So just right after Mark Zuckerberg won a court case against the Winklevoss twins, another vulture comes into play again. If you didn’t watch The Social Network, let me bring you up to speed in a nutshell. The story behind the Winklevoss twins is that they came up with the idea of a sort-of “Facebook” for Harvard. They wanted to call it “HarvardConnection” and they got Mark Zuckerberg to build the site for them. Mark Zuckerberg didn’t do it in the end and instead started Facebook. The Winklevoss twins then claimed that Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea of Facebook from them. They took legal action against Mark Zuckerberg and Mark gave them a settlement of $65 million in cash and Facebook shares. All just for the claim that Facebook was their idea!
Then if that wasn’t enough, they went to court again later on demanding for more money. Saying that Mark Zuckerberg hid from them the true value of Facebook and that they deserved more (some 4 times more or so). This time though the court threw the case out. Basically told them that they had gotten enough of a settlement.
Right after that, another guy by the name of Paul Ceglia claims that he signed a contract with Mark Zuckerberg that shows he should be entitled to some 50% of Facebook. You can find the whole story here, here and here.
Now I don’t know the legal part of this equation or whether the case even holds any water. For that, if there are some lawyers among my readers maybe you can give us some guidance.
What I can’t stand to see though is all these “opportunists”. Sure Mark Zuckerberg is successful beyond belief. He is the youngest billionaire in the world worth $13.5 billion at age 27. That’s insane! But he didn’t get there just from having the IDEA of Facebook. Ideas ARE FREE!!! Execution is the one that’s key. In order to build a business or a company like Facebook, it doesn’t just take an idea. It doesn’t even just take right leadership for one or two months. It takes years or making the right decisions, persevering and hard work in order to get where he is. Any entrepreneur who worked hard to build his business can relate to that. All these people who now claim a share of his success did not sweat or bleed like Mark Zuckerberg did.
Sure… Eduardo Saverin put up the initial startup capital for Facebook so he deserves a good share of the company. Maybe even more than what he has now. But what did the Winklevoss twins or Paul Ceglia do? Is whatever they did worth the millions or even billions that they’re asking for today?
I’m sure the Winklevoss twins, having been to Harvard are smart enough to know that ideas are free and execution is key.
They’re just seem like they’re trying to exploit whatever they can out of whatever ties they had with Mark Zuckerberg. It disgusts me to know that there are people like that out there in this world. People who can bring themselves to leech off the success attained from the hard sweat of the people who really did all the work. Can you imagine? It’s like you work hard on a job and end up with lots of savings by the time you retire. Then someone comes along and tries to take away the money you worked hard for and saved. I know it’s not an exact comparison but it probably feels just as bad.
I hope Mark Zuckerberg fights on. Not for the money but for the principle of it!
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space