consider this: the slip that brought me to my knees [book quotes]
This was a terrifying place, especially for a kid like Eduardo. He hadn't grown up poor - he'd spent most of his childhood being shuttled between upper-middle-class communities in Brazil and Miami before matriculating at Harvard - but he was a complete stranger to the sort of old-world opulence this room represented. Even through the booze, Eduardo could feel the insecurities rumbling deep down in the pit of his stomach. He felt like a freshman all over again, stepping into Harvard Yard for the first time, wondering what the hell he was doing there, wondering how he could possibly belong in a place like that. How he could possibly belong in a place like this.
...there was something very similar about all the faces - the smiles that seemed so much easier than Eduardo's, the confidence in those two hundred pairs of eyes - these kids weren't used to having to prove themselves. They belonged.
"Saverin. You're the one with the hedge fund, right?"
Eduardo blushed, but inside he was thrilled that the Phoenix member recognized his name. It was a bit of an exaggeration - he didn't have a hedge fund, he'd simply made some money investing with his brother during his sophomore summer - but he wasn't going to correct the mistake.
"The hedge fund is a hobby, really," Eduardo humbly confided as the small group of blazers hung on his words. "We focus mostly on oil futures. See, I've always been obsessed with the weather, and I made a few good hurricane predictions that the rest of the market hadn't quite picked up on."
Eduardo knew he was walking a fine line, trying to minimize the geekiness of how he'd actually outguessed the oil market; he knew the Phoenix member wanted to hear about the three hundred thousand dollars Eduardo had made trading oil, not the nerdish obsession with meteorology that had made the trades possible. But Eduardo also wanted to show off a little; Darron's mention of his "hedge fund" only confirmed what Eduardo had already suspected, that the only reason he was in that room in the first place was his reputation as a budding businessman.
Hell, he knew he didn't have much else going for him. He wasn't an athlete, didn't come from a long line of legacies, and certainly wasn't burning up the social scene. He was gawky, his arms were a little too long for his body, and he really only relaxed when he drank. But still, he was there, in that room. A year late - most people were "punched" during the fall of their sophomore year, not as juniors like Eduardo - but he was there just the same.
Certainly, he had no way of knowing, then or now, that the kid with the curly hair was one day going to take the entire concept of a social network and turn it on its head. That one day, the kid with the curly hair struggling through that prepunch party was going to change Eduardo's life more than any Final Club ever could.
Eduardo had always prided himself on his ability to get to the core of other people's personalities - it was something his father had taught him, a way of getting a step ahead in the world of business. For his father, business was everything; the son of wealthy immigrants who had barely escaped the Holocaust to Brazil during World War II, his father had raised Eduardo in the sometimes harsh light of survivors; he came from a long line of businessmen who knew how important it was to succeed, whatever one's circumstances. And Brazil was only just the beginning; the Saverin family had almost just as hastily been forced to relocate to Miami when Eduardo was thirteen - when it was discovered that Eduardo's name had ended up on a kidnap list because of his father's financial success.
By junior high, Eduardo had found himself adrift in a strange new world, struggling to learn a new language - English - and a new culture - Miami - at the same time. So he didn't know computers, but he understood, completely, what it was like being the awkward outsider; being different, whatever the reason.
Eduardo grinned to himself; in a matter of a few short weeks, he and Mark had become close friends. Even though they lived in different houses and had different majors, Eduardo felt that they had a similar spirit - and he'd begun to notice an almost strange feeling that they were supposed to be friends, even before they were. In that short time, he'd grown to really like Mark, had begun to think of him like a real brother, not just someone who shared a Jewish frat, and he was pretty sure Mark felt the same way about him.
It was only a week into January, and he hadn't even started classes yet, after the two-week winter break. In fact, he'd only gotten back onto campus from Miami the day before. After landing at Logan, he'd headed directly over to the Phoenix - really, to decompress after so much family time.
Eduardo had returned to campus needing a mind-cleansing experience - and he'd had no trouble finding one at the Phoenix.
"I'm in," Eduardo said, shaking Mark's hand across the table. He could provide money, and advice. He could help guide the project in a way that even Mark probably couldn't. Mark wasn't a business-minded kid. Hell, he'd turned down seven figures from Microsoft in high school!
Eduardo had grown up in a world of business. With this idea, perhaps he could show his father how much he had already learned. The head of the Harvard Investment Association was one thing; creating a popular Web site would be another entirely.
But Eduardo specifically saw Mark perk up when Gates answered a question from one of the audience members about his decision to leave school and start his own company. After hemming and hawing a bit, Gates told the audience that the great thing about Harvard was that you could always come back and finish. The way Mark seemed to smile when Gates said it made Eduardo a little nervous - especially considering how hard Mark had been working on simply keeping up with the demand of their nascent Web site. Eduardo would never drop out of school - it simply wasn't a possibility to him. In the first place, his father would throw a fit; to the Saverins, nothing was more important than education, and Harvard meant nothing if you didn't come out of there with a degree. Second, Eduardo understood that entrepreneurship meant taking risks - but only to a certain degree. You didn't risk your entire future on something until you figured out how it was going to make you rich.
Eduardo was so busy watching Mark watch Bill Gates, he almost didn't hear the giggles coming from the seats right behind him; he might not have turned to look if the whispered voices that followed the laughter hadn't been decidedly female.
Nobody had interviewed Eduardo - and the truth was, he was happy about that. Mark wanted the attention; Eduardo just wanted the benefits that came with attention, not the attention itself. This was a business they'd created, and getting it out there was important, but Eduardo didn't want to be a celebrity because of it.
That was the genius of it all. Mark's genius, really, but Eduardo felt he was a part of that as well. He'd put up the money for the servers - but he'd also had a hand in discussing some of the attributes of the site, the ideas behind some of the simplified structure.
Which, of course, seemed a little over the top to Eduardo, considering that thefacebook wasn't making anyone any money - and the Winklevosses were hardly hurting for cash. But it was good to see that Mark had stood up for himself.
The four of them together - Mark, Eduardo, Dustin, and Chris - were certainly not what you'd call part of the social elite at Harvard. In fact, they'd probably be outsiders at any college, not just the home to Rockefellers and Roosevelts. They were all geeks, each in his own way. But they'd found one another - and something else.
Mark started the conversation, because it was something he'd already decided - and Eduardo was rapidly realizing that that's the way things worked, in Mark's world.
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.
Both Mark and Eduardo had gone through the motions of looking for summer jobs. Mark hadn't found anything he'd been psyched about, but Eduardo, through his Phoenix connections and his family's friends, had managed to land a pretty prestigious internship at a New York investment bank.
Eduardo had gone back and forth about the internship with his dad - and it had been pretty obvious which way his dad had been leaning. Thefacebook was growing and incredibly popular, but it still wasn't making any real money. The internship was a respectable job, and an amazing opportunity. And since most of the advertisers thefacebook was chasing after were based in New York anyway, didn't it make sense for him to take the internship, and work on thefacebook during his spare time?
Even a day later, Eduardo still hadn't come to terms with Mark's second bombshell. In truth, he didn't like the sound of it at all; not only was California as far away from New York as you could get - but it was also, to him, a dangerous and seductive place. While Eduardo was off in New York, chasing advertisers, guys in suits like the VC sitting a few rows behind them would be chasing Mark. And even worse than the guys in suits were the guys like Sean Parker - who knew the exact buttons to push. Running the business out of California had never been the plan.
Things had certainly changed for both of them. For once, Mark looked genuinely happy, in the center of the swarm of idolizing computer programmers. And Eduardo was happy, too, even though he was off to the side, watching.
He decided then and there that they could make it work; he could run the company out of New York while Mark and Dustin, McCollum and the new interns did the programming in California. Maybe they'd make some good connections in Silicon Valley while they were there - connections that Eduardo could mine for the better advancement of the site. They were a team, and he would be a team player. Even if that meant watching over them from three thousand miles away.
And anyway, in three months, they'd all be back at school - Eduardo entering his senior year, Mark his junior - and life would continue. Maybe they'd be rich by then. Or maybe they'd be right where they were now, watching their company grow and grow. Either way, they were already far different from when they began this adventure, and Eduardo had no doubt that the future was going to be grand. He pushed any concerns away, because that's what a team player did. There was no need to be paranoid.
Truly, he asked himself, how much could go wrong in a handful of months?
What happens when the guy standing next to you catches a lightning bolt? Does it carry you into the stratosphere along with him?
Or do you simply get charred trying to hold on?
He didn't regret - even for a moment - that he had quit his internship on the very first day - really, minutes after he had first sat down in the little cubicle he was supposed to occupy for the next ten weeks, and had started at that pile of stock valuations he was supposed to analyze - when he'd realized that he wasn't going to become a real businessman like his father by neglecting the business he and Mark had cofounded in the dorms. But he couldn't help but be anxious about thefacebook, especially late at night, wondering how things were going in California with Mark and the rest of the ream, what they were up to, what progress they had made - and why they weren't calling more often.
He rolled his eyes at himself as he stretched into the stiff, too-small seat; maybe he was starting to think like the crazy girlfriend he was already considering dumping, maybe being a little jealous. Wasn't that the real reason he had booked the last-minute trip to California, to see for himself that his concerns were unfounded?
By the end of tonight, he was certain things would feel back to normal with thefacebook. He and Mark and the rest would have a blast, get some work done, and everything would be copacetic.
Eduardo couldn't help but grow more and more concerned each time he spoke to Mark, and heard about another milestone, party, or dinner that he had missed by being in New York. Worse yet, Mark was Mark - hard enough to read in person, but on the phone he was a complete mystery.
Eduardo had probably overreacted with the bank account, and Mark had been a bit distant and selfish by keeping Eduardo out of the loop - but Eduardo was willing to be reasonable and more forward, for the good of the company. This was a business, and they were friends; they would find a way to work things out.
Part of him knew that these papers were important - that they were legal documents, that signing them was a big step forward for the company - but he felt protected, first, because the lawyers were there - Facebook's lawyers, which meant, in his mind, that they were his lawyers as well - and more important, because Mark, his friend, was there, Mark was telling him that these documents were necessary and good...
The important thing was, Eduardo would still have his percentage of the company. Sure, there would be dilution, but wouldn't they all be diluted together? Did it matter that it was no longer thefacebook - wouldn't he be in the same position with Facebook?
Well, these papers seemed to say - in Eduardo's mind - that he was just as big a part of the company as he'd ever been. Things might change a big going forward as more money came in, as more people were hired - but the papers were just a necessary restructuring.
Weren't they?
It was a little strange - at Harvard, everyone kind of knew him, what he had done. Here, they were all looking at Mark - and only Mark.
But that was okay, really. Eduardo didn't mind being in the background, here in California. He hadn't gotten into this for the fame. He didn't really care if people knew he had been there in that dorm room, that he owned more than 30 percent of the company, that he was the person most responsible for those million members - other than Mark. He only cared that people loved the site, and that it was turning into one of the biggest businesses in internet history.
Okay, he'd been wrong - things had changed pretty dramatically since the beginning of summer. But it was okay. It was a choice he had made. He had nobody to fault but himself. He could have moved out to California. He could have taken time off from school. Anyway, he was a senior, now, only five months to go before graduation. Then he could throw himself into Facebook like the rest, go right back to where he and Mark had started.
It took Eduardo a few minutes to understand what he was reading - but as he did, his cheeks turned white, his skin going cold. Then full realization hit him like a gunshot to the chest, shattering him from the inside out, destroying a part of him that he knew he'd never get back. No amount of hyperbole, no adjective, no words - nothing could describe what it felt like - because even though, deep down, he should have seen it coming, he should have known, goddamn it, he should have seen the signs - he simply hadn't. He'd been so fucking blind. So fucking stupid.
He simply hadn't expected it from Mark, from his friend, from the kid he'd met when they were two geeks in an underground Jewish fraternity trying to fit in at Harvard. They'd had their problems, and Mark had the ability to be pretty cold, pretty distant - but this was way beyond that.
To Eduardo, this was a betrayal, pure and simple. Mark had betrayed him, destroyed him, taking it all away. It was all right there, in the papers in his hands, as clear as the pitch-black letters imprinted on those ivory-white pages.
He'd been pretty gung ho "Crimson" at the time, so proud that he was a part of this history, this university. So proud, because his father was so proud, because all the hard work of high school had paid off. The difficult road - leaning a new language, fitting into a new culture - had led to this place, this beautiful Yard embraced by these historic buildings. He had learned the song because this was his moment, as much as it belonged to anyone who'd ever stood shoulder to shoulder in this place. He'd earned it, every second of it.
Sitting there on the leather couch, he wondered if Mark had any regrets at all at how things had turned out.
Probably not, he realized with a grimace. Mark probably didn't even think that he'd done anything wrong. From Mark's point of view, he had only done what was necessary for the business.
Facebook had been Mark's idea in the beginning, after all. He was the one who'd put in the hours, put in the work. He'd built the company from the dorm room up. He'd written the code, launched the site, gone to California, postponed college, found the funding. To him, it had been a Mark Zuckerberg production from day one. And everyone else was just trying to hang on. The Winklevosses. Eduardo. Maybe even Sean Parker.
In fact, from Mark's point of view, it was probably Eduardo who had acted inappropriately, who had betrayed their friendship. From Mark's point of view, Eduardo had tried to hurt the company by freezing the bank account. From Mark's point of view, Eduardo had tried to make it difficult to raise VC money by asserting his own position as the titular head of business... Mark had as much reason to see himself as the wronged party as Eduardo did.
But Eduardo didn't see it that way. He believed, fully and completely, that he had been there from the beginning. That he had been integral to Facebook's success. He had put up the initial money. He had put in his time. And he deserved what they had agreed upon. Pure and simple.
...he wondered if Mark even remembered how it had all started. How they had been two geeky kids trying to do something special, trying to get noticed - really, trying to get laid. He wondered if Mark realized how much things had changed.
Or maybe Mark had never really changed at all; maybe Eduardo had just misread him from the start. Like the Winklevoss twins, Eduardo had projected his own thoughts onto that blankness, drawing in the features he most wanted to see.
Maybe he'd never really known Mark Zuckerberg.
He wondered if, deep down, Mark Zuckerberg even knew himself.
A memory from a night just like this one, another moment when he hadn't kept his mouth shut - a moment from that summer he'd spent in New York, way back in 2004. Eduardo wasn't sure exactly of the day and month, but it had been sometime after he'd frozen that bank account, sometime after those phone calls between him and Mark that had, in retrospect, been the beginning of the end, the cracks that eventually turned into compound fractures. Eduardo had been angry, and he'd been hurt - and he'd gone out drinking, just like tonight, and had ended up in a club, just like this one.
That night, he'd been on the dance floor, chasing after some girl, when he'd glanced across the club, and had noticed someone standing at the edge of the room, looking in his direction.
Eduardo had recognized the kid immediately - because, well, he had been hard to miss. Big, muscular, an athlete with a movie-star face and an Olympic physique. Eduardo had seen him many times around campus, with his identical twin brother. In fact, Eduardo wasn't even sure which of the Winklevoss twins he was looking at. Just that it was one of them, right in front of him, barely ten feet away in some nameless New York club.
Right there and then, Eduardo had let the emotions and the alcohol get the better of him. Maybe, deep down, he'd had a premonition about what was going to happen between him and Mark. Or maybe he had just been drunk.
Whatever the reason, he'd walked right up to the Winklevoss twin, and had held out his hand.
As the stunned kid had stared at him, Eduardo had let the words come spilling out:
"I'm sorry. He screwed me like he screwed you guys."
And without another word, he had turned - and disappeared back onto the dance floor.
...there was something very similar about all the faces - the smiles that seemed so much easier than Eduardo's, the confidence in those two hundred pairs of eyes - these kids weren't used to having to prove themselves. They belonged.
"Saverin. You're the one with the hedge fund, right?"
Eduardo blushed, but inside he was thrilled that the Phoenix member recognized his name. It was a bit of an exaggeration - he didn't have a hedge fund, he'd simply made some money investing with his brother during his sophomore summer - but he wasn't going to correct the mistake.
"The hedge fund is a hobby, really," Eduardo humbly confided as the small group of blazers hung on his words. "We focus mostly on oil futures. See, I've always been obsessed with the weather, and I made a few good hurricane predictions that the rest of the market hadn't quite picked up on."
Eduardo knew he was walking a fine line, trying to minimize the geekiness of how he'd actually outguessed the oil market; he knew the Phoenix member wanted to hear about the three hundred thousand dollars Eduardo had made trading oil, not the nerdish obsession with meteorology that had made the trades possible. But Eduardo also wanted to show off a little; Darron's mention of his "hedge fund" only confirmed what Eduardo had already suspected, that the only reason he was in that room in the first place was his reputation as a budding businessman.
Hell, he knew he didn't have much else going for him. He wasn't an athlete, didn't come from a long line of legacies, and certainly wasn't burning up the social scene. He was gawky, his arms were a little too long for his body, and he really only relaxed when he drank. But still, he was there, in that room. A year late - most people were "punched" during the fall of their sophomore year, not as juniors like Eduardo - but he was there just the same.
Certainly, he had no way of knowing, then or now, that the kid with the curly hair was one day going to take the entire concept of a social network and turn it on its head. That one day, the kid with the curly hair struggling through that prepunch party was going to change Eduardo's life more than any Final Club ever could.
Eduardo had always prided himself on his ability to get to the core of other people's personalities - it was something his father had taught him, a way of getting a step ahead in the world of business. For his father, business was everything; the son of wealthy immigrants who had barely escaped the Holocaust to Brazil during World War II, his father had raised Eduardo in the sometimes harsh light of survivors; he came from a long line of businessmen who knew how important it was to succeed, whatever one's circumstances. And Brazil was only just the beginning; the Saverin family had almost just as hastily been forced to relocate to Miami when Eduardo was thirteen - when it was discovered that Eduardo's name had ended up on a kidnap list because of his father's financial success.
By junior high, Eduardo had found himself adrift in a strange new world, struggling to learn a new language - English - and a new culture - Miami - at the same time. So he didn't know computers, but he understood, completely, what it was like being the awkward outsider; being different, whatever the reason.
Eduardo grinned to himself; in a matter of a few short weeks, he and Mark had become close friends. Even though they lived in different houses and had different majors, Eduardo felt that they had a similar spirit - and he'd begun to notice an almost strange feeling that they were supposed to be friends, even before they were. In that short time, he'd grown to really like Mark, had begun to think of him like a real brother, not just someone who shared a Jewish frat, and he was pretty sure Mark felt the same way about him.
It was only a week into January, and he hadn't even started classes yet, after the two-week winter break. In fact, he'd only gotten back onto campus from Miami the day before. After landing at Logan, he'd headed directly over to the Phoenix - really, to decompress after so much family time.
Eduardo had returned to campus needing a mind-cleansing experience - and he'd had no trouble finding one at the Phoenix.
"I'm in," Eduardo said, shaking Mark's hand across the table. He could provide money, and advice. He could help guide the project in a way that even Mark probably couldn't. Mark wasn't a business-minded kid. Hell, he'd turned down seven figures from Microsoft in high school!
Eduardo had grown up in a world of business. With this idea, perhaps he could show his father how much he had already learned. The head of the Harvard Investment Association was one thing; creating a popular Web site would be another entirely.
But Eduardo specifically saw Mark perk up when Gates answered a question from one of the audience members about his decision to leave school and start his own company. After hemming and hawing a bit, Gates told the audience that the great thing about Harvard was that you could always come back and finish. The way Mark seemed to smile when Gates said it made Eduardo a little nervous - especially considering how hard Mark had been working on simply keeping up with the demand of their nascent Web site. Eduardo would never drop out of school - it simply wasn't a possibility to him. In the first place, his father would throw a fit; to the Saverins, nothing was more important than education, and Harvard meant nothing if you didn't come out of there with a degree. Second, Eduardo understood that entrepreneurship meant taking risks - but only to a certain degree. You didn't risk your entire future on something until you figured out how it was going to make you rich.
Eduardo was so busy watching Mark watch Bill Gates, he almost didn't hear the giggles coming from the seats right behind him; he might not have turned to look if the whispered voices that followed the laughter hadn't been decidedly female.
Nobody had interviewed Eduardo - and the truth was, he was happy about that. Mark wanted the attention; Eduardo just wanted the benefits that came with attention, not the attention itself. This was a business they'd created, and getting it out there was important, but Eduardo didn't want to be a celebrity because of it.
That was the genius of it all. Mark's genius, really, but Eduardo felt he was a part of that as well. He'd put up the money for the servers - but he'd also had a hand in discussing some of the attributes of the site, the ideas behind some of the simplified structure.
Which, of course, seemed a little over the top to Eduardo, considering that thefacebook wasn't making anyone any money - and the Winklevosses were hardly hurting for cash. But it was good to see that Mark had stood up for himself.
The four of them together - Mark, Eduardo, Dustin, and Chris - were certainly not what you'd call part of the social elite at Harvard. In fact, they'd probably be outsiders at any college, not just the home to Rockefellers and Roosevelts. They were all geeks, each in his own way. But they'd found one another - and something else.
Mark started the conversation, because it was something he'd already decided - and Eduardo was rapidly realizing that that's the way things worked, in Mark's world.
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.
Both Mark and Eduardo had gone through the motions of looking for summer jobs. Mark hadn't found anything he'd been psyched about, but Eduardo, through his Phoenix connections and his family's friends, had managed to land a pretty prestigious internship at a New York investment bank.
Eduardo had gone back and forth about the internship with his dad - and it had been pretty obvious which way his dad had been leaning. Thefacebook was growing and incredibly popular, but it still wasn't making any real money. The internship was a respectable job, and an amazing opportunity. And since most of the advertisers thefacebook was chasing after were based in New York anyway, didn't it make sense for him to take the internship, and work on thefacebook during his spare time?
Even a day later, Eduardo still hadn't come to terms with Mark's second bombshell. In truth, he didn't like the sound of it at all; not only was California as far away from New York as you could get - but it was also, to him, a dangerous and seductive place. While Eduardo was off in New York, chasing advertisers, guys in suits like the VC sitting a few rows behind them would be chasing Mark. And even worse than the guys in suits were the guys like Sean Parker - who knew the exact buttons to push. Running the business out of California had never been the plan.
Things had certainly changed for both of them. For once, Mark looked genuinely happy, in the center of the swarm of idolizing computer programmers. And Eduardo was happy, too, even though he was off to the side, watching.
He decided then and there that they could make it work; he could run the company out of New York while Mark and Dustin, McCollum and the new interns did the programming in California. Maybe they'd make some good connections in Silicon Valley while they were there - connections that Eduardo could mine for the better advancement of the site. They were a team, and he would be a team player. Even if that meant watching over them from three thousand miles away.
And anyway, in three months, they'd all be back at school - Eduardo entering his senior year, Mark his junior - and life would continue. Maybe they'd be rich by then. Or maybe they'd be right where they were now, watching their company grow and grow. Either way, they were already far different from when they began this adventure, and Eduardo had no doubt that the future was going to be grand. He pushed any concerns away, because that's what a team player did. There was no need to be paranoid.
Truly, he asked himself, how much could go wrong in a handful of months?
What happens when the guy standing next to you catches a lightning bolt? Does it carry you into the stratosphere along with him?
Or do you simply get charred trying to hold on?
He didn't regret - even for a moment - that he had quit his internship on the very first day - really, minutes after he had first sat down in the little cubicle he was supposed to occupy for the next ten weeks, and had started at that pile of stock valuations he was supposed to analyze - when he'd realized that he wasn't going to become a real businessman like his father by neglecting the business he and Mark had cofounded in the dorms. But he couldn't help but be anxious about thefacebook, especially late at night, wondering how things were going in California with Mark and the rest of the ream, what they were up to, what progress they had made - and why they weren't calling more often.
He rolled his eyes at himself as he stretched into the stiff, too-small seat; maybe he was starting to think like the crazy girlfriend he was already considering dumping, maybe being a little jealous. Wasn't that the real reason he had booked the last-minute trip to California, to see for himself that his concerns were unfounded?
By the end of tonight, he was certain things would feel back to normal with thefacebook. He and Mark and the rest would have a blast, get some work done, and everything would be copacetic.
Eduardo couldn't help but grow more and more concerned each time he spoke to Mark, and heard about another milestone, party, or dinner that he had missed by being in New York. Worse yet, Mark was Mark - hard enough to read in person, but on the phone he was a complete mystery.
Eduardo had probably overreacted with the bank account, and Mark had been a bit distant and selfish by keeping Eduardo out of the loop - but Eduardo was willing to be reasonable and more forward, for the good of the company. This was a business, and they were friends; they would find a way to work things out.
Part of him knew that these papers were important - that they were legal documents, that signing them was a big step forward for the company - but he felt protected, first, because the lawyers were there - Facebook's lawyers, which meant, in his mind, that they were his lawyers as well - and more important, because Mark, his friend, was there, Mark was telling him that these documents were necessary and good...
The important thing was, Eduardo would still have his percentage of the company. Sure, there would be dilution, but wouldn't they all be diluted together? Did it matter that it was no longer thefacebook - wouldn't he be in the same position with Facebook?
Well, these papers seemed to say - in Eduardo's mind - that he was just as big a part of the company as he'd ever been. Things might change a big going forward as more money came in, as more people were hired - but the papers were just a necessary restructuring.
Weren't they?
It was a little strange - at Harvard, everyone kind of knew him, what he had done. Here, they were all looking at Mark - and only Mark.
But that was okay, really. Eduardo didn't mind being in the background, here in California. He hadn't gotten into this for the fame. He didn't really care if people knew he had been there in that dorm room, that he owned more than 30 percent of the company, that he was the person most responsible for those million members - other than Mark. He only cared that people loved the site, and that it was turning into one of the biggest businesses in internet history.
Okay, he'd been wrong - things had changed pretty dramatically since the beginning of summer. But it was okay. It was a choice he had made. He had nobody to fault but himself. He could have moved out to California. He could have taken time off from school. Anyway, he was a senior, now, only five months to go before graduation. Then he could throw himself into Facebook like the rest, go right back to where he and Mark had started.
It took Eduardo a few minutes to understand what he was reading - but as he did, his cheeks turned white, his skin going cold. Then full realization hit him like a gunshot to the chest, shattering him from the inside out, destroying a part of him that he knew he'd never get back. No amount of hyperbole, no adjective, no words - nothing could describe what it felt like - because even though, deep down, he should have seen it coming, he should have known, goddamn it, he should have seen the signs - he simply hadn't. He'd been so fucking blind. So fucking stupid.
He simply hadn't expected it from Mark, from his friend, from the kid he'd met when they were two geeks in an underground Jewish fraternity trying to fit in at Harvard. They'd had their problems, and Mark had the ability to be pretty cold, pretty distant - but this was way beyond that.
To Eduardo, this was a betrayal, pure and simple. Mark had betrayed him, destroyed him, taking it all away. It was all right there, in the papers in his hands, as clear as the pitch-black letters imprinted on those ivory-white pages.
He'd been pretty gung ho "Crimson" at the time, so proud that he was a part of this history, this university. So proud, because his father was so proud, because all the hard work of high school had paid off. The difficult road - leaning a new language, fitting into a new culture - had led to this place, this beautiful Yard embraced by these historic buildings. He had learned the song because this was his moment, as much as it belonged to anyone who'd ever stood shoulder to shoulder in this place. He'd earned it, every second of it.
Sitting there on the leather couch, he wondered if Mark had any regrets at all at how things had turned out.
Probably not, he realized with a grimace. Mark probably didn't even think that he'd done anything wrong. From Mark's point of view, he had only done what was necessary for the business.
Facebook had been Mark's idea in the beginning, after all. He was the one who'd put in the hours, put in the work. He'd built the company from the dorm room up. He'd written the code, launched the site, gone to California, postponed college, found the funding. To him, it had been a Mark Zuckerberg production from day one. And everyone else was just trying to hang on. The Winklevosses. Eduardo. Maybe even Sean Parker.
In fact, from Mark's point of view, it was probably Eduardo who had acted inappropriately, who had betrayed their friendship. From Mark's point of view, Eduardo had tried to hurt the company by freezing the bank account. From Mark's point of view, Eduardo had tried to make it difficult to raise VC money by asserting his own position as the titular head of business... Mark had as much reason to see himself as the wronged party as Eduardo did.
But Eduardo didn't see it that way. He believed, fully and completely, that he had been there from the beginning. That he had been integral to Facebook's success. He had put up the initial money. He had put in his time. And he deserved what they had agreed upon. Pure and simple.
...he wondered if Mark even remembered how it had all started. How they had been two geeky kids trying to do something special, trying to get noticed - really, trying to get laid. He wondered if Mark realized how much things had changed.
Or maybe Mark had never really changed at all; maybe Eduardo had just misread him from the start. Like the Winklevoss twins, Eduardo had projected his own thoughts onto that blankness, drawing in the features he most wanted to see.
Maybe he'd never really known Mark Zuckerberg.
He wondered if, deep down, Mark Zuckerberg even knew himself.
A memory from a night just like this one, another moment when he hadn't kept his mouth shut - a moment from that summer he'd spent in New York, way back in 2004. Eduardo wasn't sure exactly of the day and month, but it had been sometime after he'd frozen that bank account, sometime after those phone calls between him and Mark that had, in retrospect, been the beginning of the end, the cracks that eventually turned into compound fractures. Eduardo had been angry, and he'd been hurt - and he'd gone out drinking, just like tonight, and had ended up in a club, just like this one.
That night, he'd been on the dance floor, chasing after some girl, when he'd glanced across the club, and had noticed someone standing at the edge of the room, looking in his direction.
Eduardo had recognized the kid immediately - because, well, he had been hard to miss. Big, muscular, an athlete with a movie-star face and an Olympic physique. Eduardo had seen him many times around campus, with his identical twin brother. In fact, Eduardo wasn't even sure which of the Winklevoss twins he was looking at. Just that it was one of them, right in front of him, barely ten feet away in some nameless New York club.
Right there and then, Eduardo had let the emotions and the alcohol get the better of him. Maybe, deep down, he'd had a premonition about what was going to happen between him and Mark. Or maybe he had just been drunk.
Whatever the reason, he'd walked right up to the Winklevoss twin, and had held out his hand.
As the stunned kid had stared at him, Eduardo had let the words come spilling out:
"I'm sorry. He screwed me like he screwed you guys."
And without another word, he had turned - and disappeared back onto the dance floor.