Summary: The Accidental Billionaires: Review and Analysis of Mezrich's Book

By BusinessNews Publishing

The must-read summary of Ben Mezrich's book: "The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook" 

This complete summary of the ideas from Ben Mezrich's book "The Accidental Billionaires" recounts the story of the world's biggest social network and the world’s youngest billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg. Learn how a company that was created to connect people ultimately tore two best friends apart. In 2003, Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg, two Harvard undergrads, were looking for a way to stand out among the university’s elite student body. The book tells how Mark crashed Harvard’s network and created the social networking site that has since revolutionised the way people communicate. "The Accidental Billionaires" is a captivating story of betrayal, sex and money.

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To learn more, read "The Accidental Billionaires" and discover the juicy stories behind the creation of Facebook. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Business Book Summaries
• Release date: Feb 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9782806233585

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Book Presentation

The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich

Summary of The Accidental Billionaires (Ben Mezrich)

Book Presentation

The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich

About the Author

BEN MEZRICH is a graduate of Harvard University. He has published ten books including Bringing Down the House, Rigged and Ugly Americans. Bringing Down the House was the basis for the movie 21 which was released in spring, 2008. Mr. Mezrich is a columnist for Boston Common and a contributor to Flush magazine.

Mr. Mezrich’s Web site is at www.benmezrich.com.

Important Note About This Ebook

This is a summary and not a critique or a review of the book. It does not offer judgment or opinion on the content of the book. This summary may not be organized chapter-wise but is an overview of the main ideas, viewpoints and arguments from the book as a whole. This means that the organization of this summary is not a representation of the book.

Summary of The Accidental Billionaires (Ben Mezrich)

1. The FaceMash Experiment

Facebook was co-founded by Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg who became best friends when they met as Harvard undergraduates in October 2003.

Mark Zuckerberg was a sophomore at Harvard in the fall of 2003. He was a computer science major from New York, the son of a dentist father and a psychiatrist mother. While at high school, Mark created a software program called Synapse. This was a plug-in for MP3 players which allowed the device to learn a user’s preferences and then create tailored information. Mark had posted Synapse as a free download on the Web and this caused a number of major companies to contact him with offers to buy the software. It was rumored that Microsoft had made Mark a two-million dollar offer to go and work for them but impressively Mark had turned them down.

Eduardo Saverin, by contrast, didn’t know much about computers at all. He was a business major. During the summer vacation break, Eduardo had made three hundred thousand dollars by investing in oil futures with his brother utilizing an investment strategy based on meteorology. Eduardo’s family were Jewish and had barely escaped the Holocaust to move to Brazil before being forced to relocate again to Florida, where Eduardo’s father had become very successful in banking.

As Harvard undergraduates, both Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin were outside the more popular student groups because they were different. To counter this, Eduardo was working hard to get admitted into the Phoenix – one of Harvard’s eight Finals Clubs which formed the university’s exclusive old boys network. In addition to being able to rub shoulders with future billionaires, power