Tyler Winklevoss

Tyler Winklevoss was born on August 21, 1981 in Southampton, New York. His father, Howard Edward Winklevoss, Jr., was a professor of actuarial science at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Later, his founded Winklevoss Consultants and Winklevoss Technologies and he is also the author of more than twenty books.

His mother’s name is Carol Winklevoss née Leonard. He has an identical twin named Cameron Winklevoss. As children, they were inevitably stopped on the road to be asked who among them was elder. They could not answer the question because they were never told.

It is not known when, but sometime after their birth, the family shifted to Greenwich, Connecticut. Here, the boys began their education at Greenwich Country Day School. Musically inclined, they also started studying classical piano from the age of six, continuing with their lessons till they were eighteen.

For their high school education, they were sent to Brunswick School, an all-boys college-preparatory private school in Greenwich. Here Tyler developed an interest in classics, taking up Latin and Ancient Greek.

In 1994, at the age of thirteen, after teaching himself HTML, he set up a website designing business with Cameron. Operating from their bedroom, they started working for fees, receiving anything between couple of hundred dollars to several thousand for each site. Lacking in time, they soon wind it up.

In December 2002, while Tyler and Cameron were studying economics at the Harvard University, they conceived the idea of opening a social networking site called HarvardConnection for Harvard students. In this, they were joined by Divya Narendra, who was then majoring in applied mathematics at Harvard.

In January 2003, they approached Sanjay Mavinkurve, another Harvard student, for programming work. But shortly after he had started the work, in Mavinkurve graduated from Harvard and left. Thereafter, they approached Victor Gao, another senior student and programmer.

Gao did not want to become a partner in the venture; deciding to work for HarvardConnection on work for hire basis, a condition, which the trio happily accepted. Eventually, he worked on the website code throughout the summer and fall of 2003, receiving a payment of $400.

By August 2003, they had created a prototype of HarvardConnection, completing the work on coding front-end pages, the registration system, a database, back-end coding etc. Possibly in November 2003, Gao left Harvard, suggesting that they should contact Mark Zuckerberg to complete the program.

Mark Zuckerberg had entered Harvard in 2002 and by 2003 he had developed his own programs like Coursematch and Facemash, becoming quite famous for them. On November 25, 2003, Tyler, Cameron and Narendra met Zuckerberg, where they explained to him about their project.

In 2007, while the litigation was going on, Tyler and Cameron were included in the United States Pan American Team, competing at the 2007 Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro, winning silver medal in coxless-four race and a gold medal in an eight-boat event at Rodrigo de Freitas.

In 2008, they participated in the Olympic Games as members of the United States Olympic Team, competing in the men’s coxless pair event at the Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park in Beijing, reaching the Final through Repechage. They finished sixth out of the fourteen teams that took part in the Olympic.

In 2009, Tyler and Cameron entered Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford for their MBA degree. There they continued to pay equal attention to academics and rowing, waking at 6:30 am to accommodate intensive training session at Boat Club as well as long hours of classroom lectures.

In March 2010, they rowed for the Blue Boat race in Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race on River Thames. Later in the same year, they received their MBA degree from Oxford and returned to the USA.

On December 21, 2009, while the Winklevoss brothers were still in England, Wayne Chang, the founder of i2hub Organization, launched a lawsuit against them, seeking 50% of the settlement for his involvement in setting up ConnectU. The lawsuit would however be dismissed in 2014.