The Accidental Billionaires

by Ben Mezrich

  As Sean explained his situation—that he was moving his girlfriend into her parents’ house now that the semester had concluded, that he was going to be staying with her for a couple of days but after that he would be temporarily homeless—he could see the bright lights going off behind Mark’s eyes. After all, Mark had come to Silicon Valley because it seemed like the right place to go to build an Internet company. So what could be better than having an adviser who’d already launched two of the most talked-about companies in town crashing in the same house? Mark didn’t make any formal offer, but Sean could tell that the option would be there, if it was something he was interested in—which he knew it would be.

  He’d wanted to get involved with thefacebook the minute he’d seen the Web site; if all went well, he was going to be living with the guy who had created it.

  You didn’t get more involved than that.

  The kid was flying through the air like Peter Pan in some bizarre, high school production, except instead of being attached to a safety harness and a guide wire, he was hanging on for dear life to a makeshift zip line that had been run from the base of a chimney on the top of the house all the way to a telephone pole on the other side of the swimming pool. The kid was screaming as he went, but Sean could tell he was probably more drunk than scared; still, he managed to launch himself at exactly the right moment, performing an airborne spin that landed him directly in the center of the pool. Water splashed outward, drenching an outdoor barbecue and even reaching the wooden deck that stretched around the back side of the house on La Jennifer Way—that same, quiet suburban street just a few miles outside of Palo Alto’s center.

  Sean couldn’t have been more pleased by the setup; the house was great, with a wonderful frat-house feel to it—even though Mark and his friends had only recently moved into the place. They’d bought the zip line for a hundred dollars at a nearby hardware store, installing it themselves, with only minimal damage—so far—to the chimney or the telephone pole.

  The interior of the house hadn’t needed much improvement; it had already come furnished, and Mark and his friends had brought little with them. Maybe a bag or two each, and some bedding—and that was all. Mark’s parents had sent some fencing equipment, so there were foils and fencing helmets scattered about. They’d also picked up some engineering whiteboards at a local Home Depot—boards that were already covered with the scrawl of computer code, in numerous bright colors. The floor of the house was littered with empty pizza boxes, beer cans, and the cardboard remains of a fair amount of computer equipment. The oversize living room looked like a mix between a dorm room and an engineering lab—and twenty-four hours a day, there was someone locked into one of the multiple laptops or desktops that were strewn about, wires curling everywhere like the entrails of a downed alien spacecraft. The sound track for the scene was a mix of alternative and hardwired rock—a lot of Green Day, Sean noticed, which seemed appropriate for a group of hacker types with anarchistic streaks.

  Sean was likewise happy to see that the team Mark had assembled were perfect engineering soldiers; brilliant, all of them, even the interns—Stephen Dawson-Haggerty, and Erik Shilnick, both freshman CS majors, experts on Linux and front-level coding. Along with Dustin and Andrew McCollum, Mark had the makings of a real brain trust. The work ethic in the house was spectacular; almost literally, the group programmed night and day. Including Mark—especially Mark—when they weren’t sleeping, eating, or hurling themselves into the swimming pool via the zip line, they were at the computers. From noon to five in the morning, coding away, adding colleges one after another to thefacebook, working out the kinks, adding applications, and developing Wirehog. They were a top-notch crew, possibly the best start-up raw materials Sean had ever seen.

  The one person Sean didn’t see in the house was Eduardo Saverin. Which, at first, seemed confusing, since back in New York Eduardo had been introduced as the titular business head of thefacebook, and had certainly made it very clear—multiple times—that he was going to be running all the business aspects of the Web site. But it was obvious from the minute Sean walked into the La Jennifer Way house that Eduardo wasn’t involved in the day-to-day workings of thefacebook at all.

  In fact, Eduardo had gone to New York to pursue some sort of internship at an investment bank, according to Mark. Which immediately set off warning bells in Sean’s mind. Having been a part of two major companies—and witnessed many more successes and failures—he knew that the most important aspect of a start-up was the energy and ambition of the founding players. If you were going to do something like this—really do it, really succeed—you had to live and breathe the project. Every minute of every day.

  Mark Zuckerberg was living it. He had the drive, the stamina, and the ability. He was obviously a genius—but more than that, he had the strange, unique focus that was necessary to pull something like this off. Watching him program at four, five in the morning—every morning—Sean had no doubt that Mark had the makings of one of the truly great success stories in the modern, revitalized Silicon Valley.

  But where was Eduardo Saverin? Or more accurately—was Eduardo Saverin even part of the equation anymore?

  Eduardo had seemed like a perfectly nice kid. And of course, he’d been there in the beginning. He’d put up a thousand dollars, according to Mark, to pay for the first servers. And it was his money, at the moment, that was financing the current operation. That gave him some weight, sure, like any investor in a start-up. But beyond that?

  Eduardo saw himself as a businessman—but what did that mean, exactly? Silicon Valley wasn’t about business—it was an ongoing war. You had to do things out here to survive that weren’t taught in any business class. Hell, Sean had never even gone to college, he’d started Napster while still in high school. Bill Gates had never graduated Harvard. None of the true success stories out here had gotten where they were by taking classes. They became successes by coming out here—sometimes with just a duffel bag on their back and a laptop in their hands.

  Eduardo wasn’t here—and as far as Sean could tell, he wasn’t interested in being here. So Sean pretty much put him out of his thoughts. He had Mark, he had Mark’s team—he had thefacebook. With his help, he truly believed they could build this company into the billion-dollar project he’d been looking for. Fate had put him in the right place for the third time—hell, he was sleeping on a mattress in an empty corner in the house, most of his belongings still in storage somewhere—and he was going to make this work.

  First, he was going to help these guys figure out what it meant to be a part of this revolution—because the way Sean Parker saw it, that’s exactly what Silicon Valley was all about. A constant, continuing revolution. He was going to show them this world like only he could.

  Looking around this house, at these guys with their fencing equipment and their pizza boxes, he could tell that they could use a little lesson in the finer ways of living this life. After all, they were creating a premier social network. They should at least understand what it meant to be truly social. Sean knew he was just the guy to show them what was possible. He was a rock star in this town—but there was no reason that Mark Zuckerberg couldn’t eclipse even him, eventually. Thefacebook was going to be hot—which meant Mark, for all his awkwardness, for all his flaws—he was going to become the toast of the town. Parties, fancy restaurants, girls—Sean could show him the way to all of it.

  As for Eduardo, well, it was sad that the kid was going to miss out on the next stage of the company. But that was something that happened all the time in this game. Eduardo had been at the right place, at the right time—but the place had changed, and time was moving forward at the speed of light. Eduardo might try to hang on—but he was already showing that he didn’t have what it took.

  Poor kid, Sean thought to himself.

  What happens when the guy standing next to you catches a lightning bolt? Does it carry you up to the stratosphere along with him?

  Or do you simply get charred tr
ying to hold on?

  The rain was coming down in fierce gray sheets by the time the American Airlines 757 wide-body began to taxi toward the runway. Eduardo had his face against the circular window, but he couldn’t see anything beyond the rain. There was no way to tell how many planes were lined up ahead of them, but since it was JFK, a Friday night, and the weather sucked, there was a good chance they’d be sitting on the runway for a while. Which meant he was going to get into San Francisco well past the ten P.M. expected time of arrival—which would feel like one A.M. to him. He was going to be exhausted by the time Mark and the rest of them picked him up at the airport—but he knew it wasn’t going to make any difference. From the sound of the night they had planned, he was going to have to hit the ground running.

  The throb of the engines powering up as the plane rolled slowly forward reverberated through his tired muscles, and he settled back against the narrow coach window seat, trying to get comfortable. Even though he was in his customary jacket and tie, he didn’t think he was going to have trouble sleeping during the six-hour journey. He had been burning it pretty hard the past month in New York. Ten-hour days spent hitting the pavement, taking meetings with advertisers, potential investors, software makers, anyone who was interested in thefacebook, whatever the reason. Then dinners and nights out in the various New York clubs, mostly with friends from the Phoenix who were also spending the summer in the City; and of course, time spent with Kelly, who was now calling herself his girlfriend, at various times correctly, though he was starting to realize that she was a bit crazy.

  He didn’t regret—even for a moment—that he had quit his internship on the very first day—really, minutes after he had first sat down in the little cubicle he was supposed to occupy for the next ten weeks, and had stared at that pile of stock valuations he was supposed to analyze—when he’d realized that he wasn’t going to become a real businessman like his father by neglecting the business he and Mark had cofounded in the dorms. But he couldn’t help but be anxious about thefacebook, especially late at night, wondering how things were going in California with Mark and the rest of the team, what they were up to, what progress they had made—and why they weren’t calling more often.

  He rolled his eyes at himself as he stretched into the stiff, too-small seat; maybe he was starting to think like the crazy girlfriend he was already considering dumping, maybe being a little jealous. Wasn’t that the real reason he had booked the last-minute trip to California, to see for himself that his concerns were unfounded?

  By the end of tonight, he was certain things would feel back to normal with thefacebook. He and Mark and the rest would have a blast, get some work done, and everything would be copacetic. And it would all start with a bang.

  Mark had said something about a party that Sean Parker had gotten them invited to—some sort of charity bash that all the big-shot entrepreneurs would be attending. It would be fun, but there’d also be the opportunity to meet with more investor types, including some VCs, some major Silicon Valley players, even a few Internet celebs. According to Mark, Parker had already taken them to a handful of similar parties; over the past month since they’d hit California, Mark had seen all the highs the area had to offer. They’d worked their way into the Stanford summer scene, the San Francisco high-tech groove, and had even made a few trips down to L.A. for high-profile Hollywood bashes.

  Sean Parker knew everyone, and everyone knew Sean. Through him, everyone was getting to know Mark, too; thefacebook wasn’t the biggest kid on the block by any means, but it was slowly becoming the talk of the town, and it seemed like everybody wanted to meet the whiz kid behind the much-hyped social network. Eduardo couldn’t help but grow more and more concerned each time he spoke to Mark, and heard about another milestone, party, or dinner that he had missed by being in New York. Worse yet, Mark was Mark—hard enough to read in person, but on the phone he was a complete mystery. Sometimes it was like talking to a computer. He heard what you said, digested it, but responded only if he felt a response was necessary. Sometimes he didn’t respond at all.

  If he was thrilled that Eduardo had finally made some real progress with advertisers—specifically, landing a deal with Y2M, and getting a few other big players to make some pretty impressive promises—he certainly wasn’t showing it. To be fair, Mark and his team were working round the clock at adding features to the site, and signing up more and more schools. At the rate they were going, they would surpass five hundred thousand members by the end of August—a pretty spectacular number. But with that incredible growth, there came new problems.

  Most important, they were going to need more money soon. The company was still running off of the eighteen thousand dollars that Eduardo had deposited into the Bank of America account, via the blank checks he’d given Mark when he’d opened the account. The advertising money that was coming in wasn’t going to be enough to keep up with the demand; five hundred thousand users would burn a lot of server space. And pretty soon, two interns would not be enough to keep the company running. They’d have to hire real employees, get a real office, hire real lawyers—etc., etc., etc.

  All of these things, Eduardo was prepared to discuss—as soon as he could get Mark alone. It wasn’t stuff that Parker needed to hear about, because it didn’t concern Mark’s houseguest, no matter how many parties he took them to.

  Eduardo felt a sudden buzzing in his pocket, and he glanced around the plane, momentarily confused. Then he realized with a start that he hadn’t turned his cell phone off. He hadn’t been getting reception in the taxi over to the airport, but it must have finally found a satellite. He glanced out the window, saw they were still rolling along the tarmac, then yanked the thing out of his pocket.

  When he looked at the screen, his lips turned down at the corners.

  Twenty-three texts—all from Kelly. Wonderful.

  She was in Boston, still in the dorms, taking summer courses. The night before, he had made the foolish mistake of telling her over the phone that he was going to California to hang out with Mark and the boys for a few days. She had immediately reacted badly, voicing all these paranoid ideas that they were going to be partying with girls they’d met on thefacebook. It was a ridiculous notion—although, to be fair, they had met a bunch of girls over thefacebook, and more than that, they were becoming pretty well known, on and off campus, because of the Web site. Or at least Mark was—Christ, his name was on every single page.

  But Kelly was just being crazy. They weren’t going to be partying with random girls, they were going to be working a Silicon Valley scene. Eduardo texted her back, telling her to calm down. He remembered that he’d left her a gift in her dorm-room closet the last time he’d visited—a new jacket, still wrapped up in a gift box from Saks Fifth Avenue. He told her to open it, and that he was thinking about her, and not to worry.

  Then he shut off the phone and jammed it back into his pocket. With a thrust of the engines, the plane tipped back, pressing him against the stiff seat. Didn’t he have enough to worry about?

  The last thing he needed to deal with, right then, was a jealous girlfriend.

  “Don’t be afraid. Okay, be afraid. But it runs pretty well.”

  Eduardo raised his eyebrows as he followed Mark out of the terminal and caught sight of the car parked right up against the curb; he couldn’t even tell what make it was, but it was really old, and the whole thing was trembling. It looked like one of the tires was slightly bigger than the other three, giving the chassis an odd sort of tilt. In other words, the car was really a piece of crap.

  Which was exactly as expected, since Mark had bought the thing on Craigslist just a couple of days before. It didn’t even use a key, you started it by fidgeting with the ignition. The good thing was, they didn’t have to worry about anyone stealing it.

  Eduardo tossed his duffel bag into the trunk and slid into the backseat. Dustin was driving, and Sean Parker was nowhere to be seen. Mark explained that Sean had gone on ahead to the party in his BMW i
series, and had already reserved them a VIP table. He’d left their names with the doorman, so they’d have no problem getting in.

  Which was all good, because it gave Eduardo time to reconnect with Mark on the drive over from the airport.

  Mostly, it was him talking while Mark listened—the usual nature of their relationship. He detailed the Y2M deal, and the progress he’d made with other potential advertisers. He talked a bit about some possible financing plans, about some ideas for getting more from local advertisers in each of thefacebook locations. Then he told Mark about his crazy girlfriend, and how she had left twelve new messages during the flight from New York.

  Mark seemed to take it all in, but his one-word responses didn’t tell Eduardo much about what he was really thinking. His update on his own progress, on what had been going on in California for the past month, on Sean Parker and the interns and the scene was his usual: “It’s been interesting.” Which wasn’t helpful at all.

  Meanwhile, the city flashed by as they made slow progress through the congested, narrow streets of the glittering city on the hill. Eduardo thought it was one of the most beautiful places he’d ever seen, but strange, too—how the houses seemed to be built right on top of one another; how the winding, curving streets—some with cobblestones and wires for cable cars—ran up hills that were almost mountains in angle and height; how you went from one corner that looked as opulent and quaint as a postcard, to another, where a gang of shambling homeless stood around a burning trash can.

  And pretty soon, it was more homeless and less opulence as they passed below Geary and entered the heart of the Tenderloin district. The club was beyond O’Farrell, located in the center of a seedy stretch of check-cashing joints, fast-food restaurants, and massage parlors. As they pulled up to the nondescript entrance, Eduardo saw a huge line outside and a large man in a black suit with a headset by the door.