Transcript
Introduction
"His name was Mark Zuckerberg. He was a sophomore. And although Eduardo had spent a fair amount of time at various Epsilon Pi events with him, along with at least one pre-punch Phoenix event that Eduardo could remember, he still barely knew the kid. Mark's reputation, however, definitely preceded him. A computer science major who lived in Eliot House, Mark had grown up in the upper middle class of Dobbs Ferry, New York, the son of a dentist and a psychiatrist. In high school, he's supposedly been some sort of master hacker. So good at breaking into computer systems that he ended up on some random FBI list somewhere, or so the story went. Whether or not that was true, Mark was certainly a computer genius. He had made a name for himself at Exeter when after he had honed his coding skills, he created a computerized version of the game, Risk.
He and a buddy had created a software program called Synapse, a plug-in for MP3 players that allowed players to -- that allowed the players to "learn" a user's preferences and create tailored playlists based on that information. Mark had posted Synapse as a free download on the web and almost immediately, major companies came calling, trying to buy Mark's creation. Rumor was Microsoft had offered Mark between $1 million and $2 million to go work for them. And amazingly, Mark had turned them down. He followed Synapse up with a program he'd written at Harvard, something called Course Match that allowed Harvard kids to see what classes other kids have signed up for. Eduardo had checked it out himself once or twice, trying to track down random hot girls he met in the dining hall, to little avail. But the program was good enough to get a pretty big following. Most of the campus appreciated Course Match, if not the kid who created it."