Zero to One_ Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future ( PDFDrive )

Another example is Sean Parker, who started out with the ultimate outsider
status: criminal. Sean was a careful hacker in high school. But his father decided
that Sean was spending too much time on the computer for a 16-year-old, so one
day he took away Sean’s keyboard mid-hack. Sean couldn’t log out; the FBI
noticed; soon federal agents were placing him under arrest.
Sean got off easy since he was a minor; if anything, the episode emboldened
him. Three years later, he co-founded Napster. The peer-to-peer file sharing
service amassed 10 million users in its first year, making it one of the fastestgrowing
businesses of all time. But the record companies sued and a federal
judge ordered it shut down 20 months after opening. After a whirlwind period at
the center, Sean was back to being an outsider again.
Then came Facebook. Sean met Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, helped negotiate
Facebook’s first funding, and became the company’s founding president. He had
to step down in 2005 amid allegations of drug use, but this only enhanced his
notoriety. Ever since Justin Timberlake portrayed him in The Social Network,
Sean has been perceived as one of the coolest people in America. JT is still more
famous, but when he visits Silicon Valley, people ask if he’s Sean Parker.