Upon examining the cover of The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal, one sees two martini glasses and a bra thrown carelessly on the floor. The cover gives a glimpse into the world of Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin, the founders of Facebook. The author, Ben Mezrich, tells the true story with help of Eduardo Saverin of how Facebook was started and how it has become a dorm-room experiment worth over fifteen billion dollars.
Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin met at a fraternity related function while freshmen at Harvard. Mark Zuckerberg had the privilege of being extremely smart while Eduardo Saverin was very outgoing and likable. They stared at each other across the room as Eduardo was talking up a storm and Zuckerberg was being a wallflower. The two ended up talking and becoming unlikely friends. Saverin revealed that he was trying to become a member of the revered Pheonix, a social fraternity at Harvard that threw the best parties. Zuckerberg proved to have a unique personality and sense of humor, never really revealing his true thoughts or emotions.
Since Saverin was the social one and Zuckerberg was painfully introverted, Saverin found a pair of girls for them to go out with one night. Both college guys were interested in getting girls, but Zuckerberg did not know how to go about approaching them. The four people went on a double date, and Mark was shot down and left the date extremely angered. The girl had no interest in him at all. He decided he would use his computer science degree and overwhelming knowledge of the internet and programming to get back at the girls of Harvard.
Zuckerberg started by hacking into the university's dorm rosters and loading pictures of every person on campus into his computer. He originally intended to place the pictures of all the girls next to a picture of a farm animal to really insult them. However, he decided against the idea and ended up making a system where people could rate guys and girls on their "hotness". He called the site Facemash. The site was largely successful as people emailed the site to everyone they know and there were thousands of visitors in only one day. Mark never imagined this site would blow up as it had and knew that he may be facing some legal issues. Girls and guys all over Harvard's campus were angry that people were rating them on how hot, or not, they were.
Harvard's review board ended up talking to Zuckerberg in private where he told the board that he never intended any harm, and the website was quickly removed from the internet. He was let off the hook, but could not cause any more trouble. Now that he made such a successful website, everyone knew who he was. Many people hated him, but there were thousands of people who loved him. Two of the people who wanted to talk to him and get to know him better were two members of Harvard's prestigious rowing team, the Winklevoss twins. These two men were dashingly handsome, all of the girls wanted them, and they would most likely represent the United States in the Olympics one day.
The Winklevoss twins started emailing and meeting with Mark to discuss their idea; they wanted to create a social networking site where people on Harvard's campus could communicate and hook up. It was basically a way to meet guys and girls without having to go through the odd introductory period. Mark seemed excited about the idea and saw its potential and agreed to help the twins with the coding part of their project. However, all along the twins did not promise Mark payment or any type of reward, only the promise that he would be able to meet people. Zuckerberg quickly began working on the project, but realized that the website was not aesthetically pleasing and was lacking some key elements. He stopped working on the website and had to avoid the twins as they continually asked him about his progress, while starting a project of his own on the side.
Zuckerberg came up with an idea similar to that of the Winklevoss twins called thefacebook. This site would not only allow people to meet one another, but would allow them to create circles of friends, post pictures, talk about their interests, and even leave messages on their friends' "walls". The website was released and took off again. Everyone knew Zuckerberg and how he could create amazing websites, and they all wanted a piece of thefacebook. Mark's website soon had most of Harvard's campus registered. Other schools nearby joined in too and millions of people had joined thefacebook within a year.
While Zuckerberg enjoyed his success of thefacebook, his ties with Eduardo Saverin and the Winklevoss twins went sour. The Winklevoss twins knew that something was unfair about Zuckerberg's new website which seemed nearly identical to theirs. They ended up threatening with a lawsuit and being rewarded with an estimated 65 million dollars once Facebook was a world wide phenomenon. Eduardo Saverin was in a similar boat when Zuckerberg realized that he was not really doing anything for the company. Saverin had only fronted several thousand dollars to set up the website and had played a backseat role ever since. He was eventually phased out of the company once it when public and he sued Zuckerberg as well. No one really knows what his compensation was when he won the lawsuit, but his name has mysteriously reappeared on Facebook's ownership list.
Along with fame and money, one thing was for certain: girls would follow. Zuckerberg and Saverin had their share of girls once thefacebook became popular. Zuckerberg even found him involved with a Victoria's Secret model at a California club thanks to his newfound friend, Sean Parker. Parker is a Silicon Valley celebrity since he founded Napster. His file sharing community took the world by storm before he was unfairly evicted from his own company and made nothing from it. He went on to found several other companies of note and seemed to have an eye for great talent.
Parker forced his way into thefacebook. He found out about the company after he woke up in some girl's bedroom one day and found thefacebook open on her computer. He browsed the webpage for a few minutes and knew he had to contact Zuckerberg. Parker had the ability to take Mark's company to the next level since he had already been to the top and knew a lot of very rich people in very high places. Zuckerberg took Parker along for the ride, thefacebook became Facebook, and the company went from pretty big to enormously popular. Every college and university became involved with Facebook and Zuckerberg's worth went from nothing to billions of dollars in only a few years. Parker may have made some money off of his shares of Facebook, but was also kicked out of the company eventually due to legal issues.
Mark Zuckerberg is worth over 15 billion dollars today; he is the youngest billionaire ever. Companies and investors are dying to buy even small portions of his company, but Zuckerberg knows he is sitting on a goldmine which will only become more valuable. He did decide to sell a few percent of his company to his idol, Bill Gates of Microsoft, for over two billion dollars. He will comfortably live off this money and then some for the rest of his life and can keep building Facebook for the fun of it. Zuckerberg is an inspiring success story showing that the quiet, nerdy people can really create some waves in this world. This book is highly recommended and is rated 4.5 out of 5.
Daniel Breedlove is the owner and manager of Corner Office Books, the internet's premier website on business book reviews and sales. For hundreds of reviews of the best business books available, visit the website at http://CornerOfficeBooks.com/ Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Daniel_Breedlove The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal http://www.pippoproducts.com/business/index.html |
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