Larry Summers doesn't much care for Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. The former Harvard president bashed the Winklevoss twins this week at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference, calling the pair "a**holes."
"Rarely have I encountered such swagger, and I tried to respond in kind," Summers said in a Brainstorm Tech interview Wednesday, describing his encounter with the "Winklevii" in his Harvard office, when the twin Olympic-class rowers attempted to win him over with their allegation that fellow Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg stole their social networking idea and programming code to create Facebook.
The twins and their business partner Divya Narendra went on to create ConnectU, a far less successful site than Facebook. A legal battle between the trio and Zuckerberg eventually netted Narendra and the Winklevoss twins a 2008 settlement in cash and Facebook stock valued then at $65 million, but that is likely worth much more today.
But the Winklevosses and Narendra have since attempted to pull out of the deal, claiming that their right to an ownership stake in Facebook still stands. Though they've been repeatedly shot down in the courts, the trio continues to fight its legal battle against Zuckerberg and Facebook.
"One of the things you learn as a college president is that if an undergraduate is wearing a tie and jacket on Thursday afternoon at three o'clock, there are two possibilities," Summers told Fortune. "One is that they're looking for a job and have an interview. The other is that they are an a**hole. This was the latter case."
The encounter in Summer's office was later dramatized in the film "The Social Network." Summers didn't dispute the movie's portrayal of his dealings with twins, according to Fortune.
Summers' opinion of the Winklevoss twins is likely shared by many who've seen "The Social Network," or kept up with the twins' ongoing, seemingly grasping legal effort to show the courts that Zuckerberg stole their idea.
On the other hand, Summers has his own critics, particularly for the role he's played as one of President Barack Obama's top economic advisers in the wake of a near-catastrophic global economic meltdown and ensuing recession.
The Winklevii may be swaggering a**holes, but some might note that at least they didn't help orchestrate a regulatory rebuke of the giant financial institutions that brought the world economy to the brink so mild in actual effect, it was less a slap on the wrist than a hand massage followed by the presentation of an expensive charm bracelet festooned with even more keys to the global economy.