FYI, this issue probably has personal relevance for the author (Naval Ravikant). He was one of four founders who were left out in the cold during the Epinions I

FYI, this issue probably has personal relevance for the author (Naval Ravikant). He was one of four founders who were left out in the cold during the Epinions IPO. The fifth got $20 million. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F00E5D7113DF932A35752C1A9629C8B63&sec=&spon= http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F00E5D7113DF... But the founders of Epinions -- Nirav Tolia, Naval Ravikant, Ramanathan Guha, Dion Lim and Mike Speiser -- have learned that success does not necessarily mean that a company's creators will be rewarded. August Capital and Benchmark Capital, two venture capital firms that invested $4 million each to help start Epinions in April 1999, profited handsomely in the public offering. They had both made additional investments, and each now owns a stake in Shopping.com worth roughly $60 million. Overall, Shopping.com was worth $750 million at the close of the market on Friday. By contrast, four of the five founders of Epinions did not see a dime from Shopping.com's public sale -- their shares in Epinions were rendered worthless when it merged with DealTime. ''What the Epinions story demonstrates,'' said Paul Saffo, a research fellow at the Institute for the Future, a Silicon Valley research group, ''is that the golden rule applies even in Silicon Valley: the people who have the gold, rule.'' Of the Epinions founders, only Mr. Tolia, who took over as Shopping.com's chief operating officer after the merger, fared well in the offering. His shares were worth nearly $20 million at Friday's closing price.