Bojan the Top7 Dog

Aaron Sorkins movie “The Social Network”, has been the talk of the town – both in Hollywood and Silicon Valley. The movie tells the story of how Facebook, the world’s largest and most powerful social network, came into being. The beast was born in the bedroom of two undergraduate students who, if the film is to believed, had less success with the ladies than Chris Griffin.

The story is told through the unfolding of two lawsuits brought against Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO. The first is brought by the Winklevoss twins, a pair of All American jocks, born with silver spoons in their mouths, and proud Harvard men. They accuse Zuckerberg of stealing their idea, but their claim is interesting mainly for the narrative it provides – they never really had an idea as all encompassing as Facebook. At best, they can accuse Zuckerberg of “leading them on”.

However, the second law suit, brought by Zuckerberg’s room mate and best friend Eduardo Saverin raises some fascinating issues – and ones that persist within the world of Venture Capital and Startup Entrepreneurship.  The story  is one of deceit, ego, and betrayal, but the viewer is left unclear about exactly who is in the wrong. Who is the villain and who is the hero? The story – as told by the film at least – is that Saverin backed Facebook with $19,000 in return for 30% of the company, and a position as CFO. Once Facebook became a success, he was tricked into signing papers that decreased his equity in the company to 0.03%.

The film makes it quite clear that Eduardo is tricked into “signing his own death warrant”, as he puts is. But Zuckerberg’s motivation in all of this is less clear. He seems pretty disinterested in wealth, so what was it that caused him to stick a knife in the back of his best friend? The only friend who supported him at College? The friend who had believed in him enough to back him with his own money from the outset?

The viewer is left with only speculation, but I can not help but think that a part of Zuckerberg felt that his financial backer did not “deserve” to share in Facebook’s success. Zuckerberg spent night and day working on Facebook. Thinking of new features. Programming its pages and algorithms. What did Eduardo do? He simply opened a bank account and transferred a few thousand dollars. He didn’t join the group in moving down to Palo Alto. He didn’t share Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for Facebook – and quite probably, he would have taken Facebook down the wrong path if he had more power.

Zuckerberg is probably not the first CEO of a startup to feel this way about their financial backers – and it raises a fascinating debate about the importance of funding, versus the rare genius and idea that can go on to be a startup success. Is it fair that Eduaro Saverin should become one of the wealthiest men in the world simply because he had the good fortune to share a room with “the next Bill Gates”? It’s true he did not do anything wrong – everything was legal. But did he really expect to own 30% of one of the world’s largest companies without contributing anything more than $19,000 in cash? In some ways, it is hard to say that Zuckerberg may not have seen some poetic justice in the cruel trick that was played on Eduardo Saverin.