That reflects on their future prospects of being a startup founder, though. I think the founder of a company like Friendster could still get a job working at Twitter or Zynga or whatever as an engineer, and the notoriety in their past would actually be a benefit.
Engineer? Jonathan Abrams, since Friendster, has been a CEO, owns a bar, is an angel investor and an advisor to other companies (http://www.crunchbase.com/person/jonathan-abrams) . He probably was able to "take money off the table."
Right, so in this case it wasn't some failed attempt that harmed his prospects. I think the real risk is that you'll fail and end up bankrupt, not that you'll sell the company for millions but carry the ignominy of not becoming Facebook.
