The Accidental Billionaires

What Hacker News says

1. frikMay 2014
   You should read the book "The Accidental Billionaires", the screenplay is based on that book.

   As with every movie, they had to shortening some scenes like "hacking" houses websites and coding Facemesh in one night (in the book and in reality it was not that case - it took several days/nights).

   And the book is missing a side-"story" too. There was already a "Face Book" kind of website called houseSYSTEM. And Zuckerberg tricked this guy: http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/essay.html?id=80

   So the reality is even wilder than the movie.

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2. kmavmSep 2010
   The Facebook Effect is about the product and company Facebook, as opposed to Zuckerberg, per se. In tone, it more closely resembles business non-fiction, or long-form journalism, than the celebrity biopic style of The Accidental Billionaires, on which the film is based. So it's less fun as beach reading, but in my opinion more accurate, and probably of more use to somebody in the business.

   Kirkpatrick had unprecedented access to much of the early team, including people who were no longer with Facebook. He does come off as slightly star-struck at times, and not just at Mark Zuckerberg, so keep your salt-shaker handy.

   Disclaimer: I work at Facebook, and am proud to call Zuck a friend.

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3. mandeepjMar 2026
   > grow to be one of youngest billionaires

   Are you equating intelligence with networth? :-)

   I think it's more like this https://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Billionaires-Founding-Face...

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4. evaneliasMar 2025
   The author of Chaos Monkeys was hired by Facebook in 2011, the same year as the author of Careless People.

   Facebook launched in 2004, so in both cases it isn't exactly "early days" of the company, especially compared to The Accidental Billionaires (which The Social Network film was based on).

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5. trevynSep 2024
   Ah, here we go:

   A. Background About Aaron Greenspan 1. Defendant Mr. Greenspan is the Chief Executive Officer of Defendant TCC, which operates PlainSite.org, an online repository for legal pleadings from state and federal court lawsuits in the United States.1 Mr. Greenspan is a short seller of Tesla stock and member of the $TSLAQ anti- Tesla group on social media, where Mr. Greenspan goes by the Twitter handle @AaronGreenspan. Mr. Greenspan also posts anti-Tesla messages on social media on behalf of PlainSite.org, using the Twitter handle @PlainSite. 2. Mr. Greenspan has made a career out of threatening and harassing individuals and businesses. His first major target was Facebook. Mr. Greenspan was a Harvard classmate of Mark Zuckerberg’s (“Mr. Zuckerberg”). After Mr. Zuckerberg’s success in founding Facebook, Mr. Greenspan asked Mr. Zuckerberg if Facebook would hire him as Vice President of Engineering. After Mr. Zuckerberg declined, Mr. Greenspan threatened to sue Facebook, claiming that he was Facebook’s true founder. Mr. Greenspan also petitioned the United States Trademark Office to cancel two of Facebook’s registered trademarks for the term “Facebook.” Mr. Greenspan also publicly claimed that Facebook had failed to address various privacy and security issues.2 Mr. Greenspan and Facebook ultimately reached a confidential settlement for a reportedly nominal amount. 3. Mr. Greenspan continued with similar tactics against Random House Publishing and Columbia Pictures. Mr. Greenspan wrote a “memoir” regarding his purported founding of Facebook and asked the Doubleday division of Random House to publish it. Doubleday rejected Mr. Greenspan’s book, and subsequently published a different account of Facebook’s founding by Ben Mezrich titled, The Accidental Billionaires, which later provided the basis for the movie The Social Network. Mr. Greenspan responded by suing Random House, Mezrich and his company, and Columbia Pictures, which had released The Social Network. Mr. Greenspan asserted a variety of claims, including that Mr. Greenspan had been “defamed by omission” because he was not included as a character in The Accidental Billionaires and The Social Network. Mr. Greenspan’s claims were all dismissed with prejudice by the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, and the dismissal was unanimously affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Greenspan v. Random House, Inc., 895 F. Supp. 2d 206 (D. Mass. 2012), aff’d, 2012 WL 5188792 (1st Cir. Oct. 16, 2012). 4. Undeterred by his failed lawsuit against Random House, Columbia Pictures, and Mezrich, Mr. Greenspan became a serial litigator, filing more than 60 lawsuits (either directly or through organizations he controlled) against over 100 victims. Among them, Mr. Greenspan’s company, TCC, sued California Governor Jerry Brown, then-Attorney General of California Kamala Harris, and various other state government officials, because Greenspan was forced to shut down a startup of his, FaceCash, due to consumer protection law violations. TCC’s suit was dismissed. Think Computer Corp. v. Venchiarutti, No. 5:11-cv-05496-HRL (N.D. Cal. June 25, 2015), ECF No. 70. 5. Additionally, Mr. Greenspan’s company, TCC, sued much of Silicon Valley, including Stanford University, venture capital firms such as Andreesen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, and Sequoia Capital, and tech companies such as Coinbase, Facebook (again), Square, and Stripe, among many others, alleging that they operated without money transmitter licenses purportedly required by California law and asserting federal false advertising claims and various state law claims. That suit was dismissed as well. Think Computer Corp. v. Dwolla, Inc., 5-13-CV-02054-EJD, 2014 WL 1266213 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 24, 2014).

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6. bhlJan 2020
   Ben Mezrich, author of the Accidental Billionaires which was later adapted into the Social Network, has a differing opinion: like Liars Poker and Wall Street, the movie made Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg more well known and popular than before.
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