It’s roughly 2006 I believe that this occurred.
While Tim was busy studying away on a Friday night flipping thru the dense pages of another engineering book full of graphs and no color pictures of anything interesting, he gets a call. It’s one of his CalTech buddies.
I assume the conversation went something like this:
CalTech Dude: “Hey Tim, wanna go with me to this private party in this suite at The Standard Hotel?”
Tim: “Um, I got a lot of studying to do.”
CalTech Dude: “C’mon Tim! It’s at The Standard! It’s like a private party with all these cool people! No boring engineering stuff tonight man! I got this private invite.”
Tim: “Ok, I’ll go.”
Tim and CalTech Dude get all dressed up for a night of partying at one of the hottest Los Angeles scenes at the time. They arrive at the hotel to find a huge line of overanxious people waiting to get into the club. I can picture what Tim probably saw: a queue full of young girls with dresses too tiny to cover anything, struggling to stand straight in 6 inch heels, packs of males everywhere with mouths agape circling about with their shirts unbuttoned wreaking of Coolwater and Old Spice (Axe had not come along yet).
Tim was most likely intimidated by this human moshpit of Maybelline meets Hilfiger.
CalTech Dude probably turned to Tim at this point and said (in his suburbia slang): “Look man, this line ain’t for us. Let me give my guy a call. We’re VIP status tonight.”
Tim (wide-eyed and bewildered): “Ok.”
CalTech Dude (grinning ear to ear): “We’re cool, the guy is coming down to get us. We’re set man!”
The elevator doors opens. Out walks Mark Zuckerberg. Invisible at the time to anyone, Mark’s nervous. According to Tim, sweating profusely.
Mark: “Thanks for coming. Look, the hotel people are giving me funny looks. I think they’re onto us holding a party in the suite. I’m going to give you a key. Let yourself in. If anyone looks at you weird, just keep walking past the room.”
CalTech Dude: “Cool man, btw this is my friend Tim.”
Mark: “Nice to meet you, but I gotta get back. Remember, be careful. It’s crazy in our suite right now. You think it’s crazy down here? (Laughs)”
Mark hurries off pretending to buy a soda at the vending machine.
Tim: “Is that your friend?”
CalTech Dude: “Yeah and no. I’m part of this website called The Facebook. He’s the guy that started it I think. He wants to meet all the college people on it. They’re doing like a west coast tour, maybe recruiting.”
Tim: “Ok.”
CalTech Dude and Tim nervously strut past the dense line of towering females with legs for days being courted by men who use more hair gel than common sense. Like two champions, they hit the “Up” button. The doors to Valhalla slide open.
Their heart rates increase with every floor surpassed. I don’t know what imagery flashed through their heads during that ride, but it definitely wasn’t a bland dorm room full of text books nor overpriced college paraphernalia. This was their moment. A real Friday, with adventure beckoning. No more studying alone, no more boring textbooks, no more Cup O’Noodle. Tonight, they would be men!
The doors slide open. The entire floor is quiet. Too quiet. The first beads of perspiration from anticipation form. They proceed down the well lit cavernous hallway. Cautiously, they approach the door, pausing to regain their composure.
CalTech Dude: “You ready Tim? This is it.”
Tim: “Oh man!”
CalTech Dude slides the room key into the slot. The instant before the electrical relay clicks open, they stop breathing.
“CLICK!”
CalTech Dude slowly opens the heavy door. It’s party time.
Their eyes open wide, wide for two Asian males. What they see is nothing compared to what they imagined moments ago. Their mouths probably slacked open from the irony all too real before their eyes.
A very quiet suite not quite filled to capacity. And standing around, 11 awkward guys, all with hands in their pockets. Engineers.
Tim never said if he had fun or not, but the whole experience of it was the more interesting part for him. What he stressed was that everyone at the party was strange and a tad anti-social, even from an engineer’s perspective. Tim mentioned this could had been his chance to have been part of Facebook at its infancy. Ultimately, he couldn’t hang with the crowd in that room long term. So he never pursued it.