The Accidental Billionaires

by Ben Mezrich

  “This is going to be really interesting.” Eduardo grinned.

  Mark grinned right back at him.

  The door was huge and painted pitch-black; right across Mass Ave. from an even larger, more ominous stone gate—complete with iron bars, ornate masonry, and a great limestone boar’s head carved into its arched pinnacle. There was no way any freshman who walked through that gate, glanced across the street toward that door, didn’t feel at least a tingle of curiosity—if not outright paranoia. The building itself might have been nondescript, reddish bricks rising up four floors above an austere clothing store; but 1324 Mass Ave. was a place of Harvard myth and legend—an address intertwined with the secret history of the university itself.

  At the moment, Tyler Winklevoss, his brother Cameron, and their best friend Divya, were seated on a green leather, L-shaped couch just inside that black door, in a small, rectangular parlor known only as the Bicycle Room. If it had just been Tyler and Cameron, they would have been sequestered on a higher floor; but the wooden, green-carpeted staircase that led up into the century-old building was off-limits to Divya. Divya had never been invited up those winding, narrow stairs—and he never would be.

  The Porcellian was a place of rules; for more than two centuries, the Porcellian had sat atop the Final Club hierarchy, the highest rung of a social order that had trained generations of the best and brightest the country had ever educated. It was, arguably, the most elite and secretive club in America—comparable to the Skull and Bones at Yale. Founded in 1791, named in 1794 in honor of a bacchanalian pig roast that the graduating members had thrown for themselves—feasting on a pig, the story goes, that one member had brought to classes with him, hiding the porcine pet in a window box whenever a professor came near—the Porcellian was the ultimate old boys’ network on a campus that had defined the term.

  The clubhouse—“the old barn,” as the members referred to it—was a place of legend and history. Teddy Roosevelt had been a Porc, along with many members of the Roosevelt clan; FDR had been rejected from the club, and had called the incident “the greatest disappointment of his life.” The Porcellian’s motto—dum vivimus, vivamus, “while we live, let’s live”—did not apply simply to a member’s experience at college, but well after, as he went out and made his way into the world. Porcs were meant to become masters of the universe; there was even an urban myth on campus that if a Porc member hadn’t made his first million by the age of thirty, the club simply gave it to him.

  Whether or not that was true, Tyler, Cameron, and Divya hadn’t come to the Bicycle Room to contemplate the path to their first million; they were there to commiserate, because suddenly success seemed more distant than ever.

  The reason for their frustrated state had a name: Mark Zuckerberg.

  For two months, since that seemingly wonderful meeting of the minds in the Kirkland House dining hall, the kid had been telling them that their partnership in the Harvard Connection was going great. He’d looked over their computer code, studied what they’d already built of the site, and was ready to do his part to get it up and running.

  Fifty-two e-mails between Mark, the Winklevosses, and Divya, a half-dozen phone calls—and always, the kid had seemed as thrilled and excited about the project as he had been during that first dinner meeting. His e-mails had been like a work log to the Winklevosses, progress reports that they thought indicated the programming was moving steadily along, if a little slower than expected:

  Most of the coding done, It seems like everything is working. Got some class work I have to get done, be back at it soon. I forgot to bring my charger home with me for Thanksgiving.

  But by the end of the seventh week, when no real progress had been forthcoming—no code e-mailed to them or added to the site—Tyler had begun to get a little anxious. Things were taking way too long. He’d thought they’d have been ready to get the site launched by the end of the holidays. So he’d had Cameron send the kid an e-mail, asking if he could finish the job soon. Mark had responded almost immediately, but the response had been a request for more time:

  Sorry it’s taken me a while to get back to you. I’m completely swamped with work this week. I have three programming projects and a final paper due Monday, as well as a couple problem sets due Friday.

  But in the same e-mail, Mark had let them know that he was still working on the site as much as he could:

  As far as the site goes for now, I’ve made some of the changes, although not all of them, and they seem to be working on my computer. I have not uploaded them to the live site yet though.

  And then he’d added something that had caused Tyler a little concern, because it seemed out of the blue, considering how upbeat Mark had seemed until then:

  I’m still a little skeptical that we have enough functionality in the site to really draw the attention and gain the critical mass necessary to get a site like this to run. And in its current state, if the site does get the type of traffic we’re looking for, I don’t know if we have enough bandwidth from the ISP you’re using to handle the load without some serious optimization, which will take a few more days to implement.

  It was the first time Mark had mentioned anything about the site not having “functionality;” up until then, he had seemed thrilled with their ideas, and had agreed that it would be a great success.

  After that e-mail, Tyler had been insistent, putting the pressure on the kid to meet with them. He had hoped that the site would be ready to go online by now, and every day they wasted was a day that someone else could beat them to the punch—get a good similar site up and running. Tyler and Cameron were seniors, they wanted to see their project happen as soon as possible. But Mark had kept postponing, claiming he had too much schoolwork to schedule anything.

  It wasn’t until that very night, just a few hours before the Winklevosses and Divya had crossed through the Porcellian gate—donated to Harvard by the club in 1901—and entered that pitch-black door, that Mark had finally acquiesced to a brief get-together in the Kirkland dining hall.

  At first, when Tyler, Cameron, and Divya had joined the kid at the same back table, it had seemed just like before; the kid complimented them on their ideas, told them how great he thought the Harvard Connection was going to be—but then, out of nowhere, he’d started to hedge a bit, explaining that he didn’t have time to get much done right away, that he had a lot of other projects that were taking up a lot of his free hours. Tyler assumed he was talking about projects for his computer classes—but Mark was being very vague, very unclear.

  He also had brought up a few problems he was having with the Harvard Connection that he’d never mentioned before; that there was some “front-end stuff” that needed to be done, and that he wasn’t good at that. By “front-end stuff,” Tyler assumed he meant the visual aspects of the front page, which seemed strange, because that was exactly what Mark had shown himself to be very talented at with the Facemash debacle.

  Then Mark had gotten even more confusing—stating that some of the work he still needed to do to get the site live was “boring,” stuff he wasn’t interested in doing. He again reiterated that the site was lacking “functionality.” That they were going to need more server capacity.

  Tyler had suddenly gotten the feeling that the kid was trying to deflate their balloon; where he had been enthusiastic before, now he was trying to tell them that it just wasn’t that exciting to him.

  Tyler had wondered—maybe the kid was just burning out a bit. He was working hard, with all his classes, and Tyler knew from Victor that engineers had a tendency to get like that, a little burned out, a little tired, a little testy. The kid’s excuses seemed pretty hollow, that was for sure. Server problems? So they’d get more servers. Front-end issues? Anyone could design the front end. Maybe he just needed some time left alone—then he’d get right back to work. Maybe by February he would be enthusiastic again.

  Still, it was extremely frustrating, and Tyler, Cameron, and Divya had come out of the meeting utter
ly depressed. After all those weeks of telling them that everything was going along fine, now Mark was telling them it wasn’t ready to go, that there were some real issues he was dealing with, that he wasn’t that excited anymore. No real explanation other than schoolwork, nothing more than a lame apology—and another two months wasted.

  It was beyond disappointing. Tyler had really thought the site would be ready to be launched by now. He’d really thought the geeky kid had gotten their project, understood the possibilities. The kid had seen what they’d already done, had agreed that it would be easy to finish—maybe ten, fifteen hours of work for a competent computer programmer—but now all this garbage about front ends and server capacity.

  It didn’t make any sense. Tyler had ultimately decided that the best course of action was to leave the kid alone for a few weeks. Maybe he’d be back to his old self.

  “And if he doesn’t get it together in a few weeks?” Divya asked as they sat on the couch in the Bicycle Room. They could hear cars driving by on Mass Ave. on the other side of the black door. If Tyler and Cameron had gone upstairs, they could have watched the traffic through a mirror designed specifically so that nobody could see them watching; but Tyler had never been much of a voyeur. He wanted to participate, to be a part of things, to move forward. He hated being stalled, just watching as the rest of the world went by.

  Tyler shrugged. He didn’t want to get ahead of himself—but maybe they had read the kid wrong. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t the entrepreneur Tyler had thought he was. Maybe Zuckerberg was just another computer geek without any real vision.

  “If that happens,” Tyler glumly responded, “we have to find ourselves a new programmer. One that understands the big picture.”

  Maybe Mark Zuckerberg didn’t get it at all.

  Eduardo had been standing in the empty hallway in Kirkland House a good twenty minutes before Mark finally burst out of the stairwell that led down toward the dining hall; Mark was moving fast, his flip-flops a blur beneath his feet, the hood of his yellow fleece hoody flapping behind his head like a halo in a hurricane. Eduardo, watching his friend careening forward, crossed his arms against his chest.

  “I thought we were supposed to meet at nine,” Eduardo started, but Mark waved him off.

  “Can’t talk,” he mumbled as he dug his key out of his shorts and went to work on the doorknob.

  Eduardo took in his friend’s wild hair and even wilder eyes.

  “You haven’t slept yet, have you?”

  Mark didn’t respond. The truth was, Eduardo was pretty sure Mark hadn’t slept much in the past week. He had been working round the clock, light to dark to light. He looked beyond exhausted, but it didn’t matter. At the moment, nothing mattered to Mark. He was in that pure laser mode that every engineer understood. He refused to suffer any distraction, anything that could jar the single thought loose.

  “Why can’t you talk?” Eduardo continued, but Mark ignored him. Finally, the keys clicked and Mark got the door open, diving inside. His flip-flops caught in a pair of jeans that were balled up on the floor, and he momentarily lost his balance, spinning past a cluttered bookshelf and a small color television. Then he was back on his feet, and still moving forward. He launched himself into his bedroom, beelining straight to his desk.

  The desktop computer was on, the program open—and Mark went straight to work. He didn’t seem to hear Eduardo plodding across the room behind him. He hit the keys furiously, his fingers moving like they were possessed.

  He was adding a final touch, Eduardo assumed, because all the debugging had been finished by three, and most of the design and coding were already finished. The only thing that had been missing had been a function that Mark had been mulling over for nearly a day.

  He’d been playing around with the features of the site, trying to keep the design as simple and clean as possible, while providing enough pizzazz to draw a viewer’s attention. It wasn’t just voyeurism that was going to drive people to use thefacebook. It was the interactivity of that voyeurism. Or, to put it more simply, it was going to mimic what went on at college every day—the thing that drove the college social experience, drove people to go out to the clubs and bars and even the classrooms and dining halls. To meet people, socialize, converse, sure—but the catalyst of it all, the burning engine behind those social networks, was as simple and basic as humanity itself.

  “That looks pretty good,” Eduardo said, reading over Mark’s shoulder. Mark nodded, mostly to himself.

  “Yes.”

  “No, I mean, that’s great. That looks great. I think people are going to really respond to this.”

  Mark rubbed a hand through his hair, leaning back in his chair. The page was open to the inside of the site—a mock-profile page, what people would see after they registered and added their personal info. There was a picture near the top—whatever picture you wanted to add. Then a list of attributes on the right side—year you were in at college, your major, your high school, where you came from, clubs you were a member of, a favorite quote. Then a list of friends—people you could add yourself, or invite to join. A “poke” application, that allowed you to poke other people’s profiles, letting them know that you were checking them out. And, in big letters, your “Sex.” What you were “Looking For.” Your “Relationship Status.” And what you were “Interested In.”

  That was the genius of it, that the addition was going to make this all work. Looking For. Relationship Status. Interested In. Those were the résumé items that were at the heart of the college experience. Those three concepts, in a nutshell, defined college life—from the parties to the classrooms to the dorms, that was the engine that drove every kid on campus.

  Online, it would be the same; the thing that would drive this social network was the same thing that drove life at college—sex. Even at Harvard, the most exclusive school in the world, it was all really about sex. Getting it, or not getting it. That’s why people joined Final Clubs. That’s why they chose certain classes over other ones, sat in certain seats at the dining hall. It was all about sex. And deep down, at its heart, that’s what thefacebook would be about, in the beginning. An undercurrent of sex.

  Mark hit more keys, changing the page to the opening screen that you’d see when you went to thefacebook.com. Eduardo took in the dark blue band across the top, the slightly lighter blue “register” and “login” buttons. It was extremely simple-and clean-looking. No blinking lights, no annoying bells. It was going to be all about the experience—nothing flashy, nothing overwhelming or frightening. Simple and clean:

  [Welcome to Thefacebook]

  Thefacebook is an online directory that connects people through social networks at colleges.

  We have opened up Thefacebook for popular consumption at Harvard University.

  You can use Thefacebook to:

  • Search for people at your school

  • Find out who are in your classes

  • Look up your friends’ friends

  • See a visualization of your social network

  To get started, click below to register. If you have already registered, you can log in.

  “So to log on,” Eduardo said, his hovering shadow covering most of the screen. “You need a Harvard.edu e-mail, then you choose a password.”

  “Correct.”

  The Harvard.edu e-mail was key, in Eduardo’s mind; you had to be a Harvard student to join the site. Mark and Eduardo knew that exclusivity would make the site more popular; it would also enhance the idea that your info would remain in a closed system, private. Privacy was important; people wanted to have control of what they put onto the Web. Likewise, choosing your own password was integral; that Aaron Greenspan kid had gotten into so much trouble for having students use their Harvard ID numbers and system passwords to log onto his site. Mark had even e-mailed with him about his experience, the trouble he’d had with the ad board. Greenspan had immediately tried to get Mark to partner up with him—just like the Winklevoss twins and
their Harvard Connection dating site. Everyone wanted a piece of Mark, but Mark didn’t need anyone else. Everything he needed was right in front of him.

  “And what’s that, at the bottom?”

  Eduardo was leaning forward, squinting to read a small line of print.

  A Mark Zuckerberg production.

  The line would appear on every page, right there at the bottom of the screen. Mark’s signature, for everyone to see.

  If Eduardo had a problem with that, he didn’t say anything. And why should he? Mark had been working so hard—the hours must have blended together in one blur of pure programming. He had barely eaten, barely slept. It seemed like he had missed almost half of his classes, and had probably been in real danger of screwing up his grade-point average. In one class—one of his stupid Cores called Art in the Time of Augustus—he’d supposedly fallen so far behind that he’d almost forgotten about an exam that was going to be worth a large percentage of his overall grade. He’d had no time to study for the damn thing—so he’d reportedly figured out a unique way of dealing with the situation. He’d created a quick little Web site where he posted all the artwork that was going to be on the exam and invited people in the class to comment—effectively creating an online crib sheet for the test. He’d essentially gotten the rest of the class to do the work for him—and he’d aced the exam, saving his grade.

  And now, sitting here in front of Mark’s creation, it seemed like all the work had paid off. The Web site was pretty much done. They had registered the domain name—thefacebook.com—a couple of weeks ago, January 12. They’d booked the servers—around eighty-five bucks a month—from a company in upstate New York. They’d take care of any Web traffic and maintenance; Mark had obviously learned his lesson from the Facemash incident, he didn’t need any more frozen laptops. The servers could handle a pretty large amount of traffic, so there wouldn’t be any problems with the site freezing up, even if the thing was as popular as Facemash had been. Everything was in place.