Facebook Elite Drift Toward New Startups

Though Facebook is only six years old, some early employees are leaving to start their own businesses. Co-founder Dustin Moskovitz created collaboration software Asana, co-founder Chris Hughes started social networking site Jumo; among other employees, there are a question and answer site, a social gaming company, and more—at least half a dozen in total, the New York Times reports. Yahoo!, eBay, Google, and PayPal saw similar departures; early PayPal employees even went on to stake Facebook.

The ex-employees are still “social,” one explains, and asking one another for advice—or capital—is common. Unlike those who similarly departed from other companies, however, ex-Facebookers are leaving before an IPO of the company’s shares—thanks to the liquidity of the shares, which can be exchanged and leave shareholders very well-off. Some left to pursue dreams; others left as Facebook started to lose the startup culture and become, as one says, “too big and too corporate.” Click here to see where more "characters" from The Social Network ended up.
(More Facebook stories.)