The Accidental Billionaires

The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal

By: Ben Mezrich

Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain

Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

The high-energy tale of how two socially awkward Ivy Leaguers, trying to increase their chances with the opposite sex, ended up creating Facebook.

Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg were Harvard undergraduates and best friends - outsiders at a school filled with polished prep-school grads and long-time legacies. They shared both academic brilliance in math and a geeky awkwardness with women.

Eduardo figured their ticket to social acceptance - and sexual success - was getting invited to join one of the university’s Final Clubs, a constellation of elite societies that had groomed generations of the most powerful men in the world and ranked on top of the inflexible hierarchy at Harvard. Mark, with less of an interest in what the campus alpha males thought of him, happened to be a computer genius of the first order.

Which he used to find a more direct route to social stardom: One lonely night, Mark hacked into the university's computer system, creating a ratable database of all the female students on campus - and subsequently crashing the university's servers and nearly getting himself kicked out of school. In that moment, in his Harvard dorm room, the framework for Facebook was born.

What followed - a real-life adventure filled with slick venture capitalists, stunning women, and six-foot-five-inch identical-twin Olympic rowers - makes for one of the most entertaining and compelling books of the year. Before long, Eduardo’s and Mark’s different ideas about Facebook created in their relationship faint cracks, which soon spiraled into out-and-out warfare. The collegiate exuberance that marked their collaboration fell prey to the adult world of lawyers and money. The great irony is that while Facebook succeeded by bringing people together, its very success tore two best friends apart.

The Accidental Billionaires is a compulsively listenable story of innocence lost - and of the unusual creation of a company that has revolutionized the way hundreds of millions of people relate to one another.

Ben Mezrich, a Harvard graduate, has published ten books, including the New York Times best seller Bringing Down the House. He is a columnist for Boston Common and a contributor for Flush magazine. Ben lives in Boston with his wife, Tonya.

©2009 Ben Mezrich (P)2009 Random House

Definitely worth a listen.

Few companies “put a dent in the universe,” but this this is the story of one of them. It’s hard to take sides against Facebook and everything they’ve accomplished, but it’s easy to feel sympathy for those the company left behind.

The story was told so well and with great detail.

I thought this was a great listen and easy to follow. The presenter did a great job. I see how well the movie was made because it follows the book very closely.

Super fun book. Great storytelling.

It took me a long time to pick this one up, but I’m sure glad I did. It was a super fun read. It’s the same sort of Facebook story you’ll get in the movie “The Social Network,” minus some of the cinematic tricks and glorifications.

And while this certainly isn’t a review about the movie, I have to say that I enjoyed both of them highly (and about equally); this is about as good of a startup story as you’ll find.

The writing in this one is also just really solid. The stories flow seamlessly and hook you in. I could barely put it down, even though I’d been through most of the plot (via the news and “The Social Network”) already.

If you’re a tech person or a fan of startups, I’m confident you’ll enjoy this one. It’s right on par with Mezrich’s latest “billionaires” book, and that’s a very good thing.

-Brian Sachetta
Author of “Get Out of Your Head”

“Social Network” Screenplay Was Based on This

It’s funny seeing all the 1-star reviews of this calling it “like out of a bad screenplay” — many pre-date the 2010 release of “The Social Network,” which flat-out advertises Aaron Sorkin basing his screenplay on this book. The writing styles are different of course, but the events and the way they are depicted in the movie keep pretty close to the book’s presentation, far closer than I was expecting, actually. That goes all the way to the mid-point introduction of Sean Parker.

I don’t know why there isn’t some type of pronunciation fact-check with certain audiobooks, especially when there are real-life names/people places. Here Peter Thiel’s name is mispronounced repeatedly, for example (it’s pronounced Teal). Even if he were not as well known when this was produced (the audio looks to have been recorded before his lawsuit against Gawker, though PayPal had been around quite a while) he was in the book because he was the first outside investor in Facebook and is still on its board.

The only other thing I would say is it’s always been eye-rolling to see both the movie and, especially, the book presenting Mark Zuckerberg just coincidentally renting the summer intern house a couple houses down from the family of Sean Parker’s girlfriend. Please. It wasn’t coincidence. There was always another darker movie/book right in that scene. It’s not just that both are exceptional programmers and hackers. Facebook from the start collected personal data — we know this because Zuckerberg bragged about people voluntarily giving it to him and offered up to his friends whatever information they wanted on someone. The book is especially naive in presenting Zuckerberg’s choice of location as purely this wild coincidence even as the author writes in an aside that Parker never believed such things are coincidence.

oddly skewed in favor of robot douche

dont be fooled by this book. it's a fun story but lacking context about Zuckerberg's character. Didnt age well after 2016. 😬

Long winded at times

A lot of the parts were full of mundane descriptions. I actually liked that some of the story had more artistic freedom that is typical for this type of book, i.e. it goes over conversations and thoughts as if they were direct quotes. But the movie that is based on this book is more succinct and you'll get all the major parts of the story anyhow. I can't think of any details you'd miss out on by going with the movie. Go with the book because the performance is actually good and I did like falling asleep to it.

Very Slow Start but it will eventually hook you..

This book book took a very long time to hook me. I almost quit, luckily I hung in there long enough to finish the book. Some where around 2/3 of the way in it becomes addictive. Also it is based on speculative material, so if your in to pure facts look else where.

what would the critics know?

The events that unfolded in the evolution of Facebook are fascinating. It has probably been dramatised somewhat...who cares, it was a good listen. I listend to it in 3 hours on double speed as the narator is a bit slow.

Gripping read, after a slow start

I'm used to reading bios of larger tech companies (Apple, Microsoft, Pixar etc) so was excited to get this title about Facebook. However I wasn't prepared for it to be a fiction-based-on-fact work, and for the first chaptor it took me off-guard.
However this quickly became an addictive book, which made me read it faster than many others I've downloaded from Audible. The storyline is interesting, the characters are rich, and the drama will hold you through till the end.

Entertaining and Facinating

I can't believe the negitive reviews. This book is great. I loved learning about the founders of Facebook and enjoyed how the author made it a story, not a documentary.