Facebook's Initial Crew Moving On

Facebook, the most successful start-up of the last decade, is only six years old, and an initial public offering is still a way off. But a number of Facebook's early employees are giving up their stable jobs, free food and laundry service to build their own businesses.

Many of them are leaving as wealthy, either on paper or after cashing in their ownership stakes to do what they say they like best: start companies. The departures follow a familiar pattern among other Silicon Valley successes like Yahoo, eBay and Google. After amassing fortunes, early employees start walking out the door. But the Facebook Society is slightly different from the earlier alumni associations. The other serial entrepreneurs usually cashed out before resigning.