It's probably 40 degrees in the dilapidated Manhattan office that doubles as Peter Pezaris' apartment. He pulls his computer closer as if it were a hot water bottle. He can't turn on the heat. There is none. His stomach growls. The 99-cent Whopper didn't cut it for dinner. But the $12,000 annual salary he pays himself doesn't allot for prime beef.

It's bedtime. The clock reads 4:16 a.m. Before falling asleep, he thinks of tomorrow's routine, which never seems to change: 6 a.m. wakeup, 60-second freezing shower (hot water isn't an office amenity), work, lots of coffee, 99-cent Whoppers for meals, more work, bed around 4 a.m.

"I thought when I quit my Wall Street job, I would get more sleep," laughs Pezaris (S'92), who majored in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science. After Carnegie Mellon, he worked as a systems and software developer for three years at Salomon Brothers and then another year at Banker's Trust. Back then, he and his college buddies—Michael Gersh (HS'90), Khaled Matar (HS'91), and James Price (S'88), who all worked in New York—would often meet at a local bar, Flemings. During one get-together in August 1995, they yapped about Bill Gates.

"We were discussing how much money he has," recalls Pezaris, "and what we would do with that kind of money. And then we realized that instead of just talking about making money, we should make it, so someone could be talking about us someday!"

The Phi Kappa Theta fraternity brothers decided that night to start a business while keeping their full-time jobs. They spent nights and weekends creating an online restaurant guide. Didn't work out. Next came a Java-based billing system. Didn't work out, either. By then, more than a year had passed. Their next idea was to create an online game where users could draft Major League Baseball players to create a fantasy team and compete against fantasy teams of others by comparing actual statistics generated by the players during the baseball season. Nothing quite like this game existed on the Internet.

Pezaris remembers the date they conceived Commissioner.com: November 25, 1996. They planned to launch the site for baseball season, which gave them about six months to prepare. But then came an opportunity to place an ad on Yahoo's homepage, a premium space. The catch? The launch date had to move from April to January 1, 1997.

"We spent the next month essentially not sleeping. We worked our day jobs and then worked 15 to 16 hours at home," Pezaris remembers. "But we managed to launch on the first of January."

The schedule reminded him of Spring Carnival days during his senior year. He and his fraternity brothers worked on Booth while taking a full course load. Pezaris took charge of constructing a replica of the Victorian mansion from the board game Clue. "We got in way over our heads; we didn't know how we were going to finish it," Pezaris says. "All nighter after all nighter—we managed to pull it off. It was about 28 feet tall with a circular staircase made with real oak floors. It was built like a real house," he proudly recalls. Their Booth was so impressive that it was featured on the student handbook for the next few years.

The college friends found themselves in way over their heads again. Pezaris was once more in charge—this time with Commissioner.com. With his Wall Street job and heading the Web site launch, he found himself working more than 20 hours a day. He asked Gersh how he coped. Gersh told him to try 20-minute powernaps in the bathroom at work. The next day Pezaris took his friend's advice. He woke up refreshed but with traces of "if roll is empty, slide over to the right" imprinted on his forehead. It was a sign. He gave his notice.

Everyone tried to talk him out of it. His mom couldn't believe his "crazy decision" to quit his high-paying job for a start-up with no money, no backers, no nothing. Pezaris understood the concerns: "We didn't know what the outcome would be."

The months ahead—no heat, no hot water, no home cooking—aren't easy for Pezaris and his partners, including another alumnus and fraternity brother, David Hersh (HS'89, TPR'89). But what they are accomplishing, in a building that should have been condemned, is establishing the online fantasy sports industry. In addition to baseball, they develop and host computer fantasy leagues for auto racing, basketball, football, golf, hockey, and soccer.

Commissioner.com becomes a huge hit—literally. Just a little more than two years after the launch, Commissioner.com has roughly 150,000 paying customers and 500,000 registered users.

On December 7, 1999, CBS SportsLine bought Commissioner.com for $46 million. "When I pulled up my Citibank balance that day," remembers Pezaris, "I half expected to see $12, or whatever, in my checking account. But there were a lot of zeros. It was the most surreal thing."

Pezaris, Gersh, Hersh, and Price went to work for SportsLine, Pezaris as president of operations and product development. In 2004, the Commissioner.com founders were inducted into the Fantasy Sports Trade Association Hall of Fame. By then, though, the fraternity brothers were out of the fantasy business. "The arrangement of working for CBS worked great," says Pezaris, "but in 2003, we got the itch to start something new."

The foursome left CBS to create Multiply, a Web site that enables users to share digital media, including photos, blogs, videos, and music. Starting Multiply was slightly different than starting Commissioner.com, says Pezaris, Multiply's president: "We didn't have to eat 99-cent Whoppers and move into the office. We started Multiply with $1 million, so we really were able to hit the ground running."

Today, more than 20 million people visit Multiply each month, and Internet information provider comScore, Inc. lists Multiply as the eighth largest social networking site in the world.

Laurel Furlow, a former newspaper reporter, is the assistant director of on-campus programs in the Office of Alumni Relations. She is a regular contributor to this department.