The Baby Billionaires of Silicon Valley

Together, they stand for a place where all Americans are intuitively, and seamlessly, online, where the Net is less a destination than an inextricable extension of our lives — from the entertainment we choose to the social networks we form. Partly due to the combined efforts of the guys in this room, the long epoch of top-down culture — when publishers, producers and DJs could dictate the tastes of a generation — is fading faster than anyone predicted. The more vibrant world is bottom-up, powered by the people. Make a video, put it online; download a song, remix it, put it back up; hack a computer game, share it with friends. With cheap computers, free software, broadband access and enough Mountain Dew, a kid with a dream can sit down and make it all happen. And while that's scaring the shit out of everyone who thought they understood — and controlled — the culture before, it's just plain obvious to the generation leaving them behind. "What the old guard is missing is that this doesn't feel like a revolution to us," Ross says. "It feels like common sense."

But there's a price to be paid when you turn the world upside down. As these post-crash babies understand, the future isn't necessarily boundless. Though most were barely out of high school at the time, they all know what happened in the first Silicon Valley boom of the 1990s. Wide-eyed startups like Pets.com, Kozmo and Napster burned through hype and money without serving up that one crucial thing — a viable business plan. This new crew is struggling to avoid the same mistakes of excess, indulgence, selling out too soon. "We know the reasons the generation before us went over the cliff," offers Zuckerberg.

That's why they've gathered here tonight. This is one of the first meetings of a secret society they formed and jokingly called the Young Guns; a more apt moniker might be the Valley Brats. It's an invite-only cabal of the most powerful under-thirty-year-old mavericks in town. Every few weeks they gather to drink, plot global domination, make friends and, mainly, just act their age. "We got sick of hanging out with older guys," says the Brats' gregarious founder, Rob Pazornik, twenty-six-year-old creator of an online shopping startup called LicketyShip. "All they talk about is mortgages and nannies. It's like hanging out with your dad's friends."

But this geek frat isn't just about swilling drinks. It's not even much about business: It's a grasp for connections and control. Behind the meteoric hype is a group of ambitious young guys, fresh from school, being forced to grow up really fast. "Social life?" Sternberg says. "This is it." Now they've got the future on their shoulders, and they're doing everything they can to stay true to their grand visions and survive. "It's incredibly stressful," says Ross. "People around here see us as iconic figures, but we're just college students who got thrust into this role."

When Google handed YouTube $1.65 billion last month, it focused the world's attention back onto this mythological place called Silicon Valley. And for good reason: Hurley and his co-founder Steven Chen (the third co-founder, Jawed Karim, is now at Stanford University getting a degree in computer science), took the fastest meteor ride in Internet history, blazing from concept to the billionaires' club in just under a year. After meeting as grunts at PayPal, the online payment site, Hurley, who was working as a graphic designer, and Chen, an engineer, pulled all-nighters inside Hurley's garage to launch a startup of their own. The idea came after shooting video at a party and realizing there was no easy way to post it online. "It was a problem that everyone faced," Hurley explains to me in his San Mateo office. So they fixed it. "It was pretty simple: We removed the barriers for people to upload videos." No-brainer. And the Northern California Gold Rush was back on.