The Accidental Billionaires
The original book behind the 2010 movie The Social Network, the novel The
Accidental Billionaires tells the intricate story behind the founding of
one of today’s most dominant technology companies: Facebook. Told from the
perspectives of Mark Zuckerburg, the Winklevoss twins, and a lesser-known but
influential cofounder, Eduardo Sauverin, the novel focuses on the years
2002–2004: the initial startup of the company, and its growth from even before
the conflict between Zuckerburg and the Harvard Connection team right up to
Zuckerburg’s establishment as the leader of the company and rift with his
initial closest friends and partners.
A great deal of biographies I’ve read on companies and centers of
innovation rightfully provide the full history of the company in the read, of
course focusing on their founding but also writing about modern innovation. The Accidental Billionaires chooses to
focus solely on the startup and first couple years of Facebook, leaving a
majority of its major growth into one of the world’s primary technology
companies untouched. I found this style to be quite interesting, leaving out most
of the main technical details which similar novels cover to focus on conflict
and relationship. Likely, this was due to the fact that Facebook’s initial
history was filled with conflict like very few major modern companies, and I
felt that the novel did a good job portraying it. That being said, it does
leave a fair amount of reading to be desired, as especially if you’ve watched
the movie, there’s no coverage of any of the real conflict (a great deal of
lawsuits) which Zuckerburg had to face. I felt that it would’ve been nicer if
the book included some of these; it ended on a bit of an abrupt note.
The multiple switching perspectives in the novel were a nice touch, as
they gave insight into what each of the major players in the ‘game’ that was
the founding of Facebook were thinking. Some novels do a good job managing to
incorporate multiple viewpoints without confusing the reader, and I felt that The Accidental Billionaires provided a
nice touch there. As a technology enthusiast, the surface level details that
the novel went into when describing the actual technical details of Facebook
were nice, as they stuck to the theme while also giving an insight into what
the technology field was like at the time. Although not as much as other novels
due to its brevity, I felt it was fairly immersive. In general, The Accidental Billionaries is an
interesting read about the founding of one of the major technology companies of
today, that has great detail but leaves a bit to be desired. It’s a fairly
light read that essentially anyone can pick up.
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