blake-ross

Owen Thomas · 09/25/07 04:05PM

Investors in Parakey, a hot startup founded by Firefox creators Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt, were paid in cash, not shares, when Facebook bought the company. While they doubled their money in the $4 million sale, the cash payout means they were shut out of Facebook's future growth, which has left some of them quietly grumbling. [TechCrunch]

Facebook buys a star engineer, and another billion dollars in valuation

Owen Thomas · 07/19/07 05:08PM

If Facebook is the Brangelina of tech, then Silicon Valley's it company just adopted an Ethiopian baby. So to speak. The baby is Parakey, a startup cofounded by Blake Ross, the Firefox programmer profiled in Wired, and fellow Firefox developer Joe Hewitt. Ross has been promising more details on Parakey since last November, but they haven't been forthcoming. Parakey's website just tells you to "give your computer the bird." Here's what that means — and what the acquisition means for Facebook.