Passion, relentless hard work and innovative ideas defines Mark Zuckerberg.
Founder, chairman and CEO of famous social networking site Facebook. He is amongst the world’s youngest billionaires who are self-made due to his ingenious work and passion.
Mark Zuckerberg, born on May 14, 1984, and matured in the suburbs of New York, Dobbs ferry. Father Edward Zuckerberg ran a dental practice while mother Karen worked as psychiatrists before the birth of four children. Mark is second in the family along with Randi, Donna and Arielle.
Zuckerberg had a profound interest in computers from an early age. He used Atari basic, taught by his father, to develop a messaging program, which later he named as “Zucknet”. His father used the program for his office so that the receptionist didn’t have to yell across the room for informing him about a new patient. Also, the family members used the program to communicate with each other within the house. Mark followed his passion and enjoyed developing games, communication tools just for fun, along with his friends. His father hired a computer tutor, David Newman, to give his son private lessons.
Zuckerberg acquired preparatory school qualifications from Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. He excelled in literature and earned a diploma in classics. By the end of graduation, he could read and write ancient Greek, Hebrew, Latin and french. While in high school, he developed an early version of music software Pandora, which he acclaimed as Synapse. At a young age, he received approaches from AOL and Microsoft to collaborate with them as a developer. However, he rejected the offer of IT- giants and followed to develop further his software.
After his graduation in 2002, Zuckerberg attended Harvard University and studied psychology and computer science. In sophomore year, he coded a program called Course Match that allowed users to make class selection decisions as per their choices of students and help them develop their study groups. Facemash was another ingenious idea to find out who was the most attractive person on campus.
While at Harvard, Zuckerberg founded TheFacebook, intended to serve as a reliable directory based on real information about students pursuing at Harvard. The software eventually led to the growth and launch of Facebook in June 2004. After his sophomore year, Zuckerberg dropped college to pursue his dreams which are now called Facebook. By the end of 2004, the website had already captured one million active users.
Facebook received its first venture capital of $12.7 million from Accel Partners, to open for Ivy League students. By the end of 2005, Facebook was available to students from other schools causing the website to reach 5.5 million users. Since 2005, there was numerous acquisition offers open from Yahoo and Microsoft.
Marriage and Family:
In his sophomore year, he met medical student Priscilla Chan. In September 2010, they both started living together, and on May 19, 2012, they got married. Chan is a renowned paediatrician and philanthropist. The couple flourished with two children, Maxima Chan Zuckerberg and August Chan Zuckerberg.
Personal wealth:
Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth was estimated to exceed $78 billion as of Jan. 2020. He stays in Palo Alto on a $7 million estate with five bedrooms, saltwater pool and over 5,000 square feet of property. Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan pledged to give away 99% of their net worth during their lifetime.
As per TIME, no one had such a significant impact on the world as Mark Zuckerberg. Mark’s popularity is booming that inspired David Fincher to shoot a movie ‘The social network’, amazingly played by Jesse Eisenberg. The journey of Zucknet to Facebook, Mark followed his passion blindly while also faced many struggles. He faced certain lawsuits claiming the idea of Facebook was stolen, and users information was outsourced. However, with success comes struggles and despise, but stars are those who make their way and lead their roadmap without going weary.
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