
  Mark E. Zuckerberg ’06: The whiz behind thefacebook.com (2004) - jasonlbaptiste
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=502875#
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jacquesm
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-
ma...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/feb/12/facebook-mark-
zuckerberg-ex-classmates)

for a lot more info about that.

~~~
TriinT
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
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.

~~~
jfarmer
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."

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jasonlbaptiste
“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.”

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utsmokingaces
“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
the journalist was an aspiring one, writing for the crimson - harvard's
college newspaper.

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leelin
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>

I hope that's a good sign. :P

(Don't bother reading the article; our idea has morphed a lot.)

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ghost11
"Meet Anakin Skywalker, promising pod racing whiz."

