[nupark2]

> AOL is going to get press out of this that am sure they will find worth the few months of squatting.

That's AOL's decision to make. Not yours, not his.

> Also, entrepreneurs break rules in order to get stuff done.

Unethical people engage in unethical behavior (which is sometimes "breaking rules") in order to get stuff done.

Plenty of entrepreneurs do business honestly, and I'd rather read about them. I don't need a news story to tell me that behaving unethically can provide gains at a cost to others.

[sandieman]

If Steve Jobs had followed all the rules (many more unethical then sleeping on AOLs couch) I wouldn't be responding to this on my iPhone.

[nupark2]

That's an unsupported assertion.

What unethical behavior are you referring to, and how have you demonstrated that Apple's success not only stemmed from such behavior, but could have only occurred through unethical means?

[sandieman]

Steve sold blue boxes with Wozniak that allowed you to make unlimited phone calls. They profited 6k from this and is often told as the story that set the bond and precedent on how the two worked together.

This cost the phone companies and was an illegal item that they sold on the "underground market"

If Steve didn't partner with Wozniak would Apple be around today? Doubt it.

Was this more immoral then sleeping on AOLs couches for a few months after your incubator ended? I would say so.

[nupark2]

That neither proves that unethical behavior was required for Apple's success, nor that said bond could only be created through unethical behavior. If you want a recrimination of that behavior, I'd be happy to give it. It was immature and wrong.

[vecter]

That's the most egregious straw man I've seen in a while. Even so, are you saying the ends justify the means?

[halter73]

What, if not the ends, justifies the means? I understand that, from a deontological perspective, you might believe that certain means can never be justified no matter what the ends, but surely squatting in an office building isn't a means so immoral that no end could ever justify it.

Now, you might think that building an education startup is not an end that requires or warrants trespassing, and you're probably right. However, I hope that you would feel differently about trespassing as a means to protect oneself from a dangerous oncoming storm.

I'm not sure if this is what you meant, but too often I hear people argue that if a certain means is immoral in one circumstance then it must be immoral in every circumstance. These people have the notion stuck in their heads that "the ends never justify the means." IMHO this viewpoint is far too reductionist to be universally valid.

[CamperBob2]

Yes. Nothing great was ever done by people who slavishly followed the rules.

[laughinghan]

1. False. Define "great" and "rules" and I or others will happily provide no shortage of examples.

2. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're a reasonable person, and you were merely exaggerating, but I don't even know what you're trying to say. Are you trying to say that in order to do great things, rules generally have to get broken...and therefore it's ok for entrepreneurs to do unethical things?

3. Consider reducing your consumption of entrepreneurship porn.

[CamperBob2]

1) Meh, that sounds like a lot of work.

2) The world is rendered in shades of grey, and not all ethical issues carry equal weight. Some are worth sweating, some aren't. This one isn't, according to a representative of the victimized party itself.

3) Consider having a beer or two and giving the high horse a good night's sleep.

[joshuamerrill]

As I said in the topmost parent thread, "you can be sure that this incident will create additional requirements and restrictions for the [honest] entrepreneurs who still remain in the building."

Many successful entrepreneurs engage in social hacking in some way. What the entrepreneur in this case did was both unethical and illegal.

Just because you have a key to someone's house doesn't mean you get to open their front door and sleep on their couch.

[jmtame]

Agreed. Even YC explicitly says they look for the "naughty" factor in entrepreneurs, and this is exactly the type of quality I saw in Eric from reading this article.

"Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter. This quality may be redundant though; it may be implied by imagination." http://paulgraham.com/founders.html

[mbreese]

I'd say trespassing would qualify as one of the rules that matters. Or really, any law. You can't build a company like that.

It's fine to break unwritten rules of decorum, or question conventional wisdom. This is another thing all together.

[joshuamerrill]

There's a reason why PG used the word "naughty" and not "criminal." In this case, we're talking about the latter.

[Drbble]

I think AOL decided.