Eduardo Saverin is media shy, a billionaire and the long-forgotten co-founder of Facebook, at least until Andrew Garfield portrayed him in The Social Network. Now he has decided to start speaking out.
In a blog post for CNBC, Saverin uncharacteristically opened up about the experience of having a key part of his life be dramatized on the big screen. While the vast majority of his post is a cheerleader piece on the merits of entrepreneurship and "intellectual capital," he does admit that he was humbled by the experience of watching someone portray him. He also goes out of his way to praise both Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook's effect on the world:
"With Facebook, we built a product because we believed in it and its function, and wanted it to exist.
Today, Facebook affects the world in so many more ways than just its initial execution at Harvard. Mark Zuckerberg successfully developed an entirely new world for daily interactions. Today, the Facebook platform brings a social layer to many of the ordinary actions we conduct online everyday."
Saverin has shied away from the media ever since leaving the company. Saverin was Zuckerberg's best friend, the company's first investor, and the original business manager and CFO when it first launched in Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room.
Instead of moving out with Zuckerberg to Palo Alto to grow the company though, he decided to work as a finance intern and the two began to have major conflicts over the direction of Facebook. Eventually the company was restructured, leaving Saverin out in the cold. His co-founder title was stripped and his share of Facebook reportedly dropped from 30% to less than 5%, for which he sued Facebook in 2009.
Eventually both sides settled and his status as co-founder was restored. He was also awarded roughly 5% of Facebook's shares, making his net worth somewhere in the range of $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion.
It's interesting that Saverin has decided to resurface today. He wouldn't talk to David Kirkpatrick for his book The Facebook Effect. Even his Facebook page is bare; it only has two posts. All it says is that he's a "technology entrepreneur and investor."