The Accidental Billionaires Page 14

  Eduardo didn’t love the idea, but he figured it was only for a few months; then they’d both be back at school, being chased around by VCs in ridiculous gray suits.

  “I guess I should go talk to him,” Eduardo whispered as he turned away from the man’s hundred-watt smile. “You want to come, too? They’re always good for a free lunch.”

  Mark shook his head. “We’re interviewing interns today.”

  Eduardo nodded, remembering. Mark and Dustin had decided that they’d need to bring at least two interns with them to California if they were going to have any chance at reaching a hundred schools by the end of the summer. Which would cost them, of course; nobody was going to follow them across the country for free. The word they’d put out through the CS department was that they were going to pay somewhere in the order of eight thousand dollars for the summer job, along with room and board in the La Jennifer Way sublet. It seemed like a lot—considering that the company wasn’t making any money yet—but Eduardo had agreed to fund the project once again, out of his investment earnings. In a few days, he planned to open a new Bank of America account in the company’s name. He’d freed up eighteen thousand dollars to deposit into the account, and he was going to give Mark a package of blank checks to fund their operation in California. As the man in charge of the business side of the operation, it seemed the right thing to do.

  “After I’m done with this bozo,” Eduardo responded, “I’ll come by and help out with the interns.”

  “Should be interesting,” Mark responded, and Eduardo was pretty sure he saw the hint of an evil little grin.

  Interesting could mean just about anything, in Mark’s unusual world.

  “And go!”

  We can imagine the scene that Eduardo witnessed when he stepped through the threshold of the basement classroom just as the place exploded; his ears rang from the shouts, raucous laughter, and applause, and he had to push his way through a crowd of onlookers just to see what the hell was going on. The crowd was mostly men, mostly freshmen and sophomores, and all computer programming students—obvious from the pasty pallor of their cheeks to the way they seemed completely comfortable in the low-ceilinged, ultramodern comp lab. They completely ignored Eduardo as he jostled his way to the front of the mob, and when he finally made it through, he could see why. The game was in full swing, and it was infinitely more “interesting” than even he could have imagined.

  The center of the computer lab had been cleared out; in the clearing five tables had been lined up next to one another, and on each table sat a laptop computer—next to a row of shot glasses filled with Jack Daniel’s whiskey.

  Five computer geeks were at the tables, furiously pounding the keyboards of the laptops. At the head of the tables stood Mark, with a timer in his hand.

  Eduardo could see the screens from his vantage point—but to him, they were just a jumble of numbers and letters. No doubt the kids at the tables were racing through some byzantine, complex computer code; probably designed by Mark and Dustin to test just how good they really were. When one of the kids reached a point in the code that made the screen blink, he looked up, then downed one of the shots of whiskey. The crowd erupted into applause again, and the kid went right back to his programming.

  Eduardo was immediately reminded of the boat race he had taken part in during his initiation into the Phoenix. And this, too, was an initiation of sorts—into Mark’s world, the Final Club he had created with his imagination and his computer prowess. It was a race, a test—and probably the oddest interview session for an internship these kids would ever go through; but if it bothered them at all, none of them were showing it. The expressions on their faces were of pure enjoyment. They were hacking while doing shots—proving not only their capability at programming under pressure, but also their willingness to follow Mark anywhere. Not just to California, but wherever he wanted to lead them. To them, Mark wasn’t just a classmate. He was rapidly becoming a god.

  After ten more minutes of shouting, key slamming, and shot pounding, two of the kids leaped to their feet—almost simultaneously—turning their chairs over behind them.

  “We have our winners! Congratulations!”

  At that moment, someone hit an MP3 player hooked up to speakers in the corner of the room, and a Dr. Dre song burst out: California, it’s time to party…

  Eduardo had to smile. The crowd closed in around him, filling the center space, and then the place was near bedlam, as everyone moved to congratulate the new interns. Eduardo was jostled backward, and he let himself go with the flow, content to just watch Mark have his moment. He saw Mark and Dustin join the interns—forming a little cabal in the center of the room. He also noticed that there was a pretty Asian girl at Mark’s side; tall, Chinese, with jet-black hair and a really nice smile. She’d been around Mark a fair amount in the past few weeks. Her name was Priscilla, and he was starting to think that this girl was going to be Mark’s girlfriend—a concept that had seemed unthinkable just four months ago.

  Things had certainly changed for both of them. For once, Mark looked genuinely happy, in the center of the swarm of idolizing computer programmers. And Eduardo was happy, too, even though he was off to the side, watching.

  He decided then and there that they could make it work; he could run the company out of New York while Mark and Dustin, McCollum and the interns did the programming in California. Maybe they’d make some good connections in Silicon Valley while they were there—connections that Eduardo could mine for the better advancement of the site. They were a team, and he would be a team player. Even if that meant watching over them from three thousand miles away.

  And anyway, in three months, they’d all be back at school—Eduardo entering his senior year, Mark his junior—and life would continue. Maybe they’d be rich by then. Or maybe they’d be right where they were now, watching their company grow and grow. Either way, they were already far different from when they began this adventure, and Eduardo had no doubt that the future was going to be grand. He pushed any concerns away, because that’s what a team player did. There was no need to be paranoid.

  Truly, he asked himself, how much could go wrong in a handful of months?

  “Three.”

  “Two.”

  “One…”

  Tyler felt his fingers whiten against the crystal flute of champagne as he watched Divya and Cameron hunch next to each other over the desktop computer. Divya’s finger was in the air, paused over the computer’s keyboard; he was drawing this out for all it was worth, trying to make it as dramatic as possible. In theory, the moment was dramatic: the launch of the Web site they had worked on since 2002, almost two full years. Renamed ConnectU—mostly to try and help them overcome the trauma of what had gone on over the past few months, but also because now that thefacebook had proven that the idea behind the Harvard Connection could work in many schools simultaneously—the site was finally ready to go online. After so many hours of discussion, planning, anxiety—so many days spent worrying over the design of the site, the graphics, the features. It was a spectacular moment.

  And yet, it didn’t feel that spectacular—or that dramatic. Maybe that was because in practice, it was just an Indian kid hitting a key on a computer keyboard while two identical twins watched on from within a stark, almost barren Quad dorm bedroom.

  Most of Tyler’s belongings had already been packed up in cardboard boxes, which were labeled and stacked around the edges of the small room. His and Cameron’s dad would be there in a few hours to help them move out—and then they would be leaving Harvard for good, heading off into the real world. Well, maybe not the real world. Cameron and Tyler were going right into training—an even more intense regimen than they had been following at Harvard. To help them with their mission, their father had revamped a boathouse in Connecticut. They’d hired a coach, and now that they had graduated, they were going to make a serious go at making the Olympics in Beijing in 2008. Between now and then, of course, there would be thousands upon t
housands of hours of training. It was going to be hard, painful, and, at times, incredibly aggravating.

  But while they trained, ConnectU would be chugging along. Hopefully gaining members in colleges across the country. Hopefully, somehow, competing with thefacebook, MySpace, Friendster, and all the other social networks that were already moving forward, spreading like viruses across the World Wide Web.

  Tyler knew they were starting at a huge disadvantage. He knew all about the business concept of “first mover advantage;” his father had taught business at Wharton for twelve years after founding his consulting company, and he’d explained the idea to Tyler many times. For certain industries, it wasn’t about quality of product or even corporate strategy. It was about who got there first. It was a landgrab, and ConnectU was coming late to the plains.

  Which was exactly what was so damn frustrating about what Mark Zuckerberg had done to them. In Tyler’s mind, he hadn’t just stolen their idea, he’d also stalled them for two months. If he’d just told them he wasn’t going to program their site, they’d have found someone else. They’d have been mad, but they’d have moved forward, and they wouldn’t have blamed him for trying to damage their dream. Maybe they’d have launched first—and it would be ConnectU that every college kid in America was talking about. It would be ConnectU that was changing the social lives of so many people.

  It was beyond frustrating. Every day, Tyler, Cameron, and Divya had to listen as classmates chatted on and on about thefacebook. And not just at Harvard; the damn thing was everywhere. In the dorm rooms down the hall, on the laptop in every bedroom. On the TV news, almost every week. In the newspapers, sometimes every morning.

  Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg. Mark fucking Zuckerberg.

  Okay, maybe Tyler was becoming a little obsessed. He knew from Mark’s point of view, he, Cameron, and Divya were just a blip in the history of thefacebook. In Mark’s mind, he had worked for a few hours for some jocky classmates, gotten bored, and moved on. There were no papers signed, no work agreements or nondisclosures or noncompetes. Mark had bullshit them in e-mails, sure, but in his mind, what did he owe a couple of jocks who couldn’t even write computer code? Who were they to try to grasp on now that he was flying so high?

  Sure, Tyler had read Mark’s letter to the administration, his e-mailed response to Cameron’s cease-and-desist. “Originally,” Mark had written to Cameron, “I was intrigued by the project and was asked to finish the Connect side of the website. I did this. After this meeting, and not before, I began working on Thefacebook, using none of the same code nor functionality that is present in Harvard Connection. The only common aspects of the site are that users can upload information about and images of themselves, and that information is searchable.”

  And he’d also read Mark’s more vicious response to the university, when Tyler and Cameron had been trying to get the ad board involved:

  I try not to get involved with other students’ ventures since they are generally too time-consuming and don’t provide me with enough room to be creative and do my own thing. I do, however, make an effort to use my skills to help out those who are trying to develop their own ideas for websites. Perhaps there was some confusion, and I can see why they might be upset that I released a successful website while theirs was still unfinished, but I definitely didn’t promise them anything. Frankly, I’m kind of appalled that they’re threatening me after the work I’ve done for them free of charge, but after dealing with a bunch of other groups with deep pockets and good legal connections including companies like Microsoft, I can’t say I’m surprised.

  But it was the last line of that ad-board letter that really irked Tyler. After trashing their site, Mark had concluded: “I try to shrug it off as a minor annoyance that whenever I do something successful, every capitalist out there wants a piece of the action.”

  In Tyler’s mind, that was utter bullshit. For Tyler, Cameron, and Divya, it wasn’t about the money at all. It had never been about money. Tyler didn’t give a shit about money. Christ, his family had plenty of money.

  It was about honor. It was about fairness. Maybe in business, those things could be pushed to the side. Maybe in a hacker’s world, those things took second place to what you could do, how much smarter you were than the other guy. But to Tyler, there was nothing more important than honor.

  Obviously, Mark felt differently about the subject. A few times, over the past few weeks, Tyler had thought about just going over to the kid’s dorm room and confronting him, face-to-face. But he’d resisted the urge, because he’d known that it wouldn’t have gone well.

  One night just a week ago, Cameron had, in fact, been coming out of a party at one of the River Houses, when he’d seen Mark standing across the street. When he’d taken a step toward the kid—just to talk—Mark had turned and sprinted away.

  There was no doubt in Tyler’s mind that the situation would never be resolved by a simple conversation. Things had already gotten too ugly for that. The only choice seemed to be to move forward, as best he could.

  As Divya finished his countdown, Tyler shook his angry thoughts away, focusing on his brother and friend in front of the computer. This moment wasn’t about Mark Zuckerberg, or thefacebook. This was about ConnectU, and hopefully they were turning a new page in their lives.

  “And here we go,” Divya continued, his voice rising. “Liftoff!”

  His finger came down on the keyboard, the screen blinked—and then it was done. ConnectU had gone live. It was out there, and hopefully, people would notice. Hopefully, college kids would sign on, and the site would grow and grow.

  Tyler raised his glass as Divya and Cameron clinked theirs together. Then he took a long drink, feeling the bubbles against his throat. Still, despite the celebratory mood, he couldn’t help but notice that the taste in his mouth was exceedingly bitter.

  He knew, deep down, that the bitterness had nothing to do with the champagne.

  At its essence, it was simply a matter of physics. Force versus an equal and opposite force. An object in motion tending to stay in motion, no matter how unusual, unwanted, or just plain annoying that motion happened to be. Force equals mass times velocity—there simply wasn’t any way around the physics of it; at 150 pounds soaking wet, Sean Parker had no way of stopping the oversize mahogany bureau from caterwauling down the steps of the front porch of the compact little bungalow—so he didn’t even try.

  Instead, he just stood there shaking his head as the damn thing rolled onto its side, landing with an ugly thud in a patch of grass next to the driveway. He waited for a few seconds, listening carefully—but he didn’t hear any complaints coming from inside the house, which was a very good thing. Obviously, his girlfriend hadn’t heard the thud, which meant that if he could get the now slightly damaged, monstrous piece of furniture into the back of his BMW parked a few yards away in the driveway of the house, she’d never be the wiser.

  He bent to one knee, putting his hands underneath the heavy wood, and gave it a solid try. His expensive Italian driving shoes sank a few inches into the grass as his face turned bright red with the effort. He felt his lungs starting to close up a little, and he coughed, quickly giving up. He wondered for a moment if a few hits from his inhaler would make the task any less impossible. Probably not, he decided. More likely, he was going to have to suck it up and ask his girlfriend for help. Not the most manly of options, but then again, he’d been crashing in her pad for much of the last semester of her senior year at Stanford, and now that she was moving back home, it might be nice for them to share one moment of domesticity—even if that moment consisted of lugging a hundred-pound bureau across a tranquil bit of front lawn—

  “Sean Parker?”

  The voice came out of nowhere, interrupting Sean’s silent contemplation of all things bureau-related. He looked up, then realized the voice had come from behind him, down the quiet Palo Alto street where his girlfriend’s family lived. He turned on his heels—and squinted, as the sunlight caught him
straight in the face.

  When his eyes adjusted, he made out four young guys coming toward him. Strange, to see young people in this neighborhood; the sleepy town wasn’t exactly the hippest part of the suburban community—a pretty little warren of bungalow-style homes, swimming pools, and manicured lawns, maybe even with the odd palm tree or two—and Sean guessed the average age of the residents was a good thirty years older than these kids looked. College guys, he assumed, from the way they were dressed—sweatshirts, jeans, and one gray hooded fleece between them.

  Sean didn’t recognize any of the kids at first, but as they got closer, he suddenly realized that he did indeed know one of them.

  “This is a bizarre coincidence,” he murmured, figuring out who it was.

  Mark Zuckerberg seemed as shocked as he was, though it was hard to read the kid’s face. Mark quickly introduced his roommates, and explained that they had just recently moved into a house right in the neighborhood—in fact, Mark pointed out the house, which was barely half a block away from Sean’s girlfriend’s family. Mark and his roomies had literally stumbled on Sean by accident—although Sean had never really believed in accidents like this. Fate, fortune, call it whatever you like, but his whole life had sometimes seemed like a sequence of fortuitous events.

  He’d worked so hard to track Mark Zuckerberg down in New York, and now out here in California, the boy genius had stumbled right into his lap. To be sure, since the dinner at 66, he and Mark had made plans a couple of times via e-mail to try to meet up; in fact, only a few weeks earlier they had hoped to coincide in Vegas at some high-tech event, only to have their plans fall through. But this was even better. Way better.