Fourth Version, LLC

So the wife and I had the rare opportunity to have a date night this past weekend. Typically when we are able to do this we go grab dinner in the late-ish evening and make a game time decision as to whether or not we will go and catch a movie. Unlike previous date nights, this one didn’t pan out that way. My wife being the genius that she is decided to pick Alamo Drafthouse as the spot for us to go to which serves Dinner WITH the movie. Genius. Her genius of course didn’t stop there as she picked “The Social Network” as the movie we would watch. By my count she was two for two.

Given that she just recently joined Facebook (I know right?) it didn’t come as a complete shock to me that she picked that movie. I had recently read a ton about the movie online and have been completely enamored with the “Creep” rendition in the original trailer. What did surprise me was how into the movie she actually was. The two hour movie was riddled with her nudging me asking me “Was that true?”, “What about that?”, “Is his character real?”. Hilarious to hear it coming from her if you know her.

The movie tells the story of Mark Zuckerberg, boy genius, and creator of Facebook. It was mildly based on the book “The Accidental Billionaires” but really came out of the mind of Aaron Sorkin, boy genius writer and creator of “The West Wing” as well as countless other things. It had a mix of woven timelines starting from when Mark was at Harvard “coming up with the idea” of Facebook, mixed in with conference room depositions from when Mark was being sued by various people. Of these deposition timelines I felt that the Eduardo Severin timeline was the best. Honestly I felt the whole movie was more about the Mark Zuckerberg/Eduardo Severin dynamic than anything else about the story of Facebook.

I enjoyed the movie alot. I think the story is fascinating first and foremost because of the line of work I am in and secondly because of the reach that this product has on a global level. To think that such a globally recognized application had such humble beginnings is truly inspiring. I can’t help but think that the movie wasn’t so much about Zuckerberg, but about Severin. If you’ve seen it you may agree with me, if you haven’t, try to pay attention to that dynamic. In the end I really felt for Severin. He was obviously pushed out of Facebook for valid or invalid reasons but what was so surprising to me was that he sued not only for his percentage of the company (which he ultimately did not receive the full 34%) but to be named as a Co-Founder of the company on the mast head of the site. I’m not sure if that’s a Brazilian pride thing, or if that is the thing that would have irked Mark Zuckerberg more than anything else. Interesting to say the least.

I would definitely recommend the movie. I would read as much about it as you can before going in so you can truly differentiate between hollywood and reality. The reality ultimately comes down to this: a great product was made by a brilliant group of developers, the Winklevoss twins did get the 65 million and are re-suing for more because they feel the valuation was off when they settled, Sean Parker was caught with coke and forced out of the company, and Severin is named as Co-Founder, owns 5% of the company, which today is valued at $1.3 billion dollars. Not a bad haul for a $19 thousand dollar investment.

Oh and the jury is still out on Mark Zuckerberg. No one can really tell if he is a boy genius or a diabolical villain who now has access to billions of peoples online identities. Figuring out if he will use this data for good or evil still remains to be seen. No matter, to me, he has pulled off one of the most amazing feats of our time: getting my wife to sign up for Facebook. Boom.