The Accidental Billionaires

by Ben Mezrich

  One look at the skiff, the way the oars pierced the surface of the Charles in perfect rhythm, the way the boat glided across the water—and it was obvious that the two young men guiding the elegant device had spent years perfecting their art. One look at the two young men themselves, and it was equally obvious that it was more than just practice that had brought them to such a level of perfection.

  From the shore, the two rowers looked like robots: exact replicas of each other, from their sandy-colored, full heads of hair to their chiseled all-American facial features. Like the progress of their craft, physically, they were near perfect. Muscles rippling beneath gray Harvard Crew sweatshirts, bodies built long and lithe, the two young men were easily six foot five inches tall apiece; impressive presences made more so by the fact that they were truly identical, from the piercing blue color of their eyes to the fiercely determined expressions on their matinee idol faces.

  Technically, the Winklevoss brothers were “mirror” identical twins—the result of a single ovarian egg that had flipped open like two pages of a magazine. Tyler Winklevoss, at the front of the two-man skiff, was right-handed—and the more logical, serious-minded of the brothers. Cameron Winklevoss, at the rear of the boat, was left-handed; he was the more creative and artistic of the two.

  At the moment, however, their personalities had merged; they didn’t speak as they worked the oars—they didn’t communicate at all, verbally or otherwise, as they effortlessly pushed the boat forward down the Charles. Their concentration was almost inhuman, the result of years spent honing their innate abilities under various coaches at Harvard, and before that, in Greenwich, Connecticut, where the twins had grown up. In many ways, their hard work had already paid off; as college seniors, they were on track to make the Olympic rowing team. At Harvard, they were among the best of the best; crowned junior national champions the year before, they had led the Crimson to numerous crew-team victories, and they currently sat atop the Ivy League standings in any number of rowing categories.

  But none of that mattered to the Winklevoss twins as they powered their boat across the frigid water. They had been out on the Charles since four, piloting back and forth between the two bridges—and they would continue their silent vigil for at least the next two hours. They would pull those oars until they were both near exhaustion, until the rest of the campus finally came alive—until bright yellow ribbons of sunlight finally began to break through that gray-on-gray fog.

  Three hours later, Tyler could still feel the river resonating beneath him as he dropped into a chair next to Cameron at the head of a long, scuffed wooden table in a back corner of the dining hall at Pforzheimer House. The hall was fairly modern and vast, a brightly lit, rectangular room with high ceilings, containing more than a dozen long tables; most of the tables were crowded with students, as it was already deep into the breakfast session.

  Pforzheimer House was one of the newest of the Harvard undergraduate houses—“new” being a relative concept on a campus that was more than three hundred years old—and one of the biggest, home to about a hundred and fifty sophomores, juniors, and seniors. Freshmen lived in Harvard Yard; at the end of the freshman year, students entered a lottery system to find out where they’d spend the rest of their Harvard career—and Pforzheimer wasn’t exactly at the top of anyone’s wish list, located as it was in the center of “the Quad,” a pretty little quadrangle of buildings surrounding a wide expanse of rolling grass—located precisely in the middle of nowhere. The Quad had been part of the university’s expansion deep into Cambridge; ostensibly, to deal with overcrowding, but more likely simply to make better use of the huge financial endowment the university had amassed.

  The Quad wasn’t exactly Siberia, but to the students who were “quaded” at the end of freshman year, it certainly felt like they were about to be sent to some sort of gulag. The Quad houses were a good twenty-minute walk from Harvard Yard, where most of the undergraduate classes took place. For Tyler and Cameron, ending up in the Quad had been an even more difficult sentence; after the hike to the Yard, it was another ten-minute slog over to the river, where the Harvard boathouse squatted alongside the better-known Harvard houses: Eliot, Kirkland, Leverett, Mather, Lowell, Adams, Dunster, and Quincy.

  Over there, the houses were known by their names. Out here, it was just the Quad.

  Tyler glanced over at Cameron, who was leaning over a red plastic tray overflowing with breakfast items. A mountain range of scrambled eggs towered over foothills of breakfast potatoes, buttered toast, and fresh fruit, enough carbs to power an SUV—or a six-foot, five-inch rowing star. Tyler watched Cameron attacking the eggs, and could tell that his brother was nearly as worn out as he was. They’d been going full steam for the past few weeks—and not just out on the river, but also in their classes—and it was all starting to take its toll. Getting up every morning at four, heading down to the river. Then classes, homework. Then back down to the river for more training, weights, running. The life of a college athlete was hard; there were some days when it seemed like all they did was row, eat, and sometimes sleep.

  Tyler shifted his gaze from Cameron and the scrambled eggs to the kid sitting across from them at the table. Divya Narendra was mostly hidden behind a copy of the Crimson, the school newspaper, which he was holding open in front of him with both hands. There was an untouched bowl of oatmeal beneath the newspaper, and Tyler was pretty sure that if Divya didn’t put down the paper soon enough, Cameron would probably get that as well. If Tyler hadn’t already finished a tray almost twice as loaded as Cameron’s before he’d joined them at the rear table, he’d have taken the oatmeal down himself.

  Divya wasn’t an athlete like they were, but he certainly understood their passion and work ethic; he was as sharp a kid as Tyler had ever met, and together the three of them had been working pretty intensely on a somewhat secret project for quite some time. A sort of side venture in their lives, one that had slowly begun to take on more import—ironically—the busier their lives became.

  Tyler cleared his throat, then waited for Divya to put the paper down so they could get started. Divya held up a finger, asking for a minute; Tyler rolled his eyes, frustrated. As he did so, his attention drifted to the table directly behind Divya. A group of girls kept glancing back at him and Cameron. When he looked right at them, they quickly looked away.

  It was something Tyler had grown pretty used to, because it happened all the time. Hell, he and Cameron were identical twins. He knew that was something unusual—there was a slight freak-show element to it. But here, at Harvard, it was even more than that. They were on track to becoming Olympic athletes—and still, that was only part of it as well. Tyler and Cameron had a certain status on campus, a status that started with them being premier athletes—but carried over into something else.

  The turning point, of course, was easy for Tyler to pinpoint. He and his brother had become members of the Porcellian Club during their junior year. That they had been punched as juniors was pretty unusual; not only was the Porcellian the most prestigious, secretive, and oldest Final Club on campus, but it was also the smallest in terms of number of members and new punches—and it was especially rare for students to get punched for the Porc a year late.

  Tyler was pretty sure the club had waited the extra year to bring them in because of their background. Most members of the Porc had names with hundred year histories at Harvard. Although Tyler and Cameron’s father was immensely wealthy, he’d made his money himself, building a highly successful consulting company from the ground up. Tyler and Cameron weren’t from old money—but they certainly were from money. At the Fly or the Phoenix, that would have been enough. At the Porc, there had to be more.

  The Porc, after all, wasn’t a social institution like the Phoenix. For one thing, women were not allowed inside the club. On a member’s wedding day, he could bring his wife on a tour of the building; then, during his twenty-fifth reunion, he could bring her again. And that was it. Only the famed Bicycle Room
—a preparty hot spot, adjacent to the club proper—was accessible to nonmembers and coeds.

  The Porc wasn’t about parties or about getting laid like the other clubs on campus. It was about the future. It was about status—the sort of status that got you stared at in the dining hall, in the classrooms, when you were walking across Harvard Yard. The Porc wasn’t a social club—it was serious business.

  Which was something Tyler could appreciate. Serious business—after all, that’s why he and his brother were meeting with Divya that morning in the dining hall, an hour later than they usually ate breakfast. Serious fucking business.

  Tyler turned his attention away from the blushing girls at the next table, then grabbed a half-eaten apple off of his brother’s tray. Before his brother could protest, he tossed the apple in a high arc, landing it in the center of Divya’s bowl of oatmeal. The oatmeal splashed upward, soaking the newspaper with globs of thick white goo.

  Divya paused, then carefully folded the destroyed newspaper and placed it on the table next to the bowl.

  “Why do you read that rag?” Tyler asked, grinning at his friend. “It’s a complete waste of time.”

  “I like to know what my fellow students are up to,” Divya responded. “I think it’s important to keep a finger on the pulse of the student body. One day we’re going to launch this freaking company, and then this ‘rag’ is going to be real important to us, don’t you think?”

  Tyler shrugged, but he knew Divya was right. Divya was usually right. Which was the main reason Tyler and Cameron had partnered with him in the first place. They had been meeting like this, once a week, sometimes more often, since December of 2002. Almost two full years.

  “Well, we’re not going to launch anything unless we find someone to replace Victor,” Cameron interrupted, around a mouthful of eggs. “That’s for damn sure.”

  “He’s really out?” Tyler asked.

  “Yep,” Divya responded. “He says he’s got too much on his plate, he can’t put any more time into this. We need a new programmer. And it’s gonna be hard to find someone as good as Victor.”

  Tyler sighed. Two full years—and it seemed like they were no closer to launching than they were when they had first started. Victor Gua had been a great asset—a computer whiz who’d understood what they were trying to build. But he’d been unable to finish the site, and now he was gone.

  If only Tyler, Cameron, or Divya had the necessary computer background to get the thing off and running—Christ, Tyler knew in his soul that the company was going to be a huge success. It was such an amazing idea—something Divya had initially come up with, then he and Cameron had helped hone into what they all humbly considered pure genius.

  The project was called the Harvard Connection, and it was a Web site that was going to change life on campus—if they could only get someone to write the computer code that would make it work. The central idea was simple: put Harvard’s social life online, make a site where guys like Tyler and Cameron—who spent all their time rowing, eating, and sleeping—could meet up with girls—like the ones stealing glances at them from the next table over—without all the inefficient, time-wasting, wandering around campus that real life usually necessitated.

  As members of the Harvard elite, Tyler and Cameron were in a unique position to see how flawed Harvard’s social scene was. Eligible guys—like them—never had the opportunity to meet enough choice girls, because they were too busy doing the things that made them such hot properties on campus. A Web site geared toward socializing could fix that problem, could create a fluid environment where girls and guys could meet.

  The Harvard Connection would fulfill a need in what was mostly a stagnant social scene. Right now, if you rowed crew or played baseball or football—that’s all you ever did. The only girls you ever met were the ones who hung around the river, or the baseball field, or the gridiron. If you lived in the Quad, Quad girls were all you’d ever have access to. Sure, you could drop the “H-bomb” on anyone within range—meaning, you could use your Harvard Male status to bring down interested parties within your proximity—but a site like the Harvard Connection would vastly increase your range.

  Simple, perfect, fulfilling a need. The site would have two sections, dating and connecting. And once it succeeded at Harvard, Tyler and Cameron foresaw the site moving to other colleges, maybe throughout the Ivies. Every school had its own version of the H-bomb, after all.

  The only flaw in their business plan was, they didn’t have any way in hell of making the site without the help of a real computer genius. Tyler and Cameron had taught themselves HTML while in high school—but they weren’t good enough to build something like this. Truth was, they needed a real geek to make their social site work. Not just someone smart—someone who got what they were trying to do. The Harvard Connection was going to be something Harvard kids actually used, every weekend, an addition to their social routines. You’d shower, shave, make some calls, then check out the Connection and see who’d been checking you out.

  “Victor says he can find us some names,” Divya continued as he shook the newspaper over the oatmeal bowl, trying to dry it off. “Some kids from his computer science classes. We can start interviewing people, throw the word around that we’re looking for someone.”

  “I can ask around the Porc,” Cameron added. “I mean, nobody there’s gonna know much about computers, but maybe someone’s got a younger brother.”

  Great, Tyler thought, next they’d be posting a wanted add in the science center and hanging around the computer labs. He watched Divya working at the newspaper, and despite his frustration, he had to smile. Divya was such a polished guy, the son of two Indian doctors from Bayside, Queens, who’d followed his older brother into Harvard. He was always well dressed, well coiffed, well spoken. Nobody would have guessed that he was a genius on the electric guitar—specifically, a technical master of heavy-metal riffs. In public, he was so freaking dapper. He even liked to keep his newspaper clean.

  While he watched Divya and the newspaper, Tyler’s gaze inadvertently shifted back to the table of girls behind his friend. The tallest of the group—a brunette with striking brown eyes, wearing a low-cut tank top under a carefully torn Harvard Athletics sweatshirt—was now looking right at him, smiling over a purposefully revealed slice of tan shoulder. Tyler couldn’t help but smile back at her.

  Divya coughed, interrupting Tyler’s thoughts.

  “I highly doubt she’s interested in HTML code.”

  “Couldn’t hurt to ask,” Tyler responded as he winked at the brunette. Then he rose from the table. Their meeting had been short—but until they found themselves a new Victor, there wasn’t much else that they could do. He started toward the group of girls, then paused to grin at his Indian friend and his oatmeal-covered newspaper.

  “One thing I know for sure—you’re not going to find us a computer programmer in the fucking Crimson.”

  Eduardo pushed open the huge double doors as quietly as he could and slid into the back of the enormous lecture hall. The lecture was already in full swing; down at the bottom of the movie-theater-style room, on a raised stage that was backlit by a handful of industrial-size spotlights, a rotund little man in a tweed sport coat bounced up and down behind a massive oak lectern. The man was fully energized, his round little cheeks bright red with passion. His spindly arms jerked up and down, and every few minutes he slapped them against the lectern, sending a gunshotlike pop through the speakers that hung from the hall’s ridiculously high ceilings. Then he’d gesture over his shoulder, where behind him, spread across a ten-foot-high blackboard, hung a full colored map that looked like a cross between something from a Tolkien book and something that might have hung in FDR’s war room.

  Eduardo had no idea what class this was, or what this lecture was about. He didn’t recognize the professor, but that wasn’t unusual; there were so many professors, teaching fellows, and senior tutors at Harvard, one couldn’t possibly be expected to keep them all straight
. He could tell from the size of the room—and the fact that the three-hundred-seat theater was near full—that it was some sort of Core requirement. Because only Core classes were this big—as they were mandatory, what students like Eduardo and Mark considered necessary evils of Harvard life.

  The Core at Harvard was more than a requirement—it was also what the school considered a philosophy. The idea was that every student had to devote at least a quarter of their class time to courses that were designed to create a “rounded” scholar. The Core categories were foreign cultures, historical study, literature, moral reasoning, quantitative reasoning, science, and social analysis. The idea seemed sound; but in practice, the Core didn’t come close to living up to its lofty ideals. Because at their heart, the Core classes catered to the lowest common denominator, as nobody took a Core course because they were actually interested in the subject. So instead of deep, scholarly courses on history and the arts, you had classes such as Folklore and Mythology—or as it was affectionately known by the kids who slept through its vast lectures, “Greeks for Geeks;” a simple intro to physics—“Physics for Poets.” And a half-dozen bizarre anthropology courses that had little or no relevance to the real world. Because of the Core, nearly every Harvard graduate had taken at least one course that dealt with the Yanomamö, the “fierce people” of the Amazonian rain forest, a bizarre little tribe that still lived like they were in the Stone Age. A Harvard grad didn’t need to know much politics or math; but ask about the Yanomamö, and any grad could tell you that they were very fierce—that they often fought each other with big long sticks and engaged in strange piercing rituals that were even more disturbing than those engaged in by the kids who hung out in the skateboarding pit in the center of Harvard Square.