If Zuckerberg is so evidently a sociopath. What does that make people like Larry Ellison from a far? Or other individual tech giants who backstabbed other founders or early employees to their faces (Twitter founders, mainly Ev and Jack or Snap founders as examples)
Look up Martin Eberhard, then look up the name of the most famous company he founded, then look up the end of life of the person the company was named after and weep ;-)
I’m not sure about what happened to Eberhard and his co-founder, and other early employee stakes in Tesla. I find this situation to not be the same as the examples I brought up. Elon and the two co-founders he brought in did not already know the two original co-founders on a personal level. Tesla was behind on their tech and production when the recession was beginning and Elon took over.
Elon plowed all of his liquid assets into Tesla [and SpaceX]. I don’t think he had much money around the late 00s until Tesla was able to get out of its financial woes. I don’t know if the original co-founders would’ve been able to find someone else to pump the money Elon did himself and fundraised from car companies while still maintaining control of the company. Same way, I don’t know if they would’ve been able to get enough money raised from auto companies like Elon and the Tesla team did without them in the late 00s.
For all of that and the fact that the Tesla co-founders were worth tens of millions a piece from a prior startup sale, I’ve never put the Tesla co-founders in the same basket as what the Snap founders did. Or much worse, what the Twitter founders, Ev and Jack, did. Or people like Steve Jobs and Ellison firing early or important employees before stock vested or not giving stock to early employees. For companies that are financially solvent and growing. That’s despicable.
Similarly, I don’t put what Zuckerberg and Facebook did to Eduardo and the Winklevoss on remotely the same level as any of these examples. On the flip side, the twins and especially Eduardo lucked out completely that FB became so successful and they were able to reap enormous financial benefits that they otherwise wouldn’t have done on their own.
The actual Nikola Tesla though. Yes I weep for sure!
