, after all. What did they know about clear agreements, scoping development efforts, clearly assigning IP rights of side projects, managing expectations, the value and novelty (or not) of ideas? A lot less than they all know now, I'm sure.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
leelin 17y ago
Wow, the article's author is Michael M. Grynbaum, the same guy who first wrote about our startup! http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/realestate/08rent.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/realestate/08rent.html I hope that's a good sign. :P (Don't bother reading the article; our idea has morphed a lot.)
utsmokingaces 17y ago
“Some companies offered us right off the bat up to one million, and then we got another offer that was like two million,” he says. He and D’Angelo at first decided not to sell. “I don’t really like putting a price-tag on the stuff I do. That’s just like not the point,” Zuckerberg says. Really?? Is this a joke? How can a journalist even write that?
- kareemm 17y ago
  the journalist was an aspiring one, writing for the crimson - harvard's college newspaper.
ghost11 17y ago
"Meet Anakin Skywalker, promising pod racing whiz."

“I don’t really know what the next big thing is because I don’t spend my time making big things,” he says. “I spend time making small things and then when the time comes I put them together.”

jacquesm 17y ago

I'm not too impressed with Mark Zuckerberg, there has been way too much smoke around the origins of Facebook. The settlement (65 million) regarding the ConnectU case is prett much an admission of guilt. So, to take this 'whiz' as a role model basically glorifies the personality of a character that started his meteoric career by stealing designs and businessplans. See here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/feb/12/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-ex-classmates http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/feb/12/facebook-ma... for a lot more info about that.

hyperbovine 17y ago
Let's face it: in this (capitalist) world, cutthroat assholes get ahead. Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Ballmer, Rupert Murdoch--the same story could have been written about any of them. I'm not saying it's necessary to lie, cheat, and stab one's friends in the back in order to become filthy rich, because there do seem to be some very principled billionaires (I'm thinking of Larry & Sergey, Warren Buffet, Pierre Omidyar). But it certainly seems to help.
- gojomo 17y ago
  Whereas in the noncapitalist world, cutthroat assholes get ahead -- often by imprisoning or slaughtering their political opposition.
TriinT 17y ago
He's a Harvard College alumnus, what did you expect? ;-) Though the origins of FB are shady, Zuckerberg still deserves some credit IMHO. I will be blunt: building a social networking website is piece of cake. Designing it so that the users like it enough to use it on a regular basis, maintain it, and scale it are much harder. History is full of stories of people taking advantage of other people's ideas. It sucks, I know. Let's face it: scientists, engineers, hackers are the tip of the spear, the guys taking all the bullets and all the risks. Business people are the smart ones coming in the 2nd wave, when the beach has already been secured, to reap most (if not all) the rewards. Some people, myself included, actually enjoy being in the trenches... and cannot imagine being a rear echelon pussy. To each his own. I probably won't ever be rich, but hopefully I will spend my life working on interesting projects...
- gr82 17y ago
  I'm sorry, but to me the notion that an idea for a website site is something you can steal sounds absolutely ridiculous. Did Larry & Sergey steal the idea of a search engine? Did Hacker News steal the idea of a news site where stories are rated by recency + popularity? Did Etsy steal the idea of an online marketplace? I can't believe that on a site like hacker news, where virtually everybody is trying to do what somebody else has done only a bit better, people would be whining about the notion that one can own idea that others could steal through better execution.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - jfarmer 17y ago
    That's not really what the FB vs ConnectU issue is about. ConnectU wasn't upset because Mark took "their idea." By all accounts he was actively working on their product. So it's not like the Winklevoss brothers approached Mark, pitched him, and he thought, "I can do this better." He actually went to work on their product and then, later, while he was ostensibly working on ConnectU, launched a competing product. That is, it's not "he stole my idea!" It's "he took our code and confidential information and used the opportunity we gave him to harm our business."
gwern 17y ago
Some of the quotes are interesting in that light: > “I do stuff like this all the time,” Zuckerberg says in his relaxed tone. “The facebook literally took me a week to make.”
gojomo 17y ago
HarvardConnection (later renamed 'ConnectU') looked a lot like the classic "3 business guys hire a part-time coder to implement their 'vision'" startup antipattern. That Zuckerberg, who was already creating social web apps before the 'oral contract' and engagement with HarvardConnection, concluded he didn't need that overhead was his own independent discovery of the YC gospel. I'm sure the ConnectU crew thinks their special snowflake vision of a social-networking utility that starts on college campuses was a uniquely world-beating idea, but that sort of delusion is common. There are thousands with similar delusions who didn't luck into a brief collaboration with someone who'd eventually make the vision happen, and the accompanying lucrative settlement. (And a settlement is not an admission of guilt, but a calculation that the costs of fighting exceed the costs of settling. For Facebook, the costs of uncertainty in their fundraising far dominate the potential legal costs/risks, so a settlement says more about the peace of mind wanted by investors than the facts of the case.)
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Sorry, I don't buy the 'he didn't need that overhead'. When you are hired as a programmer to make something that does not give you license to make off with the business plans and designs of your employers. Imagine a contractor making off with the architectural drawings and other details of a building he's supposed to put up because he 'doesn't need that kind of overhead'. It is absolutely without honour. The settlement was likely because there was a fair chance of it sticking in court, the other party decided that 65 million / 3 is good enough for them to not risk losing in court. The costs of fighting were probably a lesser consideration than the cost of losing.
  - gojomo 17y ago
    Of course you can't make off with someone else's preexisting detailed plans. But what if you brought as much or more to the planning as others? If your multitudinous 'partners' want vast credit for concepts and feature requests while you handle all the details and execution? If they're treating you like a 'contractor' (your analogy) when you know you're the prime mover? If there's nothing but vague oral agreements about future possibilities? I see it as: Zuckerburg realized he could better do what he wanted to do -- indeed wanted to do even before meeting HarvardConnection -- on his own. They parted ways after barely 3 months of informal collaboration (while also full-time students). No doubt both sides fumbled a lot of the communication. They were undergrads, after all. What did they know about clear agreements, scoping development efforts, clearly assigning IP rights of side projects, managing expectations, the value and novelty (or not) of ideas? A lot less than they all know now, I'm sure.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

leelin 17y ago

Wow, the article's author is Michael M. Grynbaum, the same guy who first wrote about our startup! http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/realestate/08rent.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/realestate/08rent.html I hope that's a good sign. :P (Don't bother reading the article; our idea has morphed a lot.)

utsmokingaces 17y ago

“Some companies offered us right off the bat up to one million, and then we got another offer that was like two million,” he says. He and D’Angelo at first decided not to sell. “I don’t really like putting a price-tag on the stuff I do. That’s just like not the point,” Zuckerberg says. Really?? Is this a joke? How can a journalist even write that?

kareemm 17y ago
the journalist was an aspiring one, writing for the crimson - harvard's college newspaper.

ghost11 17y ago

"Meet Anakin Skywalker, promising pod racing whiz."