Feature
A novel read
07 April 2011
The author of the blockbuster book The Accidental Billionaires – on which the 2010 Oscar-winning movie ‘The Social Network’ is modelled – has spent the major part of his working life tracing the footsteps of ambitious and geeky young entrepreneurial men on their path to riches. So what makes someone entrepreneurial?
“They are all hacker people who are not good with authority and are looking for a revolution; not to get rich,” Ben Mezrich’s view on what makes a dot com billionaire isn’t necessarily received wisdom, but it is based on his insight into Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook founder’s early years spearheading what has become a global phenomenon.
“Zuckerberg was an outsider who worked to create something cool and to show the world what he could do. But what you also need for success today is someone who is thinking about the billions, to rein in the genius every now and again,” Mezrich adds.
He points to Google’s model where, until very recently, Larry Page and Sergey Brin deferred to respected businessman Eric Schmidt in order to gain the respectability they needed on Wall Street. The change at the head of Google, with the ‘garage duo’ once again taking control, signals the resurgence of the dot com entrepreneur and his renewed role as the figurehead of the organisation.
Just take a look at Apple and Twitter alongside Google and Facebook. Without fail, they all have a founder and entrepreneur at the helm. But why is Silicon Valley in 2011 still not turning out more ‘two women in a garage’ teams? Mezrick responds: “Technology businesses are usually founded by guys as it is the guys who are locked in a dorm room alone. The majority of maths students are men and the creation of a dot com billion dollar business is very much a male fantasy.” The lack of women in the Facebook founding story is not out of step with the demographic of start-ups in the Valley. According to findings from the Center for Women’s Business Research, women own 40% of private businesses in the US. However, figures from Astia, a global not-for- profit organisation that advises female entrepreneurs, show that women only create 8% of VC-backed technology start-ups in the US.
While Mezrich cheekily suggests he does not know what dreams women locked in their rooms are following, he does say that taking risks is a massive part in making a dot com a success.
“Mark left his safety zone and moved to the Valley; Eduardo [an early cofounder of Facebook who retains 5% equity] didn’t. That was a big difference in how Facebook has evolved,” he says.
Facebook certainly wasn’t the first social network in existence, so why has it grown to more than 500 million users worldwide, while other networks such as Friendster and, more recently, Myspace have struggled? Aside from Facebook arriving at a time when “everyone wanted to be on the internet socially”, Mezrich believes that its core success is down to simplicity, which should serve as a massive warning to traditional media companies.
DIGITAL REVOLUTION
“Myspace was a poor user experience, which is why Facebook took off as it is so clean and easy to use,” he explains. “Traditional media companies are at a very dangerous point in time. People are finding what they want on the internet and they are getting better at finding it themselves or through their networks. It is becoming much harder to tell people what they should be watching, reading or consuming.” He adds: “Zuckerberg is right to call it a revolution.”
Although Mezrich does not forecast the end of TV, magazines and books (his next comes out later this year), he is a keen advocate of the digital revolution. “There is something foolish about trucks driving all over the world carrying millions of tonnes of paper,” he says. “The print business has to change and devices like the Kindle represent the future.”
The majority of the innovation changing the media business, from the Kindle to the iPad, is being driven out of Silicon Valley. Long held as the best place to have an idea, fund it, make it happen (and then probably sell it to Google), Mezrich’s view into the world of a technology media start-up has only served to harden his belief that there is simply nowhere else in the world that comes close to the entrepreneurial spirit found in the Santa Clara Valley.
Facebook is the embodiment of the American dream. While Mezrich admits it’s likely that we will see Chinese or Korean dreams in the future, the continuing networking of the world through the internet is creating a homogenous global society where local differences are outweighed by global shared experiences.
“Everything is going to become more familiar, no matter where it originates,” he says. “The Facebook experience is different from country to country, but it is becoming more similar and I think that is a good thing. We are witnessing a moment in history as we shift from one time to another, but soon it will pass and we will all share the same experiences.”
Mezrich predicts that Facebook will dominate our web lives for many years to come, despite only coming into existence a little over six years ago. But ask him which dot com entrepreneurial idea he would have liked for his own and he has only one answer – Amazon. “It was an amazing shift in the world. You didn’t need a physical store anymore and it actually changed how we did things,” he enthuses.
LIVING THE ONLINE WAY
Maybe it is a predictable answer from an author who has benefited from greater visibility on account of Amazon’s global success (even if the economics have shifted). Mezrich also cites the digital reader revolution as a massive change in our lives, and one which has brought fresh challenges for the publishing industry – whether this is combating Apple’s 30% share of revenue on all digital sales through iTunes, or countering consumers’ expectations that digital products should be free or at least cheaper than physical products.
But, ultimately, the conversation still comes back to Facebook. “Google is just a search tool. Facebook is how you live online,” says Mezrich, adding rather mischievously: “It is like what AOL was supposed to be.”
Luckily for Mezrich, one of the biggest changes social networking has brought with it is a new way for people to share content. Essentially, once you are known for something, others can more easily seek you out.
His next project is called Sex on the Moon and tells the story of a young man who falls in love with a 19 year-old-girl and does something crazy to impress her. He steals a safe containing NASA’s moon rocks from every lunar landing in history – a collection worth $500bn. He then spreads the moon rocks on his bed and has “sex on the moon” with his girlfriend. “He spent seven years in a federal prison and on the day he got out he got in touch with me,” says Mezrich.
With Sex on the Moon set to be made into a movie by the same team behind ‘The Social Network’, Mezrich has more reasons than many to believe that a more connected world is a better one.
Mezrich will be speaking at the Festival of Media Global in Montreux, Switzerland, 8-10 May 2011
Greg Brooks