Napkin shows New York ubergeek Jakob Lodwick encouraged IAC employee to two-time Barry Diller
Once an oversharer, always an oversharer — no matter what it costs, personally or financially. When IAC fired Jakob Lodwick — the Internet's own Howard Roark — from Web video site Vimeo, IAC agreed to pay Lodwick $100,000 a year until 2011, just so long as he stayed away from IAC employees in any new ventures. Lodwick, reportedly bipolar and never much one for consistency, has proven unable to resist the temptation. An image posted to former IAC employee Justin Ouellette's personal blog seems to confirm what's already been rumored: Lodwick funded Ouellette's side project, an online-music site called Muxtape, with enough cash — $95,000 in exchange for 1 percent of Muxtape's equity, going by the scribbled napkin — so that Oullette could quit IAC to run Muxtape full time.
Foolish disregard for his severance agreement aside, one has to ask this about Lodwick: What kind of entrepreneur or investor puts his deal terms online, in napkin or any other form? That's an easy one: the same kind of entrepreneur or investor who would relentlessly blog his sad relationship with noted New York nobody Julia Allison, quit the Internet over its injustices, rejoin the Internet in an effort to spread Ayn Rand's message, and then, in a huff for the ages, quit the Internet once more.
Update: Ouellette has taken the memo down, saying he posted it to the Web by accident.