
Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are now VCs - dwynings
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/04/27/meet-silicon-valleys-newest-vcs-tyler-and-cameron-winklevoss-video/
======
bermanoid
The Zuck > Winklevoss thing here is out of control. Do you guys even
understand what really happened?

This is not a tale of "Rich assholes tell hacker about their idea, then sue
him for building it without them."

This is "Rich assholes come to hacker with mostly built site, he agrees to
finish it up for an equity stake, and then lies to them for two months about
progress _to make sure that he can beat them to market_."

Do all of you Winklevoss-haters even realize that the site was almost done
when Zuck joined up?

That the guy that started building the site worked on it for four months and
only stopped because he graduated to get a job at Google?

That the next contractor specifically referred Zuck as a good person to get
the job finished when he had to leave?

That if Zuck had said "no" they would have found someone else to finish it,
but he didn't say "no" because he realized how important it was to be first to
market?

It's not like this was some fucking pie-in-the-sky idea. There was code on the
table (crafted by a guy that got a job at Google a few months later, so
probably pretty decent code), and they were putting money behind getting it
finished. The only reason that Facebook beat them to market is that
_Zuckerberg lied to them for four months about working on it_. Specifically so
that he could delay them, from the looks of it - his IMs indicate that within
a couple weeks of first meeting with them, he'd already decided to string them
along but had no intention of actually doing the work.

Do I like the idea of non-technical founders getting hackers to work for
equity? No, I don't. It's their right, and it's the hacker's right to
foolishly say yes, but I don't think it's ideal.

But I'm far more offended at the idea that a hacker agrees to take on the task
of finishing a project, digests the confidential IP (including code) that
they've agreed to flesh out, and then lies to the client to delay them and
then crush them in the market. That's disgustingly unethical (not to mention
fraudulent) behavior.

If you question whether Zuck's motives were really that sinister, read some of
his IMs, like the one he sent to Eduardo, in December (3 months before launch,
as he was telling the twins that the site was "almost complete"): "Check this
site out: www.harvardconnection.com and then go to
harvardconnection.com/datehome.php. Someone is already trying to make a dating
site. But they made a mistake haha. They asked me to make it for them. So I'm
like delaying it so it won't be ready until after the facebook thing comes
out." ([http://www.businessinsider.com/how-facebook-was-
founded-2010...](http://www.businessinsider.com/how-facebook-was-
founded-2010-3) \- there's more sinister stuff there, too)

Shit like this? He should have lost 100% of the business, plain and simple,
and (to their discredit) if the Winklevoss twins had played the legal dispute
competently (they should have pushed harder, earlier, and they obviously
should not taken the settlement offer when they did), _he would have_.

~~~
9oliYQjP
I'd love to see the source code to that site at the point it was handed off to
Zuck. If this was really near finished, or at least significantly far along,
it would be extremely illuminating.

Here's the thing though. How could the Winklevoss twins get strung along for 4
months? Not that this has any relevance to the ethics of the matter. But their
contribution to developing this idea was simply money. They needed technical
people to build on that idea. Outside of this one idea they funded, they
haven't done anything significant or relevant in business since. And now
they're just spending money that they got from the settlement.

I'd much rather take a $5 Starbucks coffee and a conversation with Paul Graham
over $1M in funding from the Winklevoss twins. I just don't see what value
they bring to the table. Money can be found all over the place.

------
mtgentry
Tyler Winklevoss: "We were there at the beginning of web 2.0.."

Yes, technically you were both alive on earth at the time. So was my Nana, my
creepy uncle Hank, and about 6 billion other people.

------
ojbyrne
I didn't watch the video, but the first question I had was - wouldn't they
have become VCs anyway? Harvard Business School, upper class background (right
schools, right clubs, etc), probably a massive rolodex (Larry Summers at the
very least), and one startup that failed because they didn't hire good lawyers
to make sure their programmer didn't get uppity.

This seems to fit the profile of thousands of people in the valley.

~~~
yequalsx
I don't think they have Summers' info on their rolodex.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjJgUlme1XQ>

------
joshmlewis
I guess one good thing that came out of the Social Network is that they will
never live down their parts in the movie. Especially being portrayed as "bad
guys." Just the start of the interview the first 30 seconds must have been
very awkward for them.

~~~
c250d07
I only saw it once a while ago, but I don't think they were portrayed as 'bad
guys' in the film. They even came out in support of how their story was told
in the movie.

~~~
corin_
To me it portrayed them as money-grabbing, egotistical and a bit moronic. Is
it possible that the film manages to re-inforce whatever views the watcher had
before seeing the film, I wonder what somebody who had never heard of those
twins before seeing the film would think of them.

~~~
intended
Is that because in the end we are rooting for Zuckerberg?

I mean I could understand 'naive' and even understand dislike for kids who
come from old money.

Yet money-grabbig/egotistical is a bit weird to parse. Heck if it was a kid
from lesser beginnings and he fought back, he would have been the hero of the
movie.

~~~
corin_
I'm not a huge fan of Zuckerberg in real life - I admire what he's done, but
not his personality. But in the movie, he's written to be the hero, a hero
with flaws certainly but hero none-the-less. So yes that's certainly part of
it, but just as he was written to be the hero, so too were the twins written
to be the bad guys, even if they weren't as bad as we might expect hollywood
villains to be.

I don't think egos is weird to parse, they didn't just come from money
(incidentally I come from money, to a lesser extent, so that doesn't set me
automatically against people), they were the type of people that think their
coming from money makes them superior in more ways that just their bank
account balance.

As to money-grabbing, it's my opinion both from the actual story and also the
movie, that they frankly didn't deserve the money they got from Facebook, so
yeah they were money-grabbing in their legal pursuits.

------
IsaacL
People are being way too negative about this. So, they were a pair of "idea
guys" who failed to execute and then managed to grab more than their fair
share of the latest Valley success story. Does this warrant their eternal
membership in the tech community's pantheon of evil?

It seems to me like they're trying to put the Facebook thing behind them and
use their wealth constructively. If you think startups are generally a net
positive for the world, then more money going into startups has to be a good
thing. And you have to admit they do have _some_ ability to spot big ideas.

~~~
bermanoid
_People are being way too negative about this. So, they were a pair of "idea
guys" who failed to execute and then managed to grab more than their fair
share of the latest Valley success story._

I'd be fine with the negativity if that was even what happened. But it's not.

They _didn't_ "fail to execute". They were fairly far along in the process of
executing ("the previous HarvardConnection programmers had already made
progress on a large chunk of the coding: front-end pages, the registration
system, a database, back-end coding, and a way users could connect with each
other", according to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConnectU>), and would have
finished up just fine with someone else if Zuck hadn't signed on and lied
about progress specifically to delay them (that this was his intention came
out pretty clearly in the IM conversations that were leaked a couple years
ago, he basically lays out his plan to feign progress so that they don't look
for someone else to finish ConnectU up before Facebook launches).

It's one thing to get beat to market because you didn't hire the right
programmer, that's a straightforward failure of execution; it's another thing
altogether to get beat to market by the very programmer that you hired to beat
the competitors to market. That makes you a victim of fraud, and I have a lot
of sympathy for that.

------
joelrunyon
"We focus on early stage disruptive startups." Does this scare anyone else?
Just feels like people with money are throwing it around and making it look
pretty with buzz words.

~~~
raverbashing
"Just feels like people with money are throwing it around"

Also, there is this quote: "One of the areas of focus for their fund is cloud
computing"

So, it looks like EXACTLY that. They will probably end up with lots of
"Pets.com 2.0"

~~~
joelrunyon
I wouldn't be surprised if the entire startup ecosystem doesn't end with a
bunch of Pets.com clones.

------
tdfx
"Operational experience" == "litigation experience"?

~~~
untitledwiz
I LOL-ed really hard when they claimed they had relevant/useful "operational
experience".

~~~
maaku
I don't know about you, but I remember ConnectU.com being an actual, usable
website. Not that it at any point gained traction over Facebook, but they did
at least execute the idea.

------
cheebla
Money is the great equalizer. I don't imagine they'll have any trouble getting
start-ups to take their money. Then again, 65 million seems like a lot of
money but if these guys don't know what they're doing it won't last them very
long.

~~~
wallawe
That initial 65 million in equity is worth easily 3x that much now, even more
post-IPO

------
SkyMarshal
They didn't seem to have much original to say. Everything they discussed could
have been gleaned from Techcrunch, Mashable, etc.

I wonder if their money and network will be enough to compensate for lack of
(real) operational experience when they court top tier startup teams.

Reading PG or Thiel, or watching Andreesen's presentations at
<http://ecorner.stanford.edu>, there's a world of value beyond money that they
bring to table.

------
rollypolly
Would working for the Winklevoss'es be a black mark on someone's resume?

For one thing, you'd never get hired at Facebook after that. Then again,
Facebook isn't the only game in town.

~~~
jonnathanson
Honestly, I doubt they occupy more than a passing thought in Mark
Zuckerberg's, or Facebook's, minds these days.

------
spitfire
They actually come across fairly well. They mention the history of
timesharing. Which is an important indicator that they pay attention to
history.

This is key, we've had "social networks" since the 80's. We called them BBSes.
We dialled them up to chat, play online games, etc. Bring some historical
perspective to the party and you can short circuit a lot of work - or just
pass off something old as new again.

Their focus on enterprise tech is probably a good one too.

------
zeruch
They are not VCs. They are opportunist/tech celebs with a pool of cash. I
simply do not see the announcement of them "becoming VCs" as much more than
PR. When they actually start investing and getting returns, THEN let's give
them some attention.

------
binarray2000
Imagine they invest in your startup and later say "It was our idea!"...

But on a serious note: I'm happy for them because they'll see now that
business is more than suing someone for the mere idea.

------
bborud
I think they should hire Aleksey Vayner as their spokesperson.

~~~
BadassFractal
I wonder how many will get that. I still remember the guy, he's awesome.

------
nikcub
"we think the cloud will be really big"

mind. blown.

~~~
bborud
followup question: "how big? can you show me?"

------
draggnar
that was painful

------
eli_gottlieb
Who?

------
adaml_623
So since I have only watched the Social Network I'm very uninformed about the
Winklevoss brothers and facebook. Can someone throw up some links to give me
some more datapoints on the issue. From my point of view they are the same as
normal VCs

~~~
mkramlich
I didn't downvote you but I wanted to respectfully point out that your
question could have been more easily answered by taking a moment to Google
about the Winklevoss brothers and the Social Network, rather than post your
comment here. That kind of thing is all just a few clicks away at any time, on
the web.

~~~
adaml_623
Thanks for the reply, I was wondering why my HN points had dropped. I think my
original post should have read, "The Winklevoss brothers seem to be fairly
normal VCs with a short track record of backing good ideas. Why are people
_here_ on HN dismissive of them." Live and learn I guess.

