In 2004, Joe Green was living close enough to Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard to witness the chaotic early period that produced Facebook, yet when Zuckerberg asked him to leave university and help build the fledgling social network, Green made the decision that would follow him through almost every retelling of the company’s origin story: he said no. It was not because Green thought the idea was worthless or because he had fallen out with Zuckerberg, but because an earlier online experiment had already brought the two students dangerously close to serious disciplinary trouble, and Green’s father wanted his son nowhere near another project that might end with him being expelled from Harvard.
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