The Accidental Billionaires

by Ben Mezrich

  If this were an eighties movie, Tyler and Cameron would certainly be the bad guys. They’d be dressed as skeletons, chasing the Karate Kid around a school dance. They were jocks from a wealthy, tony family. Mark was a nebbishy geek who had hacked his way to stardom. This was a class battle the journalists couldn’t ignore: rich, privileged kids who believed the establishment existed to protect their rights, against a hacker who had been willing to break the rules. Honor code vs. hackers code.

  Tyler knew how he and his brother were going to look.

  But if that’s what it would take to have even a fighting chance at finding justice—they were willing to put on the skeleton costumes and give it a go.

  Mark Zuckerberg hadn’t left them any choice.

  Eyes closed.

  Heart pounding.

  Sweat streaming down the skin of his back.

  Eduardo was angry, that we know for certain. Where he was—wandering the streets of New York in a bitter haze, or trapped on a subway, hurtling forward at thirty miles per hour, his arms wrapped tightly around a sticky chrome pole, his body jerking forward and back as the crowd of strangers pressed into him from every side, we can’t know for sure. But wherever he was, he was fuming—and he was about to do something that would change the course of his life.

  It had all started about three days before. At the time, Eduardo had actually been on an emotional high; since he’d gotten back from California—and quickly broken up with Kelly, nipping her unbalanced theatrics in the bud—things had been going really well in New York, and he was feeling good about the progress he had been making with Y2M and the other advertisers he’d lined up for the Web site. So he’d dialed up Mark in the La Jennifer Way house to report to him—and that’s when things had started to go downhill.

  To say that Mark had been unappreciative of Eduardo’s hard work in New York would be an understatement; in Eduardo’s view, Mark barely listened at all as Eduardo explained what he’d gotten done, and immediately launched into some story about a party Sean Parker had brought them to the night before, something involving a Stanford sorority and a truckload of Jägermeister.

  After that, the conversation had devolved into Mark’s usual refrain of late—that Eduardo should move out to California, because that’s where it was all happening. The computer coding, the networking with potential investors, the meetings with VCs and software honchos—Mark pretty much intimated that Eduardo was wasting his time in New York, when everything that thefacebook needed could be found right there, in Silicon Valley.

  Eduardo had tried to point out that New York was also an important center for the things a growing start-up needed—from advertising dollars to banking contacts—but Mark hadn’t really wanted to listen to him at all. And then, to make matters worse, Sean Parker had jumped on the phone, and had immediately started talking about two potential investors whom he was going to introduce to Mark. In fact, Parker had said, these investors were ready to put up real money—and if Mark liked them, and they liked Mark, it would happen pretty fast.

  Eduardo had nearly lost it, right there on the phone. He’d quickly explained to Parker that he was running the business side of thefacebook, that any meetings with investors would have to include him—and why the hell was Parker setting up these sort of meetings anyway? In Eduardo’s mind, it wasn’t even Mark’s job to be looking for potential investors; he was supposed to just run the computer side of the company. And Parker wasn’t involved at all. He was a houseguest. That’s it. A fucking houseguest.

  After that first phone call, Eduardo’s emotions had started to shift from frustration to pure anger. So he’d done something impetuous—maybe out of that anger, or maybe because at the time it had seemed the proper thing to do. To clarify his feelings, and let Mark know that it wasn’t kosher to leave him out of the loop.

  He’d crashed out a letter reiterating his and Mark’s business relationship; specifically, he’d respelled out the agreement they’d made when they’d started thefacebook, that Eduardo was in charge of the business side of the company, and that Mark was supposed to be out in California working on the computer code. Furthermore, Eduardo had added that since he owned 30 percent of the company, he had the power to keep them from accepting any financial deals that he did not agree with. Mark had to accept that reality—and Eduardo wanted written confirmation that he could run the business side of things as he saw fit.

  Eduardo had known when he’d written the thing that it wasn’t the sort of letter that a guy like Mark Zuckerberg would react well to—but Eduardo had wanted to be as clear as possible. Sure, Sean Parker had taken them to some cool parties, maybe even helped get Mark laid with a Victoria’s Secret model—but in Eduardo’s view, he wasn’t involved in thefacebook. Eduardo was the CFO, he’d put up the money that had made thefacebook possible, he was still the one funding their adventure in California—and even though he was in New York, he was still supposed to be calling the shots.

  After receiving the letter, Mark had left him a bunch of messages on his voice mail—more entreaties for Eduardo to move out there to California, more stories about how great it was out there, more reassurances that everything was going great with the company and there was no reason for them to bicker about stupid things that didn’t matter anyway—in his bizarre worldview. Finally, Eduardo had called him back, just a little while ago—and things had gone from bad to worse.

  Mark had told him that he’d met the two investors Sean Parker had told Eduardo about, and they were really interested in making an angel investment—basically giving thefacebook some money so it could continue growing at the same rapid rate. Thefacebook needed the money, since it was beginning to fall into serious debt; the more people who were signing up, the more servers that were needed to handle the traffic—and soon they were going to have to hire more people to handle everything that was going on.

  But to Eduardo, that was all beside the point. In his opinion, Mark had deliberately ignored the sentiment of his letter—and was taking business meetings without Eduardo being present. He wasn’t simply stepping on Eduardo’s toes; he and Sean Parker seemed like they were trying to cut off Eduardo’s feet.

  Maybe Mark didn’t think Eduardo was serious, that the letter had been just a method of letting off steam. And maybe it was, in a way. But Mark’s attitude was really pissing Eduardo off; in Eduardo’s opinion, they were out there, living it up in California on Eduardo’s dime. The house in California? The computer equipment? The servers? It was all coming out of the bank account that Eduardo had opened, as far as Eduardo was concerned. That Eduardo had financed from his own, personal funds. Eduardo was paying for everything, in his mind, and Mark was ignoring him. Treating him like an angry girlfriend that he just didn’t give a shit about anymore.

  Maybe Eduardo was overreacting—but now, three days later, fuming somewhere in New York—he was growing more and more certain that he had to do something to show Mark exactly how he felt.

  He had to send a message—one that Mark couldn’t simply ignore.

  We can picture what must have happened next: Eduardo spinning through the revolving glass door of a midtown Bank of America office, his face a mask of pure determination, his oxford shirt soaked with sweat from either a subway ride or twenty minutes trapped in a traffic-bound cab.

  He moves right past the teller stations that run along one side of the wide, rectangular front area of the bank and heads directly to one of the branch associate cubicles. By the time the balding, middle-aged banker gestures him into a seat and asks what he could do for him, Eduardo has already pulled his bankbook out of his pocket. He slams the little booklet onto the desk in front of the man and gives him his most serious, adult stare.

  “I want to freeze my bank account. And cancel all existing checks and lines of credit attached to this account.”

  As the man begins the process, assuredly Eduardo feels a burst of adrenaline move through him. He must know he is crossing a line—but this was going to send Mark a real
message, let him know how serious Eduardo is. Really, in Eduardo’s mind, it is Mark’s own fault that Eduardo even has the power to do such a thing—when Eduardo had first opened the Bank of America account for thefacebook, he’d sent Mark the necessary forms to become a cosignatory on the account, along with the blank checks that were funding his California lifestyle. Mark, being Mark, had never filled out the paperwork. Nor had he ever put any of his own money into the company. He’d been perfectly content to live off of Eduardo’s funds. As if Eduardo were his own, personal banker. His partner—except, now, he had started to make decisions without Eduardo’s involvement, and Eduardo had to let him know that it simply wasn’t okay. Eduardo had to let Mark know what it meant to be a good partner. Eduardo didn’t care if every thefacebook page was a Mark Zuckerberg production. But the company itself was the result of a combined effort. Eduardo was a businessman, and this move is all business.

  As Eduardo watches the banker hit the necessary keys on his computer to freeze thefacebook’s bank account, maybe he wonders, for the briefest of seconds, if he is going too far. If he does, he can cancel the thought with another: a picture of Mark and Sean running around California in Parker’s BMW, taking meetings with investors, maybe even laughing at Eduardo’s efforts to rein them in.

  They wouldn’t be laughing when they tried to cash the next blank check—that was for sure.

  This time, the revolution wasn’t going to begin with a bang.

  Instead, Sean Parker realized, it was going to start with the whir of a state-of-the-art elevator, speeding up the spine of a massive, San Francisco skyscraper—and the sickly, soft chords of a brutally mangled Beatles song, pumped through speakers embedded above the fluorescent lights that lit the carpeted, cubic lift.

  Sean had to admit, there was something strangely poetic about the setting; this was potentially the beginning of the next great digital-social seismic change, and the only thing that marked the seconds ticking away toward that epochal event was the horrific beat of canned Muzak.

  He stifled the urge to grin as he stood next to Mark in the center of the otherwise empty elevator, staring up at the little glowing numbers that tracked their progress up the skyscraper. At the moment, they were somewhere between the ninth and tenth floors of the fifty-two-story building, moving upward at an incredible pace. Sean felt his ears pop from the change in altitude—which was a good thing; for the briefest of seconds, he couldn’t hear the Muzak, which allowed him to order his thoughts—or at least corral them in as close to a semblance of order as his highly energized gray matter would allow.

  Things were happening quickly—much faster, even, than Sean himself had expected. He’d only just a few weeks ago moved in with the eccentric genius standing next to him in the elevator—and now here they were, on their way to a meeting that could very well launch them into a partnership that would change the face of the Internet itself—and put them well on their way toward the billion-dollar payoff Sean had envisioned when he first saw thefacebook in that dorm room on the Stanford campus.

  Sean glanced toward the twenty-year-old kid standing next to him. If Mark was nervous, he didn’t show it. Or more accurately, he didn’t look any more uncomfortable or anxious than usual; his face was a mask of indifference, his eyes trained on those same ascending numbers above the elevator doors.

  Since they’d run into each other on the street outside of Palo Alto, Sean had gotten to know the eccentric kid pretty well, and he was genuinely beginning to like him. Certainly, Mark was strange; socially awkward didn’t begin to describe his standoffish mannerisms. But even despite the walls the kid had built around himself, Sean could tell that his initial opinion of the boy genius was not far off. Mark was brilliant, ambitious, and had a caustic sense of humor. For the most part, he was a quiet person; Sean had taken him to numerous parties, but Mark was never comfortable at any of them—he was much happier lodged in front of his computer, sometimes twenty hours at a stretch. He still had that college girlfriend whom he saw about once a week, and he liked to take long drives when he got tired of the computer—but otherwise he was a coding machine. He lived, breathed, and ate the company he had created.

  Sean could not have asked for more from a fledgling entrepreneur; in fact, sometimes he had to remind himself that the kid standing next to him was barely twenty years old. His lifestyle was still somewhat immature, but his focus was amazing, and Sean was certain he was willing to make any sacrifice necessary to continue growing his Web site; which was exactly why Sean felt certain that the step they were about to take was the right one. That the meeting they were hurtling toward would be the catalyst to that billion-dollar payoff that had eluded him through two successful start-ups and half a decade navigating the busts and booms of a newly reemergent Silicon Valley.

  In a weird way, Sean had Eduardo Saverin to thank for pushing things to a head so rapidly; if it hadn’t been for Eduardo’s actions over the past couple of weeks, it might have taken an entire summer to get Mark to this point. But Eduardo had done the job of pushing Mark to make a big move forward for Sean—in the most bizarre, and unexpected fashion.

  First, there had been that idiotic letter. Sean thought it was like a kidnapper’s ransom letter, really—it might as well have been written in cut-out words from newspapers and colored magazines. Threatening, cajoling, demanding—the kid had some serious self-awareness issues he needed to deal with. The very idea that he was running the business side of an Internet company from New York while the rest of his partners were actually building the site out in California was the height of absurdity. And then, trying to hold his 30 percent ownership over Mark like it was some sort of weapon—Eduardo had gone right off his rocker.

  Still, Mark had tried to be reasonable with his friend—and Sean had been right there with him, trying to smooth things over. There was really no need to turn the letter into more than it was—a desperate, childish plea to be more included in what was going on with the company, which Mark certainly could have accepted.

  But before Mark and his friend had worked anything out, Eduardo had gone and crossed the line: he’d frozen the company’s bank account, effectively cutting Mark and Dustin off at the throat. With that single act, he’d taken a shot at the soul of the company itself. Whether he realized it or not, his actions could easily have destroyed everything Mark had worked on—because without money, the company couldn’t function. If the servers went down for even a day, it would hurt the reputation of thefacebook—possibly in an irrevocable way. Users were fickle; Friendster had proven that fact time and again. If people decided to leave the Web site—well, then that could quickly have turned disastrous. Even a small-scale exodus would reverberate through the whole user base, because all of the users were interconnected. College kids were online because their friends were online; one domino goes, a dozen more follow.

  Maybe Eduardo hadn’t really understood what he was doing; maybe he’d acted out of anger, frustration, God knew what—but simply put, in Sean’s view, his childish maneuver had made it difficult for him to stay a big part of the company going forward. And in Sean’s mind, it really had been the act of a child, not the businessman Eduardo saw himself as. Like a little kid on the playground, screaming at his friends: “If you don’t do things my way, I’m taking my toys and going home!” Well, Eduardo had taken his toys—and now Mark had made a decision that was going to change thefacebook in ways Eduardo couldn’t imagine.

  First, under Sean’s guidance, Mark had reincorporated the company as a Delaware LLC—to protect it from Saverin’s whims, and also to begin the restructuring that Sean knew would be necessary to raise the money the company needed to go forward. At the same time, Mark had gathered what resources he could, and put his own money into keeping the company alive for the moment until they could set things right. Drawing from his own college savings, money that had been earmarked for his tuition, Mark had managed to come up with enough to keep the servers running for the time being; but the company was rapidl
y heading toward real financial trouble, something Mark could no longer ignore.

  Furthermore, it wasn’t just the servers or the need for new employees that was going to be a problem. To add to everything else, just a few days before, they’d received a letter from a law firm that had been hired by the ConnectU founders—the Winklevoss twins, the jocky seniors who had hired Mark to work on some dating site back when he was still in school. The letter was the first step in the initiation of a lawsuit—a sort of warning shot at thefacebook’s bow, as Sean saw it.

  Even before the letter from the law firm, Sean had spoken at length with Mark about the ConnectU situation, and he’d also done some research of his own into the situation. In his mind, the Winklevoss twins were a nuisance, but not a real danger to the future of the company. A mild concern, at best; in Sean’s opinion, their claims were unfounded and overblown. So Mark had done a little work for their dating site before coming up with the idea for thefacebook? So what? There were a hundred social networks out there; every computer geek in every dorm room was working on some program like thefacebook; that didn’t mean they were all subject to lawsuits. And all these social networks were pretty similar at their core. Mark’s own argument—that there are an infinite number of designs for a chair, but that doesn’t mean everyone who makes a chair is stealing from someone else—seemed as good as any to Sean. If anything, they were all borrowing from Friendster when it came right down to it; the ConnectU twins hadn’t exactly invented the wheel, that was for sure. Mark had done nothing wrong, nothing that every other entrepreneur in the Valley hadn’t done a dozen times before.