This was published 12 years ago
The man who said 'no' to co-founding Facebook with Zuckerberg, costing him millions
Joe Green, Harvard University roommate of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, has revealed how he turned down an offer to drop out and co-found Facebook with Zuckerberg, a decision said to have cost him about $US400 million.
Green was a roommate of Zuckerberg in 2004 when he turned down the offer so he could instead finish university.
Early days ... Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on the left, Joe Green on the right.
He had previously worked on another project with Zuckerberg called FaceMash - the "hot or not" website that let Harvard students rate female students based on their appearance.
It got him into hot water with the university, which threatened expulsion.
Joe Green . . . said 'no' to Zuckerberg when asked to found Facebook.
"We'd gotten into a little bit of trouble with the previous project," Green told ABC News, which recently interviewed him.
"My father who was a professor was not too happy with the prospect of me getting kicked out of school. Zuckerberg likes to make fun of my dad for this but we're still very close."
Instead of co-founding Facebook with Zuckerberg, Green worked for John Kerry, helping him in his failed 2004 US presidential campaign.
He now works at a for-profit business called Causes, a Facebook app and website that has raised $US50million for more than 50,000 charities in the past four or so years.
ABC News said Green had no regrets about not co-founding Facebook but said he had plenty of stock in the social networking giant, which is said to be filing this week for an initial public offering, which could value it at $US100 billion.
Fairfax Media