Accidental Billionaires

Ben Mezrich, Author of the novel Accidental Billionaires tells the story of Eduardo Saverin, a wealthy but quirky Harvard undergrad who takes you through the events preceding to the launch of Facebook.com. He and his friend Mark (Zuckerburg) are trying to find social acceptance with Eduardo entering a Finals Club and Mark hacking into the Harvard network to make a website (facemash.com) in which girls are graded on their looks compared to one another. The website crashes the Network and lands Mark in hot water with the school. Though many of the women at the school are disgusted by facemash, Harvard seniors Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss and Divya Narendra think it was genius and recruits Zuckerburg for their project, the HarvardConnection, a dating site for Harvard students. Mark reluctantly agrees to help but quickly sees something bigger for himself and Eduardo. Later on when Thefacebook.com is launched exclusively to Harvard students, it becomes huge. While the popularity of Thefacebook rises from school to school, so does the tension between Mark and Eduardo due to the partnership with Sean Parker, founder of Napster. Mark drops out of college and goes to Silicon Valley while Eduardo continues his education. Eduardo feels upset because he thinks Sean and Mark are trying to cut him out of the project.

I thought this book was a good read. It is a retelling of the basic facts of how Mark and Sean betrayed Eduardo. The fact that a 20 year old can be be worth a billion dollars with a simple idea is incredible. But it’s also a little sad and disturbing. It’s incredible that Mark would betray Eduardo like he did the Winklevosses. “Eduardo wasn’t even sure which Winklevoss twin he was looking at…but barely ten feet away from him in some nameless New York Club… he’d walked right up to the Winklevoss twin and held out his hand…Eduardo had to let the words come spilling out. ‘I’m sorry. He screwed me just like he screwed you guys.’ ” (252)

The setting of the book bounced across the country between Harvard and Silicon Valley. The first part of the book is on the Harvard campus and the second half is based around the Silicon Valley and Stanford University. It is interesting to learn how important certain environments are to the success of certain businesses. While Harvard is good for starting a tech business, if it’s really going to succeed it needs to be in Silicon Valley.

If you’re a person who enjoys a story of success, betrayal, and desperation for attention from the opposite sex, Accidental Billionaires is the book for you.