Re:ConnectU Spills Value of Facebook Deal: $65M
by old-gregg on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @08:25PM
(#476334)
Good points, but the most damage has been made by him faking the development process: telling your cofounders that you're moving along, while secretly preparing to launch a competitor isn't what I call "branching" in my book.
You're right, I may come across as strongly opinionated on this matter, as someone who worked his ass off only to learn some day that our partner has had prepared a brand new corporate entity where he's been pumping our IP for stock, leaving us with stock of an empty "shell". Lawyers helped, sure, most of what we got back went straight to their own pockets. Having two guys work for $400/hour isn't going to help you much.
So... I wouldn't call it branching when you're essentially paying (with your time and effort) for someone else's product launch. If I remember the story correctly, Zuk launched Facebook within weeks (!) after finally admitting to them that they're screwed.
Re:ConnectU Spills Value of Facebook Deal: $65M
by breck on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @11:09PM
(#476489)
Yeah I don't know the details. I'm definitely not in favor of going behind anyone's back to start a company. But if I was working on something with a few other people and they turned out to not be contributing much, I'd fork. But would certainly be open and upfront about it.
The world is a better place for Zuckerberg acting as he did. Facebook has become an incredibly successful company with great products. He obviously made the decision that he could do a much better job running the show than the ConnectU guys, and he went ahead and proved it. I have nothing but respect for that.
As for stealing code--I think it's generally pretty trivial for any developer worth his salt to rewrite things from memory without having to steal it(given that I think he only worked for ConnectU parttime for a few weeks--not enough time to build a substantial codebase). I'd be surprised if any ConnectU code was "stolen". I wouldn't be shocked if some lines were reused out of laziness, but in general I think a few weeks of code in most cases is useless. A rewrite will often be better and easier.
I would hate it if we ever even considered putting people in jail for branching out because they believe they can do a better job at innovating and leading a business than their current employers. That's the heart of capitalism--creative destruction; upsetting of the status quo.
If you're concerned that one of your co-founders may branch off and compete with you, I'd say the problem is probably with you--there's not a lot of confidence in your abilities if that happens. Zuckerberg from what I've read had been coding for a decade--that's a significant investment of time that the ConnectU guys didn't make. I probably would have done the same thing.