

Sean Parker leaves Founders Fund - foobarqux
http://blogs.ft.com/tech-blog/2014/03/sean-parker-leaves-founders-fund-not-part-of-latest-1bn-fund/

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foobarqux
Sorry, I don't know how to automatically create a link that will bypass the
paywall.

Text below:

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Hold the Sean Parker jokes about $1bn.

It was Justin Timberlake, playing Mr Parker in The Social Network, who
delivered the famous line: “A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s
cool?”

Founders Fund has just raised its first $1bn fund – but Mr Parker has now
officially cut his ties with the firm.

News of the new fund came late on Wednesday, in a deliberately low-key
statement. But it’s hard to be too low-key about $1bn – or about the departure
of an investor who attracts as much attention as Mr Parker.

It was while he was working as president at Facebook that Mr Parker introduced
Mark Zuckerberg to Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel, leading to the first
outside investment in the company. It also led to Mr Parker and Mr Thiel
working together at Founders Fund in a partnership that immediately put the
firm in the Silicon Valley spotlight.

The most prominent – and successful – company Mr Parker has been associated
with since then is Spotify, which attracted investments both from him and from
the fund, and where he remains a director. But another social networking idea
fell flat: Airtime, launched with a glitzy, celebrity-packed party in 2011,
flopped almost immediately.

A spokesperson for Founders Fund tells us that Parker “has been winding down
his involvement with Founders Fund over the last several years”, and adds: “He
remains a friend and advisor to several members of the team, but he’ll no
longer be investing on behalf of the firm.”

Another person close to the firm says that Mr Parker hasn’t been actively
involved for several years. He told the FT himself two and a half years ago
that he had “reduced his duties” at the firm to give him more time to devote
to Airtime.

However, as of Wednesday evening, Mr Parker’s Facebook page still lists him as
“executive general partner” at Founders Fund.

He was also still listed on the firm’s website as recently as Sunday, where he
was described as part of the firm and “an entrepreneur with a record of
launching genre-defining companies that reinvent ways to spread information
online.” The last time it raised a fund, a little more than two years ago, he
was listed as a part of “the team”, though he was not included among the
partners.

As the FT’s Tim Bradshaw reported, Mr Parker has been spending much less time
in the Silicon Valley recently. Since his controversial wedding among the
California redwoods, he has been based mainly in New York, away from what he
calls the Silicon Valley “monoculture”. This is what he had to say late last
year:

    
    
        Silicon Valley feels totally in the clouds. There is something so all-consuming about the tech world in San Francisco and it’s inescapable . . .
    

It looks like he has just taken one more step towards escaping.

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mathattack
Easy enough to just Google the article once you find it.

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foobarqux
It's annoying. I edited my comment to reproduce the text.

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mathattack
It is, but I'll still take it over having to pay every time. :-)

