Billionaires The Founding of Facebook

particularly well, however, and it hadn’t helped that Mark had slept through 
about half of them—and had spent the other half sitting silently while Eduardo 
tried to pick up all the slack. Though everyone they’d met had seemed 
impressed by the number of people they’d gotten to sign up to thefacebook—
over seventy-five thousand at last count—nobody was willing to put any 
significant money into placing ads on the network. They just didn’t get it, yet, 
and advertising on the Internet, in general, was such a dicey thing. It was simply 
hard to get the advertisers to understand how different thefacebook was. The 
fact that people who went on thefacebook tended to stay online longer than on 
almost any other site was lost on them. The even more impressive statistic, that 
most kids who tried out thefacebook once tended to come back—67 percent 
every day—was completely beyond their comprehension. 
But maybe if Mark had taken it all a little more seriously, things would have gone 
a bit better. Case in point; here they were, at one of the fanciest new restaurants 

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in New York, and he was sitting there in that damn fleece hoody, his flip-flops 
bouncing off each other under the table. Granted, they weren’t at 66 to meet 
with a potential advertiser, but it was still business, and Mark should have looked 
the part. At the very least, he should have tried to look hip, because in this place 
he stuck out like a sore thumb. 
Located on the first floor of the Textile Building in Tribeca, 66 was Jean 
Georges’s newest hot spot, and quite possibly the nicest Chinese restaurant 
Eduardo had ever seen. Sleek and minimalist, the place was extremely modern, 
from the twelve-foot-tall curved glass wall that took up much of the entrance to 
the huge fish tank that separated the dining area from the kitchen. The floor was 
bamboo, and frosted-glass panels separated the various leather seating areas. 
There was also a huge, forty-person communal table, next to another frosted 
wall behind which the bartenders scampered about, their silhouettes dancing 
back and forth. Chinese red silk banners hung from the ceiling, but otherwise it 
seemed more fusion than Asian, at least to Eduardo’s palate. Since their guest 
was running late, they’d already ordered some things from the menu: lacquered 
pork with a shallot-and-ginger confit. Tuna tartar. A lobster claw steamed with 
ginger and wine. And foie gras jammed into oversize shrimp dumplings. 
Eduardo’s girlfriend hadn’t been too thrilled with the items, and he could tell 
she was just biding her time until they could order dessert—homemade ice 
cream that came in little tiny Chinese takeout containers. Though if she could 
convince one of the waiters to give them drinks without checking their ages, 
she’d forget all about the ice cream. 
She probably wasn’t a keeper, but Kelly was still tall and pretty, and Eduardo 
had managed to keep her interested since their episode in the dorm bathroom. 
Mark had long lost her friend Alice, but no matter, Mark didn’t seem to care one 
way or the other. At the moment, though, Kelly wasn’t the biggest issue 
dominating Eduardo’s thoughts. He was much more concerned about the 
reason they were at the restaurant in the first place—and the guy they were 
there to meet 
Eduardo didn’t know much about Sean Parker—but what he’d found out by a 
simple search on the Internet, he didn’t like. Parker was a Silicon Valley animal, a 
serial entrepreneur who’d crashed out of two of the biggest Internet companies 
in what sounded like pretty spectacular fashion. To Eduardo, he seemed like 
some sort of wild man, maybe even a little dangerous. Eduardo had no idea why 

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the guy wanted to talk to them, or what Parker wanted from them. But he was 
pretty sure he didn’t want anything from Parker. 
Speak of the devil; Eduardo caught site of Parker first as he stepped out from 
behind the curved glass entrance. Although it would have been hard to miss the 
guy—because he was making quite an entrance, bouncing off the walls like 
some sort of animated cartoon creature, a Tasmanian Devil spinning through the 
restaurant. He seemed to know everyone as he moved through the place. First, 
he was saying hi to the hostess while hugging one of the waitresses. Then he 
was stopping at a nearby table to shake hands with a guy in a suit, while ruffling 
the hair of the guy’s kid, like they were family friends. Christ, who the hell was 
this character? 
He reached their table and smiled; there was a bit of wolf in that grin. 
“Sean Parker. You must be Eduardo, and Kelly. And of course, Mark.” 
Sean reached across the table, going right for Mark—and Eduardo saw it, then 
and there—the look on Mark’s face, the sudden flush in his cheeks and the 
brightness in his eyes. Pure idol worship. In Eduardo’s eyes, to Mark, Sean 
Parker was a god. 
Eduardo should have realized it earlier. Napster was the ultimate geek banner, a 
battle that had been fought by hackers on the biggest stage of all. Ultimately, 
the hackers had lost, but that didn’t matter, in a way it was still the biggest hack 
in history. And Sean Parker had survived that, gone on to Plaxo, made a name 
for himself a second time. Eduardo didn’t have to remember what he’d read on 
Google, because Sean launched right into it himself, after taking a seat next to 
Kelly and ordering them all drinks from one of the passing waitresses—a friend, 
of course, from a previous visit. 
Sean spun story after story, his energy level beyond incredible. About Napster, 
the battles he had fought. About Plaxo, and the even uglier battles he’d barely 
survived. He was completely open about everything. Life in Silicon Valley.