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Dzindzichashvili and asked him to put up his nephew and Parker. Dzindzichashvili gave Parker his address in Sausalito, across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County, and told him to take a taxi. Parker gathered his bags and arrived late at night, having traveled three thousand miles to a bizarre new world. A gruff, potbellied giant speaking in a thick Russian accent greeted him at the door. "Sleep in there," Dzindzichashvili said. "We talk in morning."

Shawn arrived a day or so later, exhausted from being unable to sleep on the flight. "I was in really bad shape, just from programming for eight months. I hadn't been exercising or lifting weights," he said. "I was going to a strange place. I didn't get a sense of what I was getting into or really much of an understanding for what it meant to start a company or raise money or any of those things." With the Internet bubble in full bloom, finding somewhere to live was close to impossible for anyone of modest means, let alone a teenager without a credit history. So Shawn and Parker lived with Dzindzichashvili for three months. Together, they tried to adjust to their host's strange ways. Among other things, he would order them to stay silent and in their bedrooms when his chess pupils came over. He was renowned as a chess instructor, and nervous parents would bring their children over in the hope that they had produced the next Bobby Fischer. The parents would wait tensed on the couch and staring as Dzindzichashvili played the children and coached. Dzindzichashvili was usually serious, and the humor he did display seemed equally black. Parker had never seen anything like it, but Shawn had: It was a Russian sense of humor, the same kind that Dmitry Dakhnovsky had shown at Chess.net.

Once, when both Napster founders were in their rooms, they heard a searing, maniacal laugh. Alarmed that something was wrong, they ran downstairs to the room where Dzindzichashvili slept. When they looked in, they saw the giant sitting in front of his computer screen, his face red, laughing so hard that it must have hurt. He kept pointing at the screen, where a programmed cartoon figure would dance when Dzindzichashvili clicked on it with the cursor. "He dances! Look at him!" he boomed, near tears.

The living situation was not the only logistical hurdle for the teenagers. There were also the matters of transportation and of meeting

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