There needs to be a label placed on the idea of feeling the need to bow to the wishes of critics who try to limit the idea of valid entrepreneurship to activities deemed "beneficial to society." I propose Founder's Guilt Complex.
Why on earth - when life is so big and beautiful and complex - should I feel guilty if I make money from an activity that does nothing more than give people a diversion from life's burdens and problems? College football may be a joke to pointy-head types but then reading Latin (my own peculiar idea of fun) is equally a joke to the cheering fans who join in inter-collegiate rivalries. Likewise for playing video games or hiking in the woods or listening to rock-and-roll or producing reality-TV shows or most any other activity you can name whose main goal is relaxation, entertainment, escape from life's burdens, or just plain self-indulgence. And social networking is no exception. I may not do much on Facebook (I don't) but so what? Others can and do like to share things with people of varying degrees of relationship to them and more power to them for liking to do this. It is their choice. It is a free country. It is not for me to be a scold who upbraids them for doing so. Nor should I be crabbed or pinched about what founders choose to do to create and market products and services designed to satisfy such proclivities or to make money from them.
Yes, I can set about in life to conquer diseases or to abolish poverty or to alleviate people's suffering and all such things are ennobling. I can do such things via a profit-making venture or I can make my money on other things and then use it to advance higher goals through giving. Or I can devote time and energy to helping others in my personal life. All of that is great but it hardly defines the boundaries of worthwhile human activity. Life has enough problems without having someone of a judgmental spirit continually taking us to task for wanting to have some fun as well or for trying to promote fun things for others. In a free society, there is room for fun things as well and for those who see it as worthwhile to take risk in building companies that seek to market less-than-weighty things to the public.
Life certainly can be perverse. In 17th century England, as modern western society was taking shape, you had, on the one side, royalists who despised political freedom, who valued rule by a church hierarchy, and yet who were much given to licentious habits in their lifestyles while, on the other, you had those who agitated for political freedom, who fought oppressive forms of centralized rule, who ultimately broke away to form what became America, and yet who in their personal lives bore the grim face of the puritan that sought at every turn to chain, quarter, and shame everyone all about who thought it might be fun to dance or to have a little fun in life. It seems that in our modern society we have ported over the spirit of the puritan in castigating others even as we have won the freedoms that allow us under law to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Well, if the pursuit of happiness was deemed a worthy goal of a society's founding documents, far be it from me to stand grim-faced telling others that they should feel guilty in not conforming to my narrow view of acceptable life activities - and that includes how I choose to make my living or start my business.
I don't think this is a mere technical issue either. I believe that no guilt or stigma should attach to ventures doing legal things just because they don't set out to solve World Problems. The poor have always been with us. So too have wars, rapes, and murders. Ditto for disease and death. I am the first to say "bravo" to those who do not sit resigned to accept all these destructive elements in life but who instead spur themselves to do something to help make things better not just for themselves but for the broader society too. That said, such activities cannot be the only things that define our goals in life, nor should they be. There is value in having enjoyment and fun in life and this is a transcending value that betters society. In the entrepreneurial world, there is no room for a spirit of self-righteousness. Therefore, I say away with Founder's Guilt Complex. If you want to do a venture, do it honestly and with integrity, drive, boldness, and energy. Just don't let others tell you that you should feel guilty about offending their scruples. Enjoy and make it work without guilt. You can deal with Weighty Issues too if you are so led. Just don't listen to those who say that what you are doing is not worthwhile unless it is narrowly confined to them.
So if the VC industry chose to pour all kinds of money into creating something called social networking, and if all kinds of talented engineers have flocked to that industry in pursuit of money or other personal goals, that is by definition a great benefit to society because it has given many, many people the chance to do things that were scarcely thought possible just a decade ago - and to derive simple pleasures from the diversions or other benefits afforded to them through such networking. Whatever the flaws associated with individual people or companies in such an industry, there is nothing whatever wrong with those who devoted their money and their efforts to making all this possible.
And don't worry, I'll do it with plenty of integrity, drive, boldness, and energy. Just like Zynga : )
Do it and I'll donate $1000 that I promise I was not going to donate anyways to Partners In Health.
There's an idea common to forums that I don't frequent that I recently learned of called an "ideological Turing test". The idea is to take a group of people divided along a controversy, and to get each side to anonymously write a coherent argument that capture's the other side's perspective. Then everyone tries to tell, "which is the real argument, and which is the cunning fake?".
In that spirit: if you think you understand what 'grellas is trying to say so well, go ahead and take a whack at saying it better, and demonstrate that you actually grok his perspective.
The base of his argument is offending a persons preferences is not sufficient to self censor ones own actions - and I agree.
I also agree where he said any legal start up is fine and free of guilt - but don't worry I would be behind any start up or government initiative that gave away heroin to Junkies. The so called British System worked very well for many years, until the Puritan guilt pressure ended it in spite of empirical evidence that harm reduction did in fact reduce harm
so convert your start up to social entrpreneur status, and go make something to be proud of
the only reason to feel guilty is to have talent to create and not do so.
Facebook provides an excellent service to most people in the world and it does so at a level that your $20,000 cannot buy. While we as a more discerning social customer may see it as extremely low value, the production values are actually extremely high. I always think of my national rag the Sun in these instances, it's utter trash, but they really worked hard on making it extremely good trash.
Alas for the article, to be honest the whole thing reads of bitterness, not unjustified if we are looking at 'justice'. But Zuck is a complete $&!t, and an extremely lucky one at that, but in business that's just the way it works. Moaning about it is futile. The only way to end up playing at that level is probably ending up being a complete $&!t as well. There are few big founders who haven't done very dodgy things in their time.
You sure did write a lot complaining about people using their free speech to criticize businesses they feel are either harmful or a waste of resources because this is a "free country". I was under the impression that the philosophy behind a free country was that allowing the people to openly criticize and discuss things allowed a society to thrive without overly restrictive laws. I guess they didn't consider the hurt feelings of entrepreneurs. I propose a new amendment: Freedom from hurt feelings resulting from the people's reaction to one's actions!
I'm actually very content with having the chosen method for encouraging altruism to be social norms. I'm happy you are free to invent a new addictive and time wasting form of entertainment who's contribution to society is null or negative. Complaining that some internet words made you feel guilty about it or that there is too much social pressure to actually contribute to the society on who's back you built your business is ... well, it's fucking ridiculous frankly.
A more concise way to say what 'grellas said is that these complaints about Facebook have nothing to do with ethics and everything to do with fashion. They are just a new way of proclaiming to the world that "I don't even own a television".
Concern for masses frittering away hours on meaningless entertainments is at least as old as the mechanical player piano. Despite the countervailing evidence of the Salk Vaccine, the ARPA IMP, Google, stem cell transplants, McGee's _On Food And Cooking_, and everything else society has managed to accomplished while beset by the horrors of entertainment, you are welcome to hold the view that you are better not only than the people who avail themselves of that entertainment, but also the people who manage to produce and maintain it using computer systems running at a scale unimaginable just a decade or two before.
Just do it with better writing, because the bar for articulating this particular concern is set very high; you might start with _Infinite Jest_.
Facebook has created a vast amount of wealth for a huge number of people. If you believe in capitalism, then Facebook has benefited society greatly, by definition.
--There's a reason for ethics in law, economics and public policy.
"They're f------g taking all the money back from you guys?" complains an Enron employee on the tapes. "All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?"
"Yeah, grandma Millie, man"
"Yeah, now she wants her f------g money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her a------ for f------g $250 a megawatt hour."
Even that doesn't compare to the choke-hold (and the potential for indenture-ment) FB has over your current and continued life.
Walmart isn't a service. Walmart doesn't have access to your most intimate information like Facebook does. Heck millions of Virgin Mobile accounts have been compromised. But the potential damage isn't even in the same order of magnitude of something (hypothetically) going foul at FB, either owing to deliberate policy or accidentally.
Same with JetBlue with passenger data some years ago. Not same order. Not same potential damage.
If "he was young" is a defense, then "he is too young to trust as a CEO" suddenly becomes a very very valid criticism of Zuck.
tl;dr It's hard to stop being an arrogant asshole. I feel bad for the guy.
I know I would be pretty bitter in a similar situation.
It's another thing to actively engage others, talk to them as if you are friends or enter into agreements to work together, and then take ideas from their work. It's the betrayal of people's trust that's gotten him the reputation for being a con and a thief.
He may, in fact, be the greatest con of all time, having effectively convinced an entire nation, including the President of the United States, to believe in his extremist philosophy of radical openness.
It isn't clear if getting someone to believe in your 'extremist philosophy of radical openness' is necessarily a con, unless of course you yourself don't believe in it and/or are doing so only in furtherance of some other interest which you are obscuring.
I do believe this is what Greenspan was getting at.
That's certainly not the lesson. In fact what's always made me believe these sort of attacks against Zuckerberg's character is the fact that you don't see this happen with really any of the other startups that got big. Nobody is accusing Larry and Sergey of these sorts of shenanigans.
I'd say if anything, being a moral person is more blessing than curse when it comes to amassing wealth. It's obviously not a requirement though.
I think a lot of it is about the product you are making. Google was started by people who would find Google useful. Larry and Sergey were not laughing at people for wanting to search the web. Facebook is just another in a long line of marketing triumphs, similar to movie and record producers who create movies and bands they themselves would never watch or listen to. Facebook is not a tech company, they are the worst part of the entertainment industry, the nonartists.
Reading the logs I don't get the sense Zuckerberg is being dishonest or that he even considers Aaron to be a friend. The main conflict seems to be the accusation that Zuckerberg stole ideas, which is a big question for software in general: ideas want to spread so the concept of IP is arguably against the nature of ideas. At the same time, we want people to be able to get rich off a great idea even if they don't implement it successfully. This question re: IP and copyrights is something we're still resolving as a society. Until it gets resolved, if ever, lots of people are going to have lots of unfair things happen to them and it's understandable to be mad about that.
But that's what life is: unfair. Just like we can't go through life feeling guilty about how lucky we are to have survived infancy unlike some absurd percentage of humans in poor countries, we can't constantly hate on other people who are even luckier than we are re: how they don't deserve their success. No one deserves anything. Life is unfair.
2) It is absolutely possible to treat your fellow human beings well and find richly-deserved success - Mark Zuckerberg however does not seem capable of this.
3) Even though our society might tolerate and even reward (in the short-term at least) this sort of behaviour, should we be happy that a master-exploiter of this unfairness is the guardian of social relationships on the internet?
* The degree to which sheer luck and network effects are factors in this particular sector makes this plausible.
On the bright side, at least he's thematically consistent! "I keep getting screwed over by life" is the only reason I can think of to start the post with so many words about Final Clubs before the pivot.... Suffice it to say, anyone who can graduate from Harvard with a CS degree and feel screwed over needs some perspective.
Or he could just be incompetent and bitter. Who knows.
Maybe this guy has a reasonable beef, but it's far from clear to me.
From the perspective of being a decent human being, the answer to this question is pretty much always "yes".
In the IM's Zuckerberg goes so far as to tell Greenspan he considers him to be "like a friend" (see IM for exact wording). This is really sickening.
It's "FINE-UHL clubs" not "FINE-UHLZ clubs."
And he shockingly did not understand why information privacy might be a controversial issue.
And then
He had been searching the houseSYSTEM Facebook for the twins' profiles
So much for privacy.
Aside from the Facebook, the sites had overlapping features for course schedulers, photo albums, message boards, digital posters for student groups, and eventually exchanges for buying and selling on campus and mapping your network of friends.
Irrelevant. People only used Thefacebook for obvious and simple things: connecting with people they knew, poking, messaging, and photos. No one used mapping your network of friends (which sucked, incidentally, and also was faily most of the time) and no one even used the course scheduler. To state the obvious, facebook was not successful for its features, it was successful because how it was executed!
This was claimed to have been written for historical significance, but I know that every time an article is written by this author and about this subject dozens of people are thinking the same thing: move on. Create a successful company first, then retire and write about this topic. I'd love to see blog posts regarding Think Computer's technology. As it stands, this blog post gained a lot of attention but there isn't even a a sidebar with "Hi, I'm Aaron Greenspan and I'm the CEO of Think Computer. We have this product, click here to learn more." It's a marketing failure to not capitalize on such an opportunity.
Geez, we're supposed to think less of the guy for not milking his controversial history with Zuckerburg for cash? If there's ever a right time to refrain from marketing yourself, it's when you're accusing someone else of being an opportunistic sociopath.
There's a reason there is no such link. FaceCash is currently prohibited from doing business in California by the Money Transmission Act. Aaron is trying to resolve this, but until he does his hands are kind of tied.
Aaron Greenspan has a whole song and dance about how the state of California screwed him over, too. The guy comes across as nothing but a professional victim.
I think there will be poetic justice in this story. Because the web is much bigger than Zuckerberg, or Facebook or even Google. The world is still getting online. It's early yet. But what Zuckerberg has done, how he has carried himself in the presence of enormous luck, he cannot erase. He will live with this reputation as a con his entire life. Building a website, millions of people signing up, enormous hype, making millions from display ads might seem impressive today. It won't remain that way in years to come. We're just getting started. Technology will be taken for granted. There will be more attention to the things Zuckerberg carelessly disregarded.
"Dumb fucks" indeed.
Thank you Mr. Greenspan for telling your side of the story.
Does anyone care about what may or may not have gone on at IBM 30 years ago? At MySpace? Facebook is not a bank and it's not a government. It's a social media site. Nobody will care.
Zuckerberg starts and ends most of the conversations.
To clarify: I'm not sure precisely why I find it interesting, it was just one of those phenomena that raised an eyebrow, and passed my "don't publicly engage in debates about people's character whom I haven't personally met"-test. (To be fair I do make practical judgments based on moral reputation when deciding whether or not to enter relationships with others.)
And once again, in Greenspan's own transcripts, Zuckerberg comes off better -- more focused, more observant, more strategic, seeing opportunities rather than obsessing on risks, and even more generous with offers of collaboration -- than Greenspan himself.
Maybe I'm being too rosy and idealistic here, but I prefer integrity over those other traits you mentioned. Many people have a good balance, so why compromise?
Not to mention the dozens of other social media clones around that time (I remember being members of countless social media sites in those days)
Its not like anyone at Harvard stumbled upon an amazing new idea that was going to change the game. They were building what they hoped would be better versions of things already out there. Mark registered thefacebook.com because "Face Book" is a very common phrase/object.
For better or worse, Zuckerberg won the social networking race. Congrats to him, everyone else at Harvard at that time trying to stake a claim needs to just get on with their lives.
80 million users!
Facebook gives me great comfort that the race isn't always to the swift.
And the contrast between Facebook and the launch of Google Wave has demonstrated that having a dense social graph early is critical to success.
Law 3: Never put too much trust in friends, learn how to use enemies. If only Zuck's "friends" knew about the first part of the law. Zuck was, however, a master in exploiting and gaining information from his "enemies". Further, he used what his competitions to frame what his product should be.
Law 4: Conceal your intentions. "Keep people off-balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions" -- apparent in both the Winklevoss and Greenspan's stories. Zuck misled and deceived until the right time.
Law 5: Always say less than necessary...classic Zuck, "There was a need for facebook, so I made it"
Law 6: Court attention at all cost. His fight to receive coverage in the Crimson ensuring the early dominance of thefacebook.
Law 7: Get others to do the work for you, but always take the credit. If any of the stories about facebook is true, then Zuck's a textbook example of observing this law. According to Greene: using other people's work "not only will [...] save you valuable time and energy, it will give you a godlike aura of efficiency and speed". Clearly it has worked to achieve his "genius" aura.
Law 9: Win through your actions, never through argument. He never let the lawsuits detract him away from the work too much. Now that facebook is too big, what actually happened really doesn't matter anymore.
Law 11: Learn to keep people dependent on you. Facebook is too big now...G_G
Law 12: Use selective honesty and generosity to disarm your victim. The part about facebook's frequent change and backtracks of privacy must has something to do with this.
Law 13: When asking for help, appeal to people's self-interest, never to their mercy or gratitude. Zuckerburg appealed to Greenspan's desire to help entrepreneurs when asking for advice. Also, his claim that Greenspan was one of those on his level can be seen more of a classic ego-stroking rather than admission of admiration.
Law 14: Pose as a friend, work as a spy. "Knowing about your rival is critical. Play the spy yourself to gather valuable information that will keep you a step ahead. [...] There is no occasion that is not an opportunity for artful spying". Yeah, Zuck's a master at this.
Law 15: Crush your enemey totally. Check.
So out of the first 18 laws, the rise of facebook and Zuckerburg have observed 11, textbook style. His amoral approach to power and life is definitely key to his success.
Bit of a hasty conclusion. Have you really analyzed the sum-total of his behaviors/moves and feel you can conclusively state that the above 11 "laws" are the cornerstone of his success? I doubt that. Also, the book you reference is really not useful for any human being that intends to be part of a actual society. It is a great primer for a sociopath, but I will assume that is not what you aspire to be. Some people see successful sociopaths and incorrectly conclude their sociopathy is what made them successful. That is like assuming Steve Jobs, who was somewhat notorious for being...blunt, was successful because he was an asshole, instead of in spite of that characteristic. It also willfully ignores a lot of non-sociopaths that are successful and disregards other factors that may be more causative.
I would take that book with a big grain of salt and not use it as a manual for life. Or you can, I just don’t predict great success. I would predict a long string of people telling other people what an ass you are and causing you to have countless doors closed to you without ever knowing it or knowing why; primarily because people don’t relish partnering with/working for/associating with sociopaths. For every "successful" sociopath you see that lives by those "laws" there are millions of others that also live by those "laws" that have nothing to show for it but a string of failed relationships and a complete and utter lack of friends. Beware of survivorship bias[1], it can teach you only the wrong things.
However, I don't think the laws outlined (or at least all of them) only apply to sociopaths. Law 2: Never put too much trust in friends, learn how to use enemies. This is just as defensive as manipulative, we would like to think our friends will always be loyal, but that's simply not true.
Law 3: Conceal your intentions. Law 4: Always say less than necessary. Law 6: Court attention at all cost. Marketing and public relations use these all the time.
Law 7: Get others to do the work, and you take credit. Indeed, this one breaks hearts and how we wish that no one ever does this. You can chose to play the game, or learn how it can happen to better defend against credit-stealing. If only Tesla was aware...
Law 9: Win through actions rather than arguments. I actually don't see anything sociopathic about this law at all.
Law 11: Learn to keep people dependent on you. Gaining early traction is pretty important for a startup's success.
Law 12: Use selective honesty and generosity to disarm your victim. This is mostly used in adversarial situations, more like a law of war rather than law of life. But again, "crush your enemy totally" is preached in Sun Tzu's Art of War, but the book is still a classic.
Law 13: When asking for help, appeal to people's self-interest, never to their mercy or gratitude. This is one of the tenet in Dale Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people", simply explains human nature.
Like every piece of knowledge, the laws outlined in the book really depend on your own interpretation and how you apply them. It's similar to learning about security so you can protect yourself against exploits and make robust products.
For instance:
"both so-called Facebook veterans (a phrase that actual veterans might find laughable)"
or
"It was an expense I simply could not afford all over again (unlike the Winklevoss twins, my father did not have millions of dollars of disposable income)"
or
"[Mark] didn't understand how to speak like a mature person his age."
Bits like those just scream "I'm a vicitim" and come off as whiny.
If Greenspan laid out the timeline and the documentation sans his editorializing it would be more powerful.
Carry these same points through any follow-up interviews, testimony, etc and I sense that Greenspan would be much happier with his outcome.
But don't shoot the messenger. There are plenty of facts he's giving us. It is not pure opinion. An eye witness is an eye witness. He was there. As long as he is credible, his character, for our purposes, is irrelevant.
Not saying they aren't all true, I'm sure they are.
Why focus on the negativity? Recognize it and move beyond.
> zberg02: but probably like 8k
> zberg02: i think that qualifies as real cool
8k isn't cool. You know what's cool...
I've never looked back at archived IMs from years past, though, but they are still squirreled away on the removed hard drives from past machines.
It's nice to here it from the horse's mouth instead of second-hand from a movie made to generate revenue though.
Even if Aaron is the superior engineer, Mark is the superior psychologist. Vision and navigation of systems constructed by humans turns out to be more important than building a lot of stuff no matter how cool or new it is.
Also seems like mark argues there aren't any ideas to steal and admits facebook's been done before- just this time he's going to execute it better.
Say what you will about Greenspan but at least the guy is responsible. We can't say the same for Zuckerberg. The kid is reckless and unremorseful.
I'm not aware of a common definition for "good character," but merely having your character "called into question," especially as a high-profile CEO (and celebrity, at that), should not be the sole grounds for being denied a license to transact money. I'm not saying there couldn't have been more to it in the case of Facebook/Zuckerberg, but in general, public defamation should not be, in itself, enough to prevent someone from building a legal business.
I apologise for not contributing, but I can't access the page so I have no idea what it says.. but by the amount of extensive comments here, I'm dying of curiosity
http://www.wired.com/business/2011/05/facebook-google-smear/
