[asr]

Seriously, does this guy not have any parents/siblings/super close friends who can tell him it's time to move on? This is a great happy hour story, but not such a great epitaph.

On the bright side, at least he's thematically consistent! "I keep getting screwed over by life" is the only reason I can think of to start the post with so many words about Final Clubs before the pivot.... Suffice it to say, anyone who can graduate from Harvard with a CS degree and feel screwed over needs some perspective.

[corporalagumbo]

I can see how Greenspan's experience would not exactly be easy to move on from. At stake is not his own personal success, but his belief about how the world should work. Greenspan sounds like a pretty moral guy, the kind of guy who gets upset when things happen that he thinks are wrong. Basically, you're asking him to shrug and move on but for him, an antisocial bastard is in the spotlight smiling and waving and being showered with praise by the press. It sounds like, for someone like him, fixing this mistake is more important than any other typical SV-type venture he could throw himself into.

Or he could just be incompetent and bitter. Who knows.

[cuergas]

Or... maybe he just needed some traffic to his website.

It seems everyone who had anything remotely to do with Facebook's origins has tried to cash in.

This bothers wantrapreneurs because it highlights just how much luck plays a role in a story like Facebook's. They want to believe that one founder or a few co-founders succeed based on some factor(s) under their control (hardwork, skill, etc.)

Greenspan is just another one of those people who was involved and is trying to cash in.

If anyone needs to "get over it", it's people who just can't accept that huge fads like Facebook are unpredictable and uncontrollable, and that when faced with the possibility of huge sums of "money for nothing" it brings out the worst in people all seeking a share of the bounty.

The web is a lottery.

Time to re-read the recent speech from Princeton's graduation ceremony by the author of Liar's Poker.

[dasil003]

> The web is a lottery.

This is quite an overstatement. You don't simply move to Palo Alto and then have a 1/65,412 chance of starting the next Google.

Instead you have to have a great vision, great execution, and great luck. Now Zuckerberg may not have Jobsian vision and execution (or maybe he does, only time will tell), but you can't argue that he executed the hell outta Facebook and he definitely has a vision even if you find it morally bankrupt. This definitely did not just magically fall in his lap, and he certainly deserves most of the credit regardless of what individuals he screwed over at various stages.

[cuergas]

I agree.

/The web is a lottery./d

(except I think it's quite possible for someone to do what's been done with Facebook without also being morally bankrupt)

But is the rest of the comment an overstatement?

Also, you forgot to mention great marketing. In the IM's I believe both of them at one point agree that great visionary ideas, no matter how well they are executed, (alas) do not market themselves.

[dasil003]

No I don't disagree with anything else.

Re: marketing, meh, I think Facebook pretty much went viral. Maybe there was more conscious effort there than I give it credit for, but it doesn't strike me as important for Facebook's rise.

[dasil003]

I'm not saying it's easy to move on from. If he can't, I'm not judging him. But it's just a fact that an ongoing obsession like this will be more self-destructive than right any wrong.

[alid]

"This is a great happy hour story, but not such a great epitaph." - nailed it!