The second youngest billionaire of the world and chief executive officer
of Facebook, Mark Zuckerburg is truly an inspiration for future
generation of entrepreneurs. Here is his story of great success that
began in a dorm room and encompassed the world due to utter talent and
brilliant mind work.
Mark Zuckerburg, the man who owns world’s most sought after social
networking website was born on 14th May 1984 in White Plains, New York
to Edward Zuckerburg, a dentist and Karen, a psychiatrist. As a child
prodigy, most of his time was spent with computers and creating
software. He learned the ATARI basic programming from his father and
later used it to make ‘ZuckNet’; a software that linked all the
computers of his house and his father’s dental clinic by pinging. He had
an outstanding mind even when he was little as quoted precisely by
writer Jose Antonio Vargas “some kids played computer games. Mark
created them”.
When Mark was in high school he developed a music player that worked
on artificial intelligence; the ‘Synapse Media Player’ could pick up its
user’s listening habits. Microsoft and AOL were interested in
purchasing this player but Zuckerburg refused and instead opted to
enroll in Harvard University in 2002 where he studied computer science
and psychology. While at Harvard he wrote various softwares namely
‘Facemash’, a program in which the students could vote who was better
looking. This was shut down on the grounds of privacy protection and
being totally ‘improper’. Zuckerburg dropped out of Harvard during his
sophomore year to devote all his time and energy to the project that he
had initiated.
Facebook was born in Harvard and was initially just a university
‘thing’ but Mark wanted it to extend to other universities. From
Dartmouth, Stanford to Cornell, Penn and Brown, Facebook started
spreading rapidly. To follow his dream Mark moved to Palo Alto,
California along with some close friends, where they laid the solid
foundations of Facebook. After huge investments from Peter Thiel and
venture capital firm ‘Accel Partners’, the social network was able to
cross the boundaries of the ivy league schools. By December 2005
Facebook had almost 6 million users worldwide.
Mark became the world’s youngest billionaire at the age of 24 and the
35th richest American. By 2010 Facebook users had increased to 500
million. Facebook debuted on the NASDAQ stock exchange at 38 dollars per
share and a market capitalization of 104 billion dollars making it one
of the largest companies in the Silicon Valley and the world.
Mark’s thriving career faced many legal setbacks that included several lawsuits and claims regarding Facebook. Mark faced these with determination and although he had to pay heavy amounts of settlement money, none of the controversies affected his accomplishments.
Chosen as the ‘Time’ person of the year in 2010, the billionaire
never faltered due to any hurdle and continues to introduce innovations
to his brainchild, the Facebook, which is continually becoming more
popular with the passage of time.
He is also very happy in his personal life having recently wed his
long term girlfriend; Priscilla Chan. Mark is a generous donor to many
charities. He has signed the ‘Giving Pledge’ an initiative that takes
promises from the word’s billionaires to donate half of their wealth to
charities during or after their life.
