The Accidental Billionaires

by Ben Mezrich

  But maybe if Mark had taken it all a little more seriously, things would have gone a bit better. Case in point; here they were, at one of the fanciest new restaurants in New York, and he was sitting there in that damn fleece hoody, his flip-flops bouncing off each other under the table. Granted, they weren’t at 66 to meet with a potential advertiser, but it was still business, and Mark should have looked the part. At the very least, he should have tried to look hip, because in this place he stuck out like a sore thumb.

  Located on the first floor of the Textile Building in Tribeca, 66 was Jean Georges’s newest hot spot, and quite possibly the nicest Chinese restaurant Eduardo had ever seen. Sleek and minimalist, the place was extremely modern, from the twelve-foot-tall curved glass wall that took up much of the entrance to the huge fish tank that separated the dining area from the kitchen. The floor was bamboo, and frosted-glass panels separated the various leather seating areas. There was also a huge, forty-person communal table, next to another frosted wall behind which the bartenders scampered about, their silhouettes dancing back and forth. Chinese red silk banners hung from the ceiling, but otherwise it seemed more fusion than Asian, at least to Eduardo’s palate. Since their guest was running late, they’d already ordered some things from the menu: lacquered pork with a shallot-and-ginger confit. Tuna tartar. A lobster claw steamed with ginger and wine. And foie gras jammed into oversize shrimp dumplings. Eduardo’s girlfriend hadn’t been too thrilled with the items, and he could tell she was just biding her time until they could order dessert—homemade ice cream that came in little tiny Chinese takeout containers. Though if she could convince one of the waiters to give them drinks without checking their ages, she’d forget all about the ice cream.

  She probably wasn’t a keeper, but Kelly was still tall and pretty, and Eduardo had managed to keep her interested since their episode in the dorm bathroom. Mark had long lost her friend Alice, but no matter, Mark didn’t seem to care one way or the other. At the moment, though, Kelly wasn’t the biggest issue dominating Eduardo’s thoughts. He was much more concerned about the reason they were at the restaurant in the first place—and the guy they were there to meet

  Eduardo didn’t know much about Sean Parker—but what he’d found out by a simple search on the Internet, he didn’t like. Parker was a Silicon Valley animal, a serial entrepreneur who’d crashed out of two of the biggest Internet companies in what sounded like pretty spectacular fashion. To Eduardo, he seemed like some sort of wild man, maybe even a little dangerous. Eduardo had no idea why the guy wanted to talk to them, or what Parker wanted from them. But he was pretty sure he didn’t want anything from Parker.

  Speak of the devil; Eduardo caught site of Parker first as he stepped out from behind the curved glass entrance. Although it would have been hard to miss the guy—because he was making quite an entrance, bouncing off the walls like some sort of animated cartoon creature, a Tasmanian Devil spinning through the restaurant. He seemed to know everyone as he moved through the place. First, he was saying hi to the hostess while hugging one of the waitresses. Then he was stopping at a nearby table to shake hands with a guy in a suit, while ruffling the hair of the guy’s kid, like they were family friends. Christ, who the hell was this character?

  He reached their table and smiled; there was a bit of wolf in that grin.

  “Sean Parker. You must be Eduardo, and Kelly. And of course, Mark.”

  Sean reached across the table, going right for Mark—and Eduardo saw it, then and there—the look on Mark’s face, the sudden flush in his cheeks and the brightness in his eyes. Pure idol worship. In Eduardo’s eyes, to Mark, Sean Parker was a god.

  Eduardo should have realized it earlier. Napster was the ultimate geek banner, a battle that had been fought by hackers on the biggest stage of all. Ultimately, the hackers had lost, but that didn’t matter, in a way it was still the biggest hack in history. And Sean Parker had survived that, gone on to Plaxo, made a name for himself a second time. Eduardo didn’t have to remember what he’d read on Google, because Sean launched right into it himself, after taking a seat next to Kelly and ordering them all drinks from one of the passing waitresses—a friend, of course, from a previous visit.

  Sean spun story after story, his energy level beyond incredible. About Napster, the battles he had fought. About Plaxo, and the even uglier battles he’d barely survived. He was completely open about everything. Life in Silicon Valley. Parties at Stanford and down in L.A. Friends who had become billionaires, and others who were still searching for that big hit. He painted a really exciting picture of his world—and, Eduardo could see, Mark was eating it all up. He looked like he was about to run out of the restaurant and book a plane ticket straight to California.

  When Sean finally reached the last of his stories—for the moment, Eduardo assumed—he turned it around, asking them about their most recent progress with thefacebook.

  Eduardo started to explain that they were now in twenty-nine schools—but Sean turned right back to Mark, asking him about the strategies they were applying to get the different schools to join up.

  Eduardo sat there, a little miffed, as Mark stiltedly explained their strategy by way of an example. He told the Baylor story—how the little Texan University had at first refused to adopt thefacebook, because the school had a social network of its own. So instead of attacking Baylor head-on, they’d made a list of all the schools within a hundred-mile radius of it, and had dropped thefacebook into those schools first. Pretty soon all the kids at Baylor were seeing all their friends on the Web site—and they practically begged for thefacebook on their campus. Within days, the Baylor social Web site was history.

  Sean seemed really excited by the story. He then added to it, by quoting something he’d read in the Stanford newspaper—the Stanford Daily—on March 5: “Classes are being skipped. Work is being ignored. Students are spending hours in front of the computer in utter fascination. The facebook.com craze has swept through campus.” After that article had come out, 85 percent of Stanford had joined thefacebook within twenty-four hours.

  Mark seemed thrilled that Sean had been reading up on him. And Sean, for his part, seemed happy that Mark was a fan. They had an instant connection, there was no denying it. As for Eduardo—well, Sean wasn’t purposely ignoring Eduardo, but he was definitely paying a lot more attention to Mark. Maybe it was just the fact that they were both computer savvy—but then again, Sean didn’t strike Mark as a computer geek. He was a geek, sure, but his geekiness seemed more chic, like he was just playing a geek on some prime-time television show. It wasn’t just the way he was dressed or his amped-up demeanor. It was the way he handled the room, not just their table. He was a showman, and he was damn good at what he did.

  The dinner went pretty fast, after that—although it seemed like forever to Eduardo, who almost applauded when Kelly finally got her ice cream. Once the Chinese take-out boxes were all empty, Sean picked up the check, excused himself, and promised Mark that they’d talk again soon. Then the whirling dervish was gone, as quickly as he’d appeared.

  Ten minutes later, Eduardo was standing next to Mark on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, his hand in the air as he tried to hail a cab. Eduardo’s girl had gone off to meet Sean and his girlfriend, to some bar nearby in Tribeca where they were meeting mutual friends. Eduardo was going to meet up with them later, but he still had a few phone calls to make. More advertiser meetings they were trying to set up. He wasn’t going to give up, no matter how difficult things got.

  Hand still in the air, Eduardo glanced over at Mark. He could see that his friend still had that flushed look on his face. Parker was gone, but his aura still lingered in the air.

  “He’s like a snake-oil salesman,” Eduardo said, trying to break the spell. “I mean, he’s a serial entrepreneur. We don’t really need him.”

  Mark shrugged, but didn’t respond. Eduardo frowned. He could tell that his words were falling on deaf ears. Mark liked Parker, idolized him. There was no way around
it.

  Eduardo guessed it didn’t really matter, not at the moment. It wasn’t like Parker was going to throw money at them; the guy didn’t have any real money yet, as far as Eduardo could tell. And thefacebook needed money. As it grew and grew, they were forced to upgrade their servers. And they had also come to the conclusion that they needed to hire a couple more people to work on the programming. Interns, they’d call them, but they’d have to pay them something.

  Which was why tomorrow, they were going to open a new bank account, and put some more money into the project. Eduardo had freed up ten thousand dollars to invest into the account. Mark didn’t have any funds of his own, so they’d be relying on Eduardo’s money for a while longer.

  Although Parker didn’t have huge funding ability himself, he probably did have some major connections to VC capital. But thankfully—for once—Mark’s disinterest in money made that beside the point. For him, the Web site was still primarily about fun, and it had to stay cool. Advertising wasn’t cool. VCs weren’t cool either. Guys in suits and ties, guys with money—they could never be cool. Eduardo didn’t have to worry that Mark would be looking for VC funding anytime soon.

  Still, Eduardo couldn’t help thinking—to Mark, even despite his VC friends, Sean Parker was the definition of cool. But he pushed the thought into the back of his mind. Everything was going so well—he had nothing to worry about. Everyone loved thefacebook.

  Sooner or later, they’d figure out how to make money off the damn thing—without the help of Sean Parker. Eduardo had a feeling—Sean Parker couldn’t possibly have been the only one who’d taken notice of their little Web site. It was only a matter of time before deep pockets came calling, pockets that could afford a bit more than a dinner at a fancy New York restaurant.

  “Yup. It’s another one.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “I shit you not.”

  At first, Eduardo resisted the urge to look over his shoulder. He tried to concentrate on the professor, a bearded, salt-and-pepper-haired man pacing back and forth on the stage at the front of the midsize lecture hall, but it was almost impossible; for one thing, he wasn’t even sure what class this was, but it had something to do with an advanced computer language he knew nothing about. Once again, he was crashing one of Mark’s lectures. Thefacebook was invading both of their school lives, and even class time was being perverted into makeshift office hours for their burgeoning business. At the moment, the business at hand was fighting that urge not to turn around and stare—which is exactly what he did, because he really couldn’t help himself.

  It took less than a second to spot the guy—midthirties, gray-suit-and-tie combination, suitcase under his arm—looking completely out of place, sitting between two sophomores in varsity tennis sweatshirts. The guy had a stupid grin on his face—which grew even bigger when he saw Eduardo looking back at him.

  Christ. This was getting ridiculous. This wasn’t the first VC to track them down on campus; now that the spring semester was almost over and school was getting close to finished, they were coming at an almost frightening frequency Not just VCs; also reps from the major software and Internet companies. Guys in suits had approached them in the Kirkland dining hall and at the library; one had even found his way to Mark’s dorm room, waiting outside for three hours for Mark to come home from a CS department meeting.

  The attention was great, but the thing was, they weren’t offering real money yet—just the hint that there was money to be had. A few of them had thrown out numbers—nice, big, matzo-ball-type numbers, with seven zeros in them—but nobody had made any real offers, and neither Mark nor Eduardo was inclined to take any of them seriously—even if they had been interested in selling out, which they hadn’t even discussed. At the same time, Facebook had now crossed 150,000 members, and was adding thousands more every day. If things continued like that, Eduardo was sure the site was going to be worth serious money. Now that the school year was almost over, he and Mark had to make some important decisions going forward.

  Even with Dustin and Chris pulling their weight, thefacebook was beginning to feel like a full-time job. With school ending, it would be easier to balance everything—but thefacebook was certainly going to be a priority for both of them over the summer. Eduardo had made a little progress with advertisers over the past month; he’d been aggressively soliciting on both national and local levels, and had already run free test ads for a handful of big companies—such as AT&T Wireless, America Online, and Monster.com. He’d also sold some advertisements to a few Harvard undergraduate organizations—the Harvard Bartending Course, the Seneca Club’s Red Party, the Mather House’s annual “Lather” dance. The College Democrats were paying thirty dollars a day to drum up interest in an upcoming trip to New Hampshire. So the site was earning a little bit of cash. Not quite enough to offset the rapidly growing server costs—and the upgrading and maintenance necessary now that there were so many people on the site, twenty-four hours a day. But it was a start.

  Eduardo had also moved the business along in terms of its structure; he and Mark had officially incorporated themselves on April 13, legally creating TheFacebook, LLC, registered in Florida, where Eduardo’s family lived. In the incorporation documents, they’d laid out the ownership of the company as they’d agreed upon in Mark’s dorm room: 65 percent ownership for Mark, 30 percent for Eduardo, and 5 percent for Dustin. Chris was still going to get some percentage in the future, but that hadn’t been decided on yet. In any event, just having those incorporation documents made the company feel more real—even if it wasn’t actually making any profits yet.

  But even with the incorporation documents, and the continued viral growth of thefacebook, the decision of what to do when school ended in a few weeks was still a difficult one. Both Mark and Eduardo had gone through the motions of looking for summer jobs. Mark hadn’t found anything he’d been psyched about, but Eduardo, through his Phoenix connections and his family’s friends, had managed to land a pretty prestigious internship at a New York investment bank.

  Eduardo had gone back and forth about the internship with his dad—and it had been pretty obvious which way his dad had been leaning. Thefacebook was growing and incredibly popular, but it still wasn’t making any real money. The internship was a respectable job, and an amazing opportunity. And since most of the advertisers the facebook was chasing after were based in New York anyway, didn’t it make sense for him to take the internship, and work on thefacebook during his spare time?

  Before Eduardo had even been able to bring up the idea with Mark, Mark had dropped a bombshell of his own; although thefacebook was his priority as well, he’d started developing a side project called Wirehog with a couple of his computer programming buddies—Adam D’Angelo, his high school friend with whom he’d invented Synapse, and Andrew McCollum, a classmate and fellow CS major.

  Wirehog was basically a bastard child of Napster and Facebook, a sort of file-sharing program with a social network feel. Wirehog would be downloadable software that would allow people to share anything from music to pictures to video with friends, via personalized profile pages linked to other friends in a personally controlled network. The idea was, when Mark was finished with Wirehog, he’d merge it into thefacebook as an application. Meanwhile, both he and Dustin would also be continuing to upgrade thefacebook; they hoped to increase the number of schools using the Web site from about thirty now to over one hundred by the end of the summer.

  It was a heady task, especially combined with the Wirehog project. But Mark seemed more thrilled than overwhelmed. And the fact that Mark planned to divide his time between the two projects made Eduardo’s decision to take the internship a little easier.

  It wasn’t until Mark had dropped the second bombshell that Eduardo started to feel a little concerned. Mark had broken the news to Eduardo just yesterday, in fact, after Eduardo had already accepted the internship and had even started looking for rental apartments in New York.

  Somewhere i
n the past few weeks, Mark had explained, in his dorm room over a six-pack of Beck’s, he had come to the conclusion that for the next few months, California seemed like the place he should be. He wanted to work on Wirehog and thefacebook in Silicon Valley—a place of legend, to computer programmers like Mark, the land of all of his heroes. Coincidentally, Andrew McCollum had landed a job at Silicon Valley-based EA sports, and Adam D’Angelo was going as well. Mark and his computer friends had even found a cheap sublet on a street called La Jennifer Way in Palo Alto, right near the Stanford campus. To Mark, it seemed like a perfect plan. He’d bring Dustin along, they’d set up shop in the rental house, and thefacebook and Wirehog would be right where they belonged. California. Silicon Valley. The epicenter of the online world.

  Even a day later, Eduardo still hadn’t come to terms with Mark’s second bombshell. In truth, he didn’t like the sound of it all; not only was California as far away from New York as you could get—but it was also, to him, a dangerous and seductive place. While Eduardo was off in New York, chasing advertisers, guys in suits like the VC sitting a few rows behind them would be chasing Mark. And even worse than the guys in suits were the guys like Sean Parker—who knew the exact buttons to push. Running the business out of California had never been the plan. Mark and Dustin were supposed to be programmers, while Eduardo was supposed to play the businessman. If they separated, how was Eduardo going to guide the business like they’d agreed?

  But Mark had shrugged off Eduardo’s concerns when he’d voiced them; there was no reason why they couldn’t work from two cities at once. Mark and Dustin would continue programming while Eduardo would find advertisers and handle the finances. In any event, there wasn’t time to debate the issue; Mark had already made his decision, and Eduardo had accepted his internship in New York. They’d just have to find a way to make it work.