Would I call the Winkelvoss Twins Dumb and Dumber?

Sometimes in this life you need someone to take you to one side and tell you some truths that you are probably not able to see or admit for yourself. That time has come in the case of twin brothers Tyler and Cameron Winkelvoss.

You may recall that the Winkelvoss twins have claimed for some years that Mark Zukerberg, Facebooks’s young Chief Executive, stole their idea in 2005 when they were classmates at Harvard. Their idea, they claimed in court, was used by Zuckerberg to start thefacebook.com – a social networking phenomenon that became Facebook. A business now valued at $60 billion.

An out-of-court settlement was reached in 2008 which saw the Winkelvi, as Zukerberg cruelly dubbed them, awarded $20 million in cash and $45 million in Facebook shares; a settlement that is now worth $160 million based on Facebook’s current valuation.

This week a Federal Appeals Court judge in the USA ruled that the Winkelvosses could not have the 2008 ruling re-opened allowing them to go back for a larger settlement. Their case was based on a claim that at the time of the settlement they were duped by Facebook regarding its valuation – meaning they got fewer shares than they believe they should have.

So here’s one way to look at this. Here are two Harvard Graduates, majors in Economics and attendees of business school at Oxford whose father is a very successful and wealthy businessman and who surrounded themselves with an army of lawyers. Now they want us to believe that this collective of extraordinary business acumen and mental horsepower weren’t able to come to the right valuation for Facebook. Come on guys!

Could it be that the motivation here is two guys who have ceased to be able to see the woods from the trees? Two guys who are eaten up with bitterness that a geeky computer science major made himself the world’s youngest billionaire with an idea they allege was theirs. I can’t think of any other logic – because I think everyone predicted the outcome of this appeal. Everyone saw that it was fatally flawed....except that is the Winkelvoss twins. It is time someone took them to one side and gave them a simple piece of advice.

Guys you have many extraordinary qualities. You are Harvard and Oxford graduates, you are Olympic oarsmen and you are worth $160 million – more than most people will accumulate in ten lifetimes. It is time to stop defining your lives by how much you hate Mark Zuckerberg for monetising what you claim is your idea. Harness all of the positive things you have going for you and move on and create your own Magnum Opus before you destroy yourselves wondering what could have been.

And would I call the Winkelvoss twins Dumb and Dumber – no! Not with their track record for litigation! Besides which these guys have rowed in an Olympics - they are much much bigger than me!