The Accidental Billionaires

by Ben Mezrich

  But the housing office wasn’t the subject of the Crimson article. The three blondes had been ranked by a Web site—according to the Crimson, it had been called Facemash, a sort of “hot-or-not” clone where students were able to rate girls based on their pictures—and it had caused quite a stir on campus.

  “It got shut down pretty fast,” Divya continued, pointing to the Crimson. “Says here that the kid who made it shut it down himself. When he created the site, he didn’t even realize people were going to get mad. Even though on his blog, he talked about comparing girls to farm animals.”

  Tyler leaned back in his chair.

  “Who got mad?”

  “Well, girls. Lots of them. The feminist groups on campus sent dozens of letters. And then the university—so many people were on the site at the same time, it clogged up the university’s bandwidth. Professors couldn’t even get into their e-mail accounts. It was a righteous mess.”

  Tyler whistled low.

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah, wow. It got like twenty thousand hits in twenty minutes. Now the kid who created it is in a lot of trouble. Seems he stole all the pictures off the houses’ databases. Hacked in and just downloaded ’em all. Him and a few of his friends are gonna get ad-boarded.”

  Tyler knew all about the ad board—the administration’s disciplinary organization, usually made up of deans and student advisers, sometimes even university lawyers and the higher administrators themselves. Tyler had a friend in the Porc who’d been accused of cheating on a history exam. The kid had had to go up in front of two deans and a senior tutor. The ad board had a lot of power—it could suspend you, even call for expulsion. Though in this case, Tyler doubted the punishment would be that severe.

  The kid who made Facemash would probably end up getting probation. His reputation was a little fucked, however. Certainly the girls on campus weren’t going to be thinking too highly of him. Although, from the sound of it, the kid wasn’t exactly a Casanova. Comparing farm animals to girls? That wasn’t the sort of thing you came up with when you were getting laid regularly.

  “Says here it’s not his first program,” Cameron said, leafing through the article. “He wrote that Course Match thing. You remember, Tyler, that online schedule, to pick your classes. And in high school, he was supposedly some sort of megahacker.”

  Tyler felt the energy rising inside of him. He liked everything he was hearing. This kid had fucked things up with his Web site—but he was obviously a brilliant programmer, and definitely a freethinker. Maybe he was exactly what they were looking for.

  “We should talk to this kid.”

  Divya nodded.

  “I already called Victor. He says the kid is in some computer science classes with him. He warned me that he’s a little weird, though.”

  “Weird how?” Cameron asked.

  “You know, like kind of socially autistic.”

  Tyler looked at Cameron. They knew exactly what Divya meant. Autistic wasn’t the right word; socially awkward probably covered it. There were dozens of kids like that all over Harvard. To get into Harvard, you had to either be incredibly well rounded—like a straight-A student who was also the captain of a varsity sport. Or you had to be really, really, really good at one thing—maybe better than anyone else in the world. Like a virtuoso violinist, or an award-winning poet.

  Tyler liked to think that he and his brother were well rounded—but he wasn’t going to fool himself, he also knew that they were really, really, really good at crew.

  This kid was obviously really, really, really good at computers—because it sounded like he sure as hell wasn’t the captain of any varsity sport.

  “What’s the kid’s name?” Tyler asked, his mind already whirring ahead.

  “Mark Zuckerberg,” Divya answered.

  “Go send him an e-mail,” Tyler decided, tapping at the Crimson. “Let’s see if this Zuckerberg kid wants to be a part of history.”

  From the steps of Widener Library, in the bright light of eleven A.M., Harvard Yard looked pretty much as it had for the past three hundred years. Little tree-lined paths meandering between patches of meticulously shorn grass. Ancient, brick-and-stone buildings covered in ivy, complicated twists of green that curled like veins across aging architectural skin. From Eduardo’s vantage on the top stone step, he could just make out the peak of Memorial Church in the distance, but nothing beyond, not the space-age science center or boxy freshman dorm Canaday, none of the newer buildings that marred the austere continuum of the historical-minded campus. There was weight in that view, centuries of moments like these—though Eduardo had a feeling, in all those hundreds of years, no student had lived through precisely the sort of bizarre torture that the kid sitting next to him had just endured.

  He looked over at Mark, who was sitting cross-legged next to him on the step, partially enveloped in a shadow cast by one of the vast pillars that held up the roof of the great stone library. Mark was wearing a suit and tie, and he appeared uncomfortable, as usual—but at the moment, Eduardo was pretty sure his friend’s discomfort was due only partially to his clothes.

  “That was unpleasant,” Eduardo commented, turning his attention back to the Yard.

  He watched a pair of pretty freshmen hurrying down one of the paths. The girls were wearing matching Crimson scarves, and one had her hair up in a bun, showing off a porcelain stretch of neck.

  “Kind of like a colonoscopy,” Mark responded.

  He was watching the girls’ progress across the yard as well. Maybe he was thinking the same thing that Eduardo was—that those girls had probably heard of Facemash, maybe read about it in the Crimson or seen something posted on one of the online campus bulletin boards. Maybe the girls were even aware that just an hour before, Mark had been forced to sit down in front of the ad board and explain himself, that he’d been propped up in front of no fewer than three deans, not to mention a pair of computer security experts, and made to apologize, again and again, for the mess he had inadvertently caused.

  The funny thing—although the deans hadn’t exactly seen the humor in it—was that Mark hadn’t seemed to really understand why anyone was so upset in the first place. Yes, he’d hacked into the university’s computers, and he’d downloaded pictures. He knew that was wrong, and he’d certainly apologized for it. But he was truly confused by the anger that had been directed toward him by the various female groups on campus—and not just the groups, but by the girls themselves, many of whom had sent e-mails, letters, and sometimes boy friends to get the message across. In the dining hall, in the classrooms, even in the library stacks, wherever they ran across Mark’s path.

  During the ad-board meeting, he’d readily admitted his guilt in terms of the hacking—but he’d also pointed out that his actions had illuminated some serious security flaws in the university’s computer system. His stunt had a silver lining, he’d argued, and he’d readily volunteered to help the houses fix up the flaws in their systems.

  Also, Mark had gamely pointed out that he’d shut the site down himself, when he’d realized it had gone viral. He’d never had any intention of launching Facemash across the campus—it was sort of a beta test gone wild. A stunt, and he hadn’t meant to do anything malicious with the Web site.

  Frankly, Mark’s social awkwardness—and his confusion over the response to Facemash—had been his greatest defense. The gathered deans had looked at him and listened to his stilted affectation, and they had realized that Mark really wasn’t a bad kid—he just didn’t think the same way other kids did. He hadn’t realized that girls were going to get mad because guys were voting on their appearance—hell, Mark and Eduardo and probably every other college guy in the world had been ranking female classmates in terms of hotness since the dawn of structured education. Eduardo was pretty sure that someday, some paleontologist would find a cave drawing ranking Neanderthal girls—it was simply human nature to make that kind of list.

  To an outside observer, it seemed that Mark hadn’t realized
that the sort of things that went on in his mind, the sort of conversations you had with your fellow geek friends in the privacy of your geek lairs—they didn’t play well out in the general public. You suggest putting pictures of girls up against farm animals, and you’re going to piss people off.

  Mark had certainly pissed a lot of people off. But the deans, in their good graces, had decided not to suspend or expel him over Facemash. They’d given Mark a form of probation—really, they’d simply told him to stay out of trouble for the next two years, or else. They hadn’t clearly defined what “or else” meant, but in any event, it was a good, solid slap on the wrist.

  Mark had survived the incident without much damage to his academic standing. His reputation on campus, however, hadn’t gotten off quite as easily. If he’d had trouble getting girls before, he was going to have a hell of a time with them now.

  Then again, people knew the name Mark Zuckerberg. The Crimson article had made sure of that. The paper had even followed up the initial article about the Facemash debacle with an editorial about Facemash’s popularity, and how the very number of hits the site had garnered showed that there was interest in a sort of online picture-sharing community—though maybe not one with such a negative bent. Mark had certainly stirred up the pot—that was something, wasn’t it?

  When the two freshman girls strolled out of view, Mark reached into his back pocket and pulled out a piece of folded paper, then turned to Eduardo.

  “I want to show you something. What do you think of this?”

  He handed the paper over, and Eduardo unfolded it; it was an e-mail, printed off of Mark’s computer:

  Hey Mark, I got your email from my friend. In any case, me and my team need a web developer with php, sql, and hopefully java skills. We’re very deep into developing a site, which we’d like you to be a part of and a site which we know will make some waves on campus. Please call my cell or write me an email letting me know when you’d be free to chat on the phone and meet with our current developer. This should be a really rewarding experience, especially if you have an entrepreneurial personality. We’ll let you know the details when you respond. Cheers.

  The e-mail was signed by someone named Divya Narendra, and had been cc’d to someone named Tyler Winklevoss. Eduardo read through the e-mail twice, digesting the request. It sounded like these kids were working on some sort of secret Web site—probably they had read about Mark in the Crimson, had seen Facemash, and were thinking he could help them with whatever it was they were building. They certainly didn’t know Mark—they were responding to his reputation, his sudden notoriety.

  “You know these guys?” Mark asked.

  “I don’t know Divya, but I know who the Winklevoss twins are. They’re seniors, I think they live in the Quad. They row crew.”

  Mark nodded. Of course, he knew the Winklevoss twins, too. Not personally, of course, but you couldn’t avoid having noticed them at some point. Six-foot-five identical twins were kind of hard to miss. But neither Eduardo nor Mark had ever exchanged a word with the two jocks; they weren’t exactly wandering around in the same circles. Tyler and Cameron were Porc guys. They were athletes, and they hung out with athletes.

  “Are you going to talk to them?”

  “Why not?”

  Eduardo shrugged. He glanced at the e-mail again. To tell the truth, he didn’t have a great feeling about it. He didn’t know the Winklevoss twins, or Divya, but he knew Mark, and he couldn’t imagine Mark getting along well with kids like that. It took a certain sort of “understanding” to get along with Mark in the long run. And guys like the Winklevosses, well, they didn’t understand geeks like Eduardo and Mark.

  Sure, Eduardo was making great ground now that he was hanging out at the Phoenix, working his way through the initiation process. In a week or so, he was pretty sure that process would end—and he’d become a full-fledged Final Club member. But there was a vast difference between being a member of the Phoenix and being a member of the Porcellian. The Phoenix was about learning how to talk to girls, drink heavily, and hopefully get laid. The Porcellian was about learning how to rule the world.

  “I’d say fuck ’em,” Eduardo responded. “You don’t need them.”

  Mark took the e-mail back and shoved it into his pocket. Then he picked at his shoelaces, loosening his shoes.

  “I don’t know,” he said, and Eduardo could tell that he’d already made up his mind. Maybe the idea of hanging out with guys like the Winklevoss twins appealed to something inside Mark, or maybe it was just another lark, like Facemash—something that seemed like it could be amusing.

  Or, as Mark would put it, as he always put it:

  “It might be interesting.”

  “Oh, shit. Lock up your girlfriends, boys. Look who’s coming to dinner.”

  Tyler and Cameron were halfway through the Kirkland dining hall, moving between the tables at a near jog, when it happened. Tyler saw the bull-shaped senior coming toward them, hands outstretched in a low, faux tackle, a sloppy grin above those wide, saggy jowls—and he just had to laugh. The very idea that they could get through the meeting at the river house without being noticed was foolish; both he and Cameron had a lot of friends in Kirkland, including a few members of the Porc, and a handful of crew teammates. Davis Mulroney wasn’t either; but he was hard to avoid, considering that he must have weighed close to three hundred pounds, played center on the varsity football team—and now he was coming right at them.

  Tyler feinted left, but he was too slow, and Davis got him in a waist-high bear hug, lifting his feet off the floor for a full count of five. After letting Tyler down, he shook both brothers’ hands, then cocked a bushy eyebrow at them.

  “Slumming on the river? What brings you boys down from the Quad?”

  Tyler glanced at Cameron. They’d both agreed that it was better, for now, to keep their meeting with the computer kid under wraps. It wasn’t like their Web site was a complete secret; their friends knew about it, and so did a few of their brothers at the Porc. But this Zuckerberg kid was kind of a flash point on campus at the moment, and they certainly weren’t ready for any Crimson-level announcements.

  Hell, they hadn’t even met the kid yet—but they did know he was very interested in their site and wanted to be a part of what they were building. Both Divya and Victor Gua had traded a bunch of e-mails with the kid, and according to them, Zuckerberg had seemed really interested. His exact words in one of his recent e-mails made it sound like he was certainly worth the trip to the river house:

  I’m down to chat, but I need to deal with the aftermath of facemash—so maybe tomorrow? I’m definitely interested in hearing about your project.

  But a dinner meeting at Kirkland wasn’t the same as a full partnership, and Tyler didn’t need the whole campus knowing that he and his brother were working with the Facemash kid before it was actually true. Still, it was foolish to think that he and his brother could march into Kirkland without running into a handful of friends. Davis’s girlfriend was roommates with one of Cameron’s exes; and anyway, football and crew had similar workout schedules, so they were always running into each other.

  “We heard it was sloppy-joe night,” Tyler responded. “We’re always up for a good sloppy joe.”

  Davis laughed. He gestured toward a table near the windows, which was filled with rather large-looking guys in matching Harvard athletic sweatshirts.

  “Why don’t you join us? We’re gonna grab a drink afterward at the Spi, maybe head down to Grafton. My buddy has some chicks coming in on the Fuck Truck from Wellesley Should be a good time.”

  Tyler rolled his eyes. The “Fuck Truck” was a Harvard institution—a vanlike bus that traveled between the Harvard campus and a half dozen of the nearby all-girl schools—as well as a few of the more liberal-minded coed party campuses—shuttling kids back and forth, most often on weekends. All socially knowledgeable Harvard grads had been on the Fuck Truck at least once in their college career; Tyler could close his eyes and
still remember the wonderfully thick scent of alcohol and perfume that seemed to permeate the bus’s vinyl seats. But tonight, he wasn’t interested in the Fuck Truck, or its contents.

  “Sorry, man, can’t tonight, but maybe a rain check.”

  He gave the big kid a pat on the shoulder, waved at the table of jocks, then kept on moving through the dining hall. As he went, he couldn’t help thinking that in some ways, the Fuck Truck was analogous to the project he and his brother were working on; the Harvard Connection would have features that could be described as an electronic Fuck Truck—a superslick connection between guys and girls, but instead of a long ride in the back of a bus, you’d just have to click a key on your laptop. One-stop shopping, as it were, for that coed of your dreams.

  Cameron tapped his arm and pointed toward a table at the very back of the rectangular hall. In the center of the table, a kid was waving at them. The kid was lanky and had a mop of curly brownish blond hair. He was wearing a zippy and cargo shorts, even though it was thirty degrees outside, and his cheeks had a certain ivory pallor to them, as if he hadn’t been in the sun in a long time.

  There was another kid at the table with him—a short, dark-haired guy with scruff on his chin, maybe the kid’s roommate—but that one took off as they approached, leaving Mark by himself. Tyler reached the table first, holding out his hand.

  “Tyler Winklevoss. This is my brother, Cameron. Sorry Divya couldn’t make it, he had a seminar he couldn’t get out of.”