venture-capitalPer David Kirkpatrick’s book The Facebook Effect, the Facebook board in 2006 consisted of:
Zuckerberg - Jim Breyer - Peter Theil - Gilman Louie - Sean Parker
The board had 5 members. If all 4 except Zuckerberg wanted to sell, as is the popular belief, then they could have forced a sale in some way - sold critical assets, agreed to a very close partnership with Yahoo, and/or diluted Zuckerberg down over time by issuing and buying stock. These are all completely legal and above board (at least compared to what Zuckerberg et al did). Likewise they could have easily vetoed a sale with their board majority. So Zuckerberg’s decision was not particularly decisive.
Looking forward to being proven wrong.
As I mentioned in a comment:
This information has been verbally provided to me by one of the bigger initial angel investors of Facebook, who was personally involved in the process, the company and Zuckerberg. As any verbal information, it should be taken with a grain of salt, as it’s just words, which aren’t always 100% black & white, especially as people are biased. Just trying to bring light to the situation with the little I know :)
The information I have:
Zuckerberg is a very charismatic and influential person, he can paint work pictures to people and convince them what is “right” - his opinion. At that time his arguments for not selling out, was that he didn’t want to be be Microsoft or part of any corporation, he just wants to bring people together and better the world, and the rest of the board agreed, as that was also the reasoning he gave when first approaching any of them, and they knew what they had gotten on board with. That kind of drive is what investors are also often looking for - someone to be passionate at what they’re doing, not doing it just for the money, yet are still able to make a few bucks for them.. Seems to have worked out for all of them :)
Cheers
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