Facebook

I've been a little obsessed about facebook lately.  Not obsessed with looking at the website, but obsessed with facebook as a business (although I do spend plenty of time on facebook, especially on my phone).  It started with seeing The Social Network, a movie that dramatized the start up of the company and the initial building of the website.

Even those people who know me in real life don't really get what I do for a living, but a lot of it was touched on in The Social Network.  When asked, I say that I am a corporate attorney for early stage companies.  People always seem to follow that with "Oh, Mergers and Acquisitions?"  Which, yeah, kind of, but not really.  Few people know what that means (which is why we are having such a hard time hiring a new paralegal).  Mergers & Acquisitions are the touch down passes of corporate law.  It's your exit event.   Someone else buys the company, the founders make some money (my firm gets paid and maybe makes some money), and then the other team takes the field.  Day to day corporate work is more like what was portrayed in the Social Network--like making the $500,000 angel investment happen.  A $500,000 angel investment is like a 12 yard reception for a first down (although with life science companies a $500,000 angel investment is more like getting 4 yards on 3rd and long).  The successful companies keep trucking down the field and their exit events usually look more like a running play on 3rd down after two unsuccessful attempts to score.

There was also that incident where Eduardo Saverin's stock was diluted down to nearly nothing after he executed an agreement he didn't read.  We are the attorneys that try to help our clients make sure that if a founder is not there actually helping to build a company either with money or hard work, that founder does not reap the benefit of the work of others.  I also do all of the things that get companies geared up to make money--like employment agreements and equity arrangements for executives and employees, leases for their shiny new office space, contracts with their clients, agreements to license their intellectual property from the Universities or big pharma companies that own it, plus there is a fair amount of counseling on how to deal with conflicts when they arise and how to stretch funding when cash runs low.

(As an aside, because everyone asks, I am back to work four days/week.  Clara is home with a nanny whom we love.  The extra day off has been a wonderful thing for both Clara and me.  Finding good child care is a subject for a whole different post.)

I became interested in this type of law when I worked for two (now defunct) internet start ups in the late 90s, early 2000s.  Although my practice is now focused on life science and biotechnology (read drugs and medical devices) companies because of the partners that I work for, I still have a special place in my heard for tech companies, and still do about 20-25% of my work for such companies. 

Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has spent the last 5 years embroiled in litigation.  He built it, he started it, and now everybody wants a piece.  I mean, I get it.  If I were the Winklevoss twins I would want a piece of facebook too, but do they really deserve it because they had a few conversations with him about building a Harvard dating site for them?  And they got $65M from him and still won't go away?  Facebook is certainly much more than a dating site and if they could have built facebook, they would have.  Lots of people had thought about social networks--examples are myspace.com and friendster.com, but neither is nearly as good.  So I've thought a lot about what differentiates those websites from facebook.  I think the answer is simplicity and the News Feed.  The News Feed makes facebook like US Weekly Magazine but with people you actually know (I did not make that up).  All my facebook friends get to see cute pictures of Clara that I can easily upload straight from my phone and I get to keep up with them.  It's made communication with family, friends, and even friends from other stages of life much more simple, because both parties have a base line of "what's been going on" from facebook before we even get on the phone.

We got a whole lot of support when Clara went in for tubes after I posted this picture:



(As an aside, did you know that cameras on phones are replacing point-and-shoots?  The guy at Peace Camera told me that cameras are getting so good on the phones and the difference between digital SLRs and point-and-shoots has gotten so drastic that people who take even an average number of pictures are going with a phone and a DSLR).

Also amazing has been the reconnection with friends from the distant past.  For example, Jaime (Rivet) Tommasello was one of my very best friends at Ligon Middle School.  She moved to Wilmington in 9th grade and we saw each other a few times.  Then she moved to Marietta, Georgia and we lost touch.  Through the magic of facebook, we're back in touch!  And she has a baby that is two months younger than Clara!  And he's adorable!  And now I read her blog! 

It has been said that facebook is strangely obsessive and I do believe that to be true.  My mom won't join because she says it would feel like meddling in her childrens' lives and Quincy's mom does not understand the draw.  There is a certain amount of over sharing that is a draw back, but for me, it has been a positive addition to my life.

I wish one of my clients would invent the next big thing and invite my firm to invest.