Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, published by Doubleday

The author’s note at the beginning of the book tells you straight away that this is not a standard ‘this is how we conquered the world’ story. It reveals that the author has written the book in ‘story’ form and has used ‘re-created dialogue’. Even more revealing, the author has received cooperation from many of the people involved but Mark Zuckerberg - the main creator of Facebook - ‘declined to speak to me despite numerous requests’.

Thus this book has to be accepted for what it is, an incomplete and probably biased account of what happened, particularly as Eduardo Saverin, the original co-founder, did cooperate and features as one of the aggrieved parties in the disputes that later took place.

The big advantage of the chosen format is that it reads like a novel and engages the reader from page 1. The first half of the book is all about Harvard University and the life of students there, including the pressure to find the right social network and the chase for sexual engagement, both of which were fundamental to the idea and the success of Facebook.

Zuckerberg is painted as the typical computer geek who has established a reputation by reportedly turning down a million dollar offer from Microsoft even before he entered Harvard. He develops his Facebook model by simple observation of how social networks operate in real-life and how technology can enhance and improve the experience. There is some dispute about whether he borrows the ideas of others along the way but it is clear that his model is superior to all the many competitors at Harvard.

Saverin is a financial whiz who has already made money and provides the financial backing to set up Facebook and extend it to other Universities. But Zuckerberg opts out of Harvard and takes some fellow geeks to California to work on the technology while Saverin stays on the East Coast and tries to find financial backers and recruit advertisers.

They both succeed in their different ways but the differences in philosophy are too wide to be resolved and they fall out over ownership rights. In the meantime another group of Harvard students believe that Zuckerberg stole their ideas and the main result seems to be that the lawyers have a field day!

However all this does not stop the Facebook idea becoming the most amazing global phenomenon, second only to Google in its rate of expansion and impact on the modern culture. The title of the book certainly describes the financial outcome for Zuckerberg and probably Saverin once the legal disputes have been settled, but the use of the word ‘Accidental’ is perhaps more questionable. Certainly Zuckerberg did not seem to have money making on his mind when he started Facebook but the way he developed the idea to meet the needs of young people for social networking was by no means accidental.

All in all, a great read and a fascinating story with lots of lessons for would be entrepreneurs.