Facebook/ConnectU

The New York Times had a great article today about the ongoing ConnectU/Facebook kerfuffle (pdf). There are many lessons here for those starting up a technology company.

They quote R. Scott Feldmann, an intellectual property lawyer and a partner at Crowell & Moring.

Ideas, Mr. Feldmann explained, are protected either by trade-secret contracts or by patents and copyrights. “Trade secrets may be maintained indefinitely,” he said, but “it does not appear that ConnectU had Zuckerberg sign a nondisclosure agreement, and disclosing a trade secret to someone without doing so would ordinarily result in loss of any trade secret status.”

At the same time, Mr. Feldmann said, “copyright will not protect ideas themselves, only their expression” — in a Web site’s underlying source code, for instance. But if Mr. Zuckerberg was an unpaid, casual worker at ConnectU, and not an employee, then “he owns the code,” Mr. Feldmann said. Thus, even if the ConnectU plaintiffs can prove that the codes of two social networking sites were similar (an argument that Facebook seems confident it can refute), the Winklevosses might have no claims on Mr. Zuckerberg.

“On the surface, it appears ConnectU will have some challenges,” Mr. Feldmann said.

Given all the sturm und drang this case has kicked up on the blogosphere (now also in the offline press), the thing that keeps running through my head is the old Peggy Lee song...

Light Blogging

We've got a lot going on and blogging will be light.

Rabble Rousers

There's a Japanese Proverb: "Deru kugi wa utareru." It translates to "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down." Nowhere is this proverb more true than in big companies (speaking as one who has been a nail standing proud in a big company). Working at a start-up is a whole different world. In a start-up everyone needs to be the nail that sticks up. While doing your job is necessary, it is not nearly sufficient.

Foneshow will soon be hiring our first non-founders. Those first few hires are key to defining the culture of the organization. We want people who get pissed off at things in the world that don't work well. But they can't just rant about them, they need to at least try to do something about them. We want people with strong opinions who will make cogent arguments supporting those opinions. We want people who will passionately argue their position. I'd be surprised if we hire people who don't have their own blogs or podcast. There's no room for standing on past achievements, it's all about what comes next. It's not about following instructions, it's about getting stuff done. Getting rich can't be the goal (although it might be a nice side effect). The goal is to change the world.

In the words of Thomas Jefferson, "all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." If you're good at suffering evil, then you're likely not a good fit in a start up. We want rabble rousers.