Accidental Billionaires

Andrew Marks / Retna The idea for Facebook made Mark Zuckerberg rich for life, but a new book by Ben Mezrich argues he did it the old-fashioned way—he stole it.

I first met Facebook co-creator Eduardo Saverin the fall of my first year of college at Harvard. He cut a Gatsby-ish figure. His penchant for formalwear helped, but it had more to do with him pulling a party together and then retreating from it. I liked him because he let me into the social club he belonged to when the most common sight for a new freshman tended to be a closing door.

Why did Saverin and Zuckerberg start Facebook? For the same reason anyone does anything in this book—to get laid.

For that, Saverin seemed like a good guy, so I did what you did then in college: I friended him on Facebook. He accepted. I didn’t know it at the time, but it turns out Saverin was being rejected by his other Facebook friends at the same time.

There was whispering in the fall of 2005 that was loud enough even for a clueless freshman to pick up.

“That's the Facebook guy,” someone would say.

“No, it’s not. Didn't they all just leave school and move out to California?”

“Yeah, but he stayed.”

“Oh. Weird.”

Here’s where Ben Mezrich, author of 2002’s bestseller Bringing Down the House, steps in. With his new book, Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal, he attempts to explain why one Facebook guy was hovering around the edges of parties in Cambridge, rather than living it up at Casa Facebook in Palo Alto and building the most exciting company to come out of a dorm room in a long time. The book is an extension of his now-trademarked brand—a combination of youth, money, prestige, and risk all set to a peppy soundtrack. It's his second successful Hollywood vehicle (the book comes complete with press clippings describing its progress toward becoming a movie). Accidental Billionaires, as bloggers and early reviewers have suggested, is also another round of the Boston author's game of hide-and-go-seek with truth.

Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook. By Ben Mezrich. 272 pages. Doubleday. $25. At its bottom though, the story is about one kid feeling betrayed by another and trying to reclaim the attention he feels he deserves.

Mark Zuckerberg may be Facebook’s best-known creator, but Eduardo Saverin was an integral player from the start. He was the first person Zuckerberg talked to about the idea. He was there when the site launched. He gave Zuckerberg and a few others the seed money to start Facebook: $18,000 the first summer the Web site’s original employees set to work in California. Then, he slowly moved out of the picture. This was partly, it seems, due to his own desire to finish school and his hesitancy to move out to Palo Alto. It also seems partly plain-old poor decision-making. As Facebook picked up steam, Saverin wasn’t consulted. His advice was ignored. Ultimately, he saw his stake in the company (he originally boasted more than one-third ownership) watered down to nothing. Of course, as these things go, a lawsuit and countersuit followed. Last summer, according to Luke O’Brien, who has written extensively about the company, the two sides reached an agreement. The terms haven’t been disclosed.