Aaron Greenspan :: About :: The Long Version

Aaron Greenspan Hi there! I'm Aaron, and this is my web site.

What's your deal?

I grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where I attended the Shaker Heights schools. Like teachers in many public school systems, teachers in Shaker conflated excessive homework with learning, and I quickly grew frustrated with the oppressive amount of work that I had to do. To escape the madness I incorporated Think Computer Corporation in April, 1998 as a high school freshman, and began charging $25.00 per hour to fix computers for individuals and businesses in the Cleveland area. Though it required precious time, Think served as a welcome distraction, and allowed me to think for myself while solving real problems for at least a few hours each day.

With the dot-com boom in full swing by 1999, just one year later, Think won first place in the Junior Achievement Young IT Entrepreneur of the Year Award. I invested the $5,000.00 prize in the company's stock market portfolio, which crashed not too long after. So, I raised my hourly rate.

By my senior year of high school I had tired of fixing the same problems with Microsoft Windows-based PCs, so I decided to start writing software. My uncle's company was having trouble bringing its order management system into the internet age, and so during the summer of 2001, without knowing much about programming or accounting, I set out with a few friends to build a new system in the library of University School, around the corner from my house.

In the fall of 2001, I matriculated at Harvard College, where I met wonderful friends and terrible teachers (with a few notable exceptions). The technology at Harvard was about as old as the school, so I set about creating a new university portal called houseSYSTEM to fill the gaps. houseSYSTEM lasted six days before the administration tried to shut it down. Two months later, after a protracted battle, it was back up and running, and it even had a new feature: The Universal Facebook (also known as "The Facebook"), designed to unite the entire campus on one easy-to-search, opt-in directory, modeled after Harvard's printed "face books." One of my classmates in Computer Science 91r thought that this was a good idea.

I received my diploma early from college when it became clear that entrepreneurs weren't particularly welcome there, and spent the 2004-2005 academic year enjoying Cambridge and stumbling upon security flaws in computer software. After graduation, I moved to Dallas, Texas, where I continued working on the order management system and finding even bigger security issues. In 2006, I moved once again to Silicon Valley after noting that thefacebook.com, based in large part on The Universal Facebook, was worth $2 billion according to Businessweek. Unfortunately, no one believed my story, and so I wrote it down in a book. When no one in the New York publishing world found the story interesting, I published it myself.

After publishing the book, a very large search engine informed me that I was not allowed to advertise it because of a trademark owned by my former classmate's company. Representing myself for the majority of the proceedings, I petitioned to cancel two of that company's trademark filings before the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The matter was settled in 2009.

Who played you in the movie?

In 2010, Ben Mezrich authored a terribly inaccurate book (for which he was paid handsomely by Doubleday) using my book (that had just been rejected by Doubleday) as a reference. Before it was even published, Sony Pictures and Aaron Sorkin started turning it into a pretty entertaining but still inaccurate movie called "The Social Network." Since I declined the opportunity to be a "compelling character" in what was proposed to me as a thriller and later marketed as non-fiction, I wasn't in the movie. I'm okay with being left out of a fictional tale, but Mr. Mezrich has since made repeated false claims that both the book and movie are true, which makes the situation a bit more complicated.

I heard you sue a lot of people. Why don't you go build something useful?

I've built and am still building a lot of things, a few of which are listed on this page. Building products isn't easy, though. When people don't play fair and there are no repercussions, society ends up with bizarre economic distortions. I've noticed that these tend to come back to bite later on--so now I don't let them grow. That might mean that every now and then, I'm behind a lawsuit, but always with good reason. (And so far, my track record isn't too bad.)

So what do you do now?

Now I work on FaceCash, a fairly incredible mobile payment system that lets you pay with your phone and sign with your face. (Remember that order management system? Ten years later, FaceCash is part of it.) FaceCash is illegal in most states because the government is dysfunctional and banks are greedy. So I've found a new set of problems to solve.

Can you help me with my idea?

I always try to help people with good ideas, but I'm unlikely to get excited about social networks. Right now, I'm not looking for new projects or business partners.

What's with the Hebrew?

I've always liked languages (especially Hebrew), and the phrase on this web site translates to a kind of personal ethos: societal longevity through truth and innovation.

Wow, that was really long!

VL; RM If you want to read something even longer I'd recommend this book, which goes into a bit more detail.

Thanks for visiting!

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