The Accidental Billionaires

by Ben Mezrich

  Ten minutes to one in the morning, and the iPod was churning away, filling the air with a mixture of pop and anachronistic folk rock—either the result of a schizophrenic’s playlist or some bickering committee members’ poorly thought-out compromise. Even so, the music wasn’t half bad—and the speakers were a minor coup brought about by whoever was in charge of the entertainment. A previous year’s shindig had featured a color television in the back corner of the classroom, hooked up to a borrowed DVD of Niagara Falls playing on an infinite loop. No matter that Niagara Falls had nothing even remotely to do with Alpha Epsilon Pi or Harvard; the sound of running water had somehow seemed party appropriate, and it hadn’t cost the committee a dime.

  The speaker system was an upgrade—as were the peeling posters. The party, on the other hand, was par for the course.

  Eduardo stood beneath the banner, thin slacks hanging down over his storkish legs, an oxford shirt buttoned all the way up to his throat. Surrounding him were four similarly attired guys, mostly juniors and sophomores. Together, the small group made up a full third of the party. Somewhere, on the other side of the room, there were two or three girls in the mix. One of them had even dared to wear a skirt to the event—although she’d chosen to wear it over thick gray leggings, out of respect for the weather.

  It wasn’t exactly a scene from Animal House, but then, underground fraternity life at Harvard was a far cry from the Greek bacchanalia one might find at other colleges. And Epsilon Pi wasn’t exactly the pearl of the undergrounds; as the reigning Jewish frat on campus, its membership was more notorious for its combined grade-point average than its party proclivities. This reputation had nothing to do with its nominal religious leanings; the truly pious Jews, the ones who kept kosher and dated only within the tribe, joined Hillel House, which had its own building on campus and sported a true endowment, not to mention both male and female members. Epsilon Pi was for the secular kids, the ones whose last names were their most recognizably Jewish feature. To the Epsilon Pi kids, a Jewish girlfriend might be nice because it would make Mom and Dad happy. But, in reality, an Asian girlfriend was much more likely.

  Which was exactly what Eduardo was explaining to the frat brothers surrounding him—a topic of conversation they’d revisited fairly frequently, because it hinged on a philosophy they could all get behind.

  “It’s not that guys like me are generally attracted to Asian girls,” Eduardo commented, between sips of punch. “It’s that Asian girls are generally attracted to guys like me. And if I’m trying to optimize my chances of scoring with the hottest girl possible, I’ve got to stock my pond with the type of girls who are the most likely to be interested.”

  The other kids nodded, appreciating his logic. In the past, they’d taken this simple equation and elaborated it into a much more complex algorithm to try to explain the connection between Jewish guys and Asian girls, but tonight they just let it remain simple, perhaps out of respect for the music, which was now reverberating so loudly through the expensive speakers that it was hard to engage in any complex thought.

  “Although at the moment”—Eduardo grimaced as he glanced toward the girl in the skirt-leggings combination—“this pond’s running a little dry.”

  Again, agreement all around, but it wasn’t like any of his four frat mates were going to do anything about the situation. The kid to Eduardo’s right was five foot six and pudgy; he was also on the Harvard chess team and spoke six languages fluently, but none of that seemed to help when it came to communicating with girls. The kid next to him drew a cartoon strip for the Crimson—and spent most of his free time playing RPG video games in the student lounge above the Leverett House dining hall. The cartoonist’s roommate, standing next to him, was well over six feet tall; but instead of basketball, he’d chosen fencing as a high school student at a mostly Jewish prep school; he was good with an épée, which was about as useful when it came to picking up girls as it was in any other aspect of modern life. If eighteenth-century pirates ever attacked a hot girl’s dorm room, he was ready, but otherwise he was pretty much useless.

  The fourth kid, standing directly across from Eduardo, had also fenced—at Exeter—but he wasn’t built anything like the tall kid to his left. He was a bit on the gawky side, like Eduardo, though his legs and arms were more proportionate to his slim, not entirely unathletic frame. He was wearing cargo shorts instead of slacks, sandals with no socks. He had a prominent nose, a mop of curly blondish brown hair, and light blue eyes. There was something playful about those eyes—but that was where any sense of natural emotion or readability ended. His narrow face was otherwise devoid of any expression at all. And his posture, his general aura—the way he seemed closed in on himself, even while engaged in a group dynamic, even here, in the safety of his own fraternity—was almost painfully awkward.

  His name was Mark Zuckerberg, he was a sophomore, and although Eduardo had spent a fair amount of time at various Epsilon Pi events with him, along with at least one prepunch Phoenix event that Eduardo could remember, he still barely knew the kid. Mark’s reputation, however, definitely preceded him: a computer science major who lived in Eliot House, Mark had grown up in the upper-middle-class town of Dobbs Ferry, New York, the son of a dentist and a psychiatrist. In high school, he’d supposedly been some sort of master hacker—so good at breaking into computer systems that he’d ended up on some random FBI list somewhere, or so the story went. Whether or not that was true, Mark was certainly a computer genius. He had also made a name for himself at Exeter when, after he had honed his coding skills creating a computerized version of the game Risk, he and a buddy had created a software program called Synapse, a plug-in for MP3 players that allowed the players to “learn” a user’s preferences and create tailored playlists based on that information. Mark had posted Synapse as a free download on the Web—and almost immediately, major companies came calling, trying to buy Mark’s creation. Rumor was, Microsoft had offered Mark between one and two million dollars to go work for them—and amazingly, Mark had turned them down.

  Eduardo wasn’t an expert on computers, and he knew very little about hacking, but business ran in his family, and the idea that someone would turn down a million dollars was fascinating—and a little bit appalling—to him. Which made Mark more of an enigma than even his awkwardness implied. An enigma—and obviously a genius. He’d followed Synapse up with a program he’d written at Harvard, something called Course Match that allowed Harvard kids to see what classes other kids had signed up for; Eduardo had checked it out himself once or twice, trying to track down random hot girls he’d met in the dining hall, to little avail. But the program was good enough to get a pretty big following; most of the campus appreciated Course Match—if not the kid who’d created it.

  As the three other frat brothers moved off toward the punch bowl for a refill, Eduardo took the opportunity to study the moppet-haired sophomore a little closer. Eduardo had always prided himself on his ability to get to the core of other people’s personalities—it was something his father had taught him, a way of getting a step ahead in the world of business. For his father, business was everything; the son of wealthy immigrants who had barely escaped the Holocaust to Brazil during World War II, his father had raised Eduardo in the sometimes harsh light of survivors; he came from a long line of businessmen who knew how important it was to succeed, whatever one’s circumstances. And Brazil was only the beginning; the Saverin family had almost just as hastily been forced to relocate to Miami when Eduardo was thirteen—when it was discovered that Eduardo’s name had ended up on a kidnap list because of his father’s financial success.

  By junior high, Eduardo had found himself adrift in a strange new world, struggling to learn a new language—English—and a new culture—Miami—at the same time. So he didn’t know computers, but he understood, completely, what it was like being the awkward outsider; being different, whatever the reason.

  Mark Zuckerberg, from the looks of him, was obviously different. Maybe it w
as just that he was so damn smart, he didn’t fit in, even here, among his peers. Among his own kind: not Jewish, per se, but kids like him. Geeky kids who made algorithms out of fetishes, who had nothing better to do on a Friday night than hang out in a classroom filled with crepe paper and colored posters, talking about girls they weren’t actually getting.

  “This is fun,” Mark finally said, breaking the silence. There was almost zero inflection in his voice, and it was impossible for Eduardo to guess what emotion—if any—he was trying to convey.

  “Yeah,” Eduardo responded. “At least the punch has rum in it this year. Last time, I think it was Capri Sun. They went all out this time around.”

  Mark coughed, then reached out toward one of the crepe-paper ribbons, touching the closest twist of material. The packing tape unhinged, and the ribbon drifted toward the floor, landing on his Adidas sandal. He looked at Eduardo.

  “Welcome to the jungle.”

  Eduardo grinned, despite the fact that he still couldn’t be sure from Mark’s monotone delivery if the kid was joking or not. But he was getting the sense that there was something really anarchistic going on behind the kid’s blue eyes. He seemed to be taking everything in around him, even here, in a place with so little stimulus to grasp onto. Maybe he really was the genius everyone thought he was. Eduardo had the abrupt feeling that this was someone he wanted to befriend, to get to know better. Anyone who’d turned down a million dollars at seventeen was probably heading somewhere.

  “I have a feeling this is gonna break up in a few minutes,” Eduardo said. “I’m heading back to the river—Eliot House. What house are you in again?”

  “Kirkland,” Mark responded. He jerked his head toward the exit, on the other side of the stage. Eduardo glanced at their other friends, still at the punch bowl; they were all quad kids, so they’d be going in a different direction when the party ended. It was as good an opportunity as any to get to know the awkward computer genius. Eduardo nodded, then followed Mark through the sparse crowd.

  “If you want,” Eduardo offered as they wound their way around the stage, “there’s a party on my floor we could check out. It’s gonna suck, but certainly no worse than this.”

  Mark shrugged. They’d both been at Harvard long enough to know what to expect from a dorm party; fifty dudes and about three girls jammed into a small, coffinlike box of a room, while someone tried to figure out how to tap an illicit keg of really cheap beer.

  “Why not,” Mark responded, over his shoulder. “I’ve got a problem set due tomorrow, but I’m better at logarithms drunk than sober.”

  A few minutes later, they had pushed their way out of the lecture room and into the cement stairwell that descended to the ground floor. They took the steps in silence, bursting out through a pair of double doors into the tree-lined quiet of Harvard Yard. A stiff, crisp breeze whipped through the thin material of Eduardo’s shirt. He jammed his hands into the deep pockets of his slacks and started forward down the paved path that led through the center of the Yard. It was a good ten-minute walk to the houses on the river, where both he and Mark lived.

  “Shit, it’s fucking ten degrees out here.”

  “More like forty,” Mark replied.

  “I’m from Miami. It’s ten degrees to me.”

  “Then maybe we should run.”

  Mark took off at a slow jog. Eduardo followed suit, breathing hard as he caught up to his new friend. They were side by side as they moved past the impressive stone steps that led up to the pillared entrance to Widener Library. Eduardo had spent many evenings lost in the stacks of Widener—poring through the works of economic theorists such as Adam Smith, John Mills, even Galbraith. Even after one in the morning, the library was still open; warm orange light from inside the marbled lobby splashed out through the glass doors, casting long shadows down the magnificent steps.

  “Senior year,” Eduardo huffed as they skirted the bottom stone step on their way to the iron gate that led out of the Yard and off into Cambridge, “I’m going to have sex in those stacks. I swear, it’s gonna happen.”

  It was an old Harvard tradition—something you were supposed to do before you graduated. The truth was, only a handful of kids had ever actually achieved the mission. Though the automated stacks—vast bookshelves on automatic, wheeled tracks—were labyrinthine and descended many floors below the massive building, there were always students and staff lurking through those narrow passageways; finding a spot isolated enough to do the deed would be quite a feat. And finding a girl who was willing to attempt to continue the tradition was even more unlikely.

  “Baby steps,” Mark responded. “Maybe you should try getting a girl back to your dorm, first.”

  Eduardo winced, then grinned again. He was starting to like this kid’s caustic sense of humor.

  “Things aren’t that bad. I’m punching the Phoenix.”

  Mark glanced at him as they turned the corner and headed along the side of the great library.

  “Congratulations.”

  There it was again, zero inflection. But Eduardo could tell from the little flash in Mark’s eyes that he was impressed, and more than a little envious. That was the reaction Eduardo had learned to expect when he mentioned the punch process he was going through. The truth was, he’d been letting it slip to everyone he knew that he was getting closer and closer to becoming a member of the Phoenix. He’d been through three punch events already; there was a very good chance, now, that he’d go the distance. And maybe, just maybe, events like the Alpha Epsilon Pi party they’d just survived would be a thing of the past.

  “Well, if I get in, maybe I can put your name on the list. For next year. You could punch as a junior.”

  Mark paused again. Maybe he was catching his breath. More likely, he was digesting the information. There was something very computer-like about the way he spoke; input in, then input out.

  “That would be—interesting.”

  “If you get to know some of the other members, you’ll have a good shot. I’m sure a lot of them used your Course Match program.”

  Eduardo knew, as he said it, how foolish the idea sounded. Phoenix members weren’t going to get excited about this awkward kid because of some computer program. You didn’t get popular by writing computer code. A computer program couldn’t get you laid. You got popular—and sometimes laid—by going to parties, hanging out with pretty girls.

  Eduardo hadn’t gotten that far yet, but last night he had received that all-important fourth punch invitation. In one week, next Friday night, there was a banquet at the nearby Hyatt hotel, then an after-party at the Phoenix. It was a big night, perhaps the final big punch event before new members were initiated. The invitation had “suggested” that Eduardo bring a date to the dinner; he’d heard from classmates that in fact the members would be judging the punches on the quality of the women they brought with them. The better-looking their dates, the more likely it was that they’d get through to the final punch round.

  After receiving the letter, Eduardo had wondered how the hell he was going to get a date—an impressive one, at that—on such short notice. It wasn’t like the girls were breaking down his dorm-room door.

  So Eduardo had been forced to take matters into his own hands. At nine A.M. that morning, in the Eliot dining hall, he had walked right up to the hottest girl he knew—Marsha, blond, buxom, in reality an econ major but she looked like a psychology major. She was a good two inches taller than Eduardo, and had a strange predisposition toward eighties-style hair scrunchies, but she was beautiful, in a Northeast prep-school sort of way. In short, she was perfect for the punch event.

  To Eduardo’s surprise, she’d said yes. Eduardo had immediately realized—it was the Phoenix, it wasn’t about Eduardo—it was about going to a Final Club dinner. Which bolstered everything Eduardo already believed about the Final Clubs. Not only were they a powerful social network, but their exclusive nature gave their members instant status—the ability to attract the coolest, hottest, bes
t. He had no illusions that Marsha was going to join him in the Widener stacks after the event—but at the very least, if enough alcohol was involved, she might let him walk her home. Even if she brushed him off at the door to her room with a little kiss, that would be further than he’d gotten in four months.

  As they reached the back corner of the library and jogged out from under the long shadow of the building’s archaic, stone pillars, Mark shot him another unreadable glance.

  “Was it everything you hoped it would be?”

  Was he talking about the library? The party they had just left? The Jewish fraternity? The Phoenix? Two geeky kids running across Harvard Yard, one in a buttoned-up oxford shirt, the other in cargo shorts, freezing to death while they tried to get to some lousy dorm party?

  For guys like Eduardo and Mark, was college life supposed to get any better than this?

  Five A.M.

  A desolate stretch of the Charles River, a quarter-mile serpent’s twist of glassy greenish blue, braced by the arched stone Weeks Footbridge on one side and the concrete, multi-lane Mass Ave. Bridge on the other. A frigid glade of water winding beneath a gray-on-gray canopy of fog, hanging low and heavy, air so thick with moisture it was hard to tell where the river ended and the sky began.

  Dead silence, a moment frozen in time, a single paragraph on a single page in a book that spanned three centuries of pregnant, frozen moments like this. Dead silence—and then, the slightest of noises: the sound of two knifelike oars dipped expertly into that frigid glade, pivoting beneath the swirl of greenish blue, levering backward in a perfect and complex marriage of mechanics and art.

  A second later, a two-man skiff slid out from under the shadow of Weeks Bridge, its phallic, fiberglass body slicing down the center of the curving river like a diamond-edged blade carving its way across a windowpane. The motion of the craft was so smooth, the boat almost seemed a part of the water itself; the curved, fiberglass hull of the skiff seemed to bleed out of the green-blue water, its forward motion so pure it produced almost no wake.