#24 No Better Time: The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one time only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like the Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories, and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets, they're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high, so I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show, so we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today, and I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. In the spring of 2011, a friend asked if I was interested in a job co-producing an independent film tribute for the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. The subject, he explained, was a passenger on the first plane to crash into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. From there, the story took on a life of its own. It is the story of Danny Lewin, who was almost certainly the first victim of the 9-11 attacks. It's the story of an extraordinary gifted young man who believed anything was possible and that nothing stand in his way. Of an all-American kid who moved to Israel against his will, ended up falling hopelessly in love with the country, and served as an officer in the most elite unit of the Israeli army. Of a young soldier who trained to hunt and kill terrorists and who, in a tragic twist of irony, later died at their hands. Of a loud, irreverent computer science student who formed a beautiful friendship with a soft-spoken, reserved professor. Of a husband and a father who spent years struggling to make ends meet and became a billionaire almost overnight. Of a theoretical mathematician who wrote a set of algorithms that would change the internet forever.
So that's from the preface of the book, No Better Time, The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, The Genius Who Transformed the Internet by Molly Knight Raskin.
That one paragraph is a great description, I guess, of why I think this book is important and why I wanted to cover it on the podcast. In his short 31-year life, he winds up becoming an elite officer, let's say in the Israeli version of kind of like the Navy SEAL equivalent of what we have in America, and becomes an extremely talented computer science student, and then founds a company and becomes a billionaire. So he got a lot done in his short time here. Okay, so let's jump right into the book. This is a part I found interesting, where Danny's future co-founder, Professor Layton, is describing Danny's personality. So it says he, which is Danny, who they're referring to, he was immediately assigned to Professor Layton, first as his teaching assistant, then as his research assistant. Professor Layton was at that time the head of the algorithms group at LCS. When they refer to LCS throughout the book, that's MIT's Laboratory of Computer Science. So Professor Layton's heading the algorithms group at LCS, and he starts to build a relationship with Danny. And it says, Layton soon found himself looking forward to Lewin, that's Danny's last name, to Lewin's visits which punctuated his typically quiet, serious academic life with bursts of exuberance. And it wasn't just the student's gusto that intrigued Layton. When he spoke about topics that energized him, which seemed to include almost everything, Lewin became so animated, arms gesticulating, eyes ablaze, that his enthusiasm was infectious. We're going to come back to his enthusiasm and his passion over and over again in the book, too. What stood out to me was how engaging he was, almost like this live wire. When Danny was excited about something, you couldn't help but get excited, too.
Few paragraphs down. It says, In the cluttered, unkept halls of LCS, over desks piled high with papers and textbooks, are crossing the campus quads. Lewin and Leighton spent hours absorbed in mind-bending conversations about math and computer science. I felt like I was talking to an equal, we called Leighton. He'd think of clever ways to take an idea in some new direction. Lewin joined Leighton's algorithms group, which was grappling with a challenging set of problems centered on this new mode of communication, the internet, and some barriers to its growth. The reason this is important, well, let me give some context first. If you listen to last week's podcast, the events in No Better Time take place around the same time as the events in the New New Thing. So we're talking late 90s, early 2000 And this sentence right here, it says, the algorithm of the group is meeting and they're grappling with the challenging set of problems centered on this new mode of communication, the internet, and some of the barriers to its growth. That is the fundamental problem they're solving, and their solution is founding the company of Akamai. And we'll see how they get there in a second. So let's skip ahead a little bit.