In 2004, the Winklevoss brothers sued Mark Zuckerberg, claiming he stole their ConnectU idea to create the social networking service site Facebook, and received $65 million as settlement.

[1] He is the son of Carol (née Leonard) and Howard Winklevoss,[2][3] who started an asset management company overseeing hundreds of millions of dollars, and is an author[4] and professor of actuarial science at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

[6][7] On June 14, 2002, Winklevoss's older sister, Amanda, died from cardiac arrest induced by drug overdose.

[16] The three conceived of a social network for Harvard students named HarvardConnection;[17] the concept ultimately expanded to other schools around the country.

In January 2003, they enlisted the help of fellow Harvard student, programmer and friend Sanjay Mavinkurve to begin building HarvardConnection.

[21] Gao, a senior in Mather House, opted not to become a partner in the venture, instead agreeing to be paid in a work for hire capacity.

[19] In November 2003, at the suggestion of Victor Gao, the Winklevosses and Narendra approached Mark Zuckerberg about joining the HarvardConnection team.

[20] In early November, Narendra emailed Zuckerberg saying, "We're very deep into developing a site which we would like you to be a part of and ... which we know will make some waves on campus.

[25] He was given the private server location and password for the unfinished HarvardConnection website and code,[19] with the understanding that he would finish the programming necessary for launch.

Zuckerberg writes: "I read over all the stuff you sent and it seems like it shouldn't take too long to implement, so we can talk about that after I get all the basic functionality up tomorrow night.

"[18] On December 10, 2003: "The week has been pretty busy thus far, so I haven't gotten a chance to do much work on the site or even think about it really, so I think it's probably best to postpone meeting until we have more to discuss.

"[18] On December 17, 2003,[24] Zuckerberg met with the Winklevosses and Narendra in his dorm room, allegedly confirming his interest and assuring them that the site was almost complete.

[20] On the whiteboard in his room, Zuckerberg allegedly had scrawled multiple lines of code under the heading "Harvard Connection," however, this would be the only time they saw any of his work.

[20] Two days later, on January 14, 2004,[24] Zuckerberg met again with the HarvardConnection team; however, he allegedly failed to disclose registering the domain name thefacebook.com or developing a competing social networking website.

[30] They also lodged a complaint with the Harvard administration regarding what they viewed as a violation of the university's honor code and student handbook.

[28] Between November 30, 2003, and February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg exchanged a total of 52 emails with the Harvard Connection team and engaged in multiple in-person meetings.

[28] During the same period of time, Zuckerberg engaged in multiple electronic instant message communications with people outside of the HarvardConnection team.

[32] The HarvardConnection team subsequently allegedly formed a partnership The Winklevoss Chang Group with i2hub, joining the popular peer-to-peer service with ConnectU.

The Winklevosses had argued that the court lacks jurisdiction because the settlement with Facebook has not been distributed and therefore Chang hasn't suffered any injury.

Chang alleges that he has received nothing in return for the substantial benefits he provided to ConnectU, including the value of his work, as well as i2hub's users and goodwill."

The court concludes that Chang has pled sufficient facts to confer standing with respect to his claims against the Winklevoss defendants.

In his junior year, he and his identical twin brother, Cameron Winklevoss, co-founded the crew program at their high school.

[63] As a Harvard Crimson in 2004, he helped the "God Squad" win the Eastern Sprints, the Intercollegiate Rowing Association Championship, and the Harvard–Yale Regatta to complete an undefeated collegiate racing season.

[71] He rowed with his brother in the men's coxless pair event which took place at the Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park.

[72] In 2012, Tyler and his brother Cameron founded Winklevoss Capital Management, a firm that invests across multiple asset classes with an emphasis on providing seed funding and infrastructure to early-stage startups.

[73] Tyler and his brother Cameron are both played by actor Armie Hammer in The Social Network (2010), a film directed by David Fincher about the founding of Facebook.

[74] Tyler and Cameron are featured as the main protagonists in the 2019 book Bitcoin Billionaires: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal, and Redemption.