Here's a cached version of the article for those of us without a nytimes account. http://www10.nytimes.com.nyud.net/2010/10/03/business/03face...
Mark Zuckerberg's Most Valuable Friend
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Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Most Valuable Friend
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
Downvote the above if you will, but there is truth in those words, if only masked behind palpable bitterness... ...and honestly - I feel the guy. We humans have a tendency towards the shameless worship of heroes. We seem to need to create legends and demigods and to praise and glorify acts that upon careful examination are little more than the progeny of good fortune and timing. Providence itself isn't worthy of our…
That's one of the aspects of the HN community that I most dislike. It's like Puritan divine providence, but applied non-religiously to business. X succeeded so he/she must be great. HN sees these people as masters of business: smart, ambitious, persistent, etc. What if they were lucky? Unscrupulous? Manipulating? I'm not saying it has to be all one way or all the other, but I often think only one point of view gets s…
"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people."
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
Completely agree, the name dropping around here can get tiresome quick. There was a great article on Mint vs. Wesabe posted here recently - in my opinion we need more articles like that and less Jobs is a design master/Zuckerberg is a genius/etc.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Most Valuable Friend
#13Mark Zuckerberg's most valuable friend is/was Sean Parker. Thanks to Sean, Mark retained control of the board, and thus was able to avoid the utter disaster of a $1b sale to Yahoo. Sean got to see what happens when shortsighted VCs get control before (at Napster and then Plaxo); he's smart enough to not get screwed the same way thrice.
How did Mark retain control of the board specifically?
"... Donald Graham, the chairman of the Washington Post Company, who once tried to hire Ms. Sandberg, says that in the last two years a lot of questions about Facebook’s viability have been put to rest. ..."
I'd argue that Zucks most valuable friend post Sean is Graham. Graham helped set the company up so control falls to the owner and not the board. The Washington Post is set up the same way. Facebook isn't going away till the founder wants it to.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Most Valuable Friend
#14Oh Jesus, can't we all stop gawking at Facebook bullshit? No one can figure out what Facebook is, but if you haven't succumbed to it, you're intimidated by it. It's worth billions of dollars and for what? The pure evil of having everyone's marketing data? In the mindset of Rodney King, can't we all just move on? Can't we all just get past not being Zuckerberg? Can't we all get back to being hackers who do things beca…
Downvote the above if you will, but there is truth in those words, if only masked behind palpable bitterness... ...and honestly - I feel the guy. We humans have a tendency towards the shameless worship of heroes. We seem to need to create legends and demigods and to praise and glorify acts that upon careful examination are little more than the progeny of good fortune and timing. Providence itself isn't worthy of our…
Pure academic achievement is no doubt worthy of appreciation. And on other days, the Nobel Laureates and Fields Medalists and Booker Prize winners will get their due.
But let's be clear: our modern day Fords and Edisons also deserve their due. Self-made billionaires have served society in the ultimate sense: they made something that millions upon untold millions of people want.
Those in the ivory tower, god bless them, are scratching their own itch. Sometimes, some of them produce something which benefits humanity, but it's not their primary goal. Their goal is to indulge their curiosity and make a name for themselves. And their world is generally far less stressful than if they'd taken the plunge into actually creating wealth and building things for other people.
As for your children, well, there's a couple billion people in China and India who've endured a 20th century replete with attacks on industrial ambition. Something tells me many of them would be just fine with their son or daughter growing up to be the next Gates, Jobs, or Zuckerberg.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Most Valuable Friend
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did Mark retain control of the board specifically?
"... Donald Graham, the chairman of the Washington Post Company, who once tried to hire Ms. Sandberg, says that in the last two years a lot of questions about Facebook’s viability have been put to rest. ..." I'd argue that Zucks most valuable friend post Sean is Graham. Graham helped set the company up so control falls to the owner and not the board. The Washington Post is set up the same way. Facebook isn't going aw…
So beyond just having the founder take up the majority of the board seats? I suppose one needs to first find investors comfortable to let this all happen.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Most Valuable Friend
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
"... Donald Graham, the chairman of the Washington Post Company, who once tried to hire Ms. Sandberg, says that in the last two years a lot of questions about Facebook’s viability have been put to rest. ..." I'd argue that Zucks most valuable friend post Sean is Graham. Graham helped set the company up so control falls to the owner and not the board. The Washington Post is set up the same way. Facebook isn't going aw…
So beyond just having the founder take up the majority of the board seats? I suppose one needs to first find investors comfortable to let this all happen.
You make it a negotiating point; you might have to accept lower valuation or other terms to protect investors if you push on board control. Being obviously brilliant, responsible, and experienced (Parker) goes a long way in those negotiations too.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Most Valuable Friend
#17Is Donald Graham (Washington Post chairman / Facebook board member) related to Paul Graham?
If my XPath is correct, there are 168 people with the Graham last name that are noteworthy enough to merit their own wikipedia pages.
Either Paul Graham and his immediate family[1] have done well for themselves, or maybe, just maybe, it's one of the top 10 most common names for people from the British-Isles.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Most Valuable Friend
#18Oh Jesus, can't we all stop gawking at Facebook bullshit? No one can figure out what Facebook is, but if you haven't succumbed to it, you're intimidated by it. It's worth billions of dollars and for what? The pure evil of having everyone's marketing data? In the mindset of Rodney King, can't we all just move on? Can't we all just get past not being Zuckerberg? Can't we all get back to being hackers who do things beca…
Looking at Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg from a positive perspective is the new flavour of the month. It's a novelty compared to a few weeks or months ago where Facebook was the bloody piñata of the internet.
I don't think that this new angle is a bandwagon like deriding Facebook was - maybe it's just a sign of the new nuanced approach to thinking about Zuckerberg and Facebook.
I don't mind the Facebook coverage as long as it is original, independent and not just a flailing industry's attempt at staying relevant and interesting by jumping on a bandwagon.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Most Valuable Friend
#19I think this will go down in history as one of the great working relationships in the technology industry along with Larry & Sergey and Jobs & Woz.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Most Valuable Friend
#20Oh Jesus, can't we all stop gawking at Facebook bullshit? No one can figure out what Facebook is, but if you haven't succumbed to it, you're intimidated by it. It's worth billions of dollars and for what? The pure evil of having everyone's marketing data? In the mindset of Rodney King, can't we all just move on? Can't we all just get past not being Zuckerberg? Can't we all get back to being hackers who do things beca…
Also, can we stop to consider the fact that a company that is worth billions of dollars can only barely eke out a profit, despite having access to the personal lives of 500 million people? It's not like they lack the capability to be evil. More likely, they're a paper tiger. They don't have much time to build the killer app that people will pay for before their investors start gettin anxious.
The approach to social networking they've taken simply isn't a particularly profitable approach, the profitable approach hasn't been invented yet. Eventually, people will realize that, and while they're running and begging venture capitalists for another $100 million just to keep the lights on in their server farms, someone else is gonna build the next big thing, and Facebook will go the way of Friendster and Myspace. If we've learned anything, social networks are fickle, and it doesn't take long for a trickle of users to become a flood.
Zuckerburg won't ever starve, and the company probably won't ever fold (heck, even AOL is still around), but the idea that his wealth and any perceived power is in any way stable just doesn't check in with reality.