Mark Zuckerberg – Biography And Net Worth Of The Founder Of Facebook

If you know Facebook, then you must have heard of Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg is a technology entrepreneur and a philanthropist who has pledged to give away 99% of his Facebook share in the course of his life. Through Mark’s leadership, the social platform he founded has brought the world together and turned it into global village.

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We are certain that most people do not know Mark Zuckerberg beyond Facebook. So, today we are going to look at his life, career, other business interest, and his net worth. As with every entrepreneur we write about, we want all aspiring and budding entrepreneurs to learn business lessons that they can apply to their businesses. Another lesson we want to pass across is that Rome was not built in a day. It took hard work, persistence, and resilience for Mark Zuckerberg to achieve all he has achieved till date.

So buckle your seat belt and come on this journey with us.

Mark Zuckerberg Background.

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is a Jewish descent, born on 14^th of May 1984 to Karen and Edward Zuckerberg in White Plains New York, USA. He hails from Dobbs Ferry, New York and he currently resides in Palo Alto, California, USA. Zuckerberg is happily married to long time girlfriend, Priscilla Chan and they are blessed with two beautiful daughters.

Mark Zuckerberg Educational History.

Mark attended Ardsley High School (1998-2000) and Phillips Exeter Academy, New Hampshire (2000-2002). He attended the Johns Hopkins Center for talented youth summer camp as a youth. He started studying Psychology and Computer Science at Harvard University but did not finish as he left in 2004 to concentrate on Facebook.

While in Harvard, he belonged to Alpha Epsilon Pi and Kirkland House. During his college application, he said he could read and write French, latin, ancient greek and Hebrew.

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The Early Years of Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg started writing software while in middle school. When his father noticed it, he tutored him on the Atari Basic programming and also employed a private tutor to take him on software development.

While in High School, Zuckerberg went for a graduate course at Mercy College to study software development. As a teenager, he built games from images drawn by his artist friends. He built a software called ZuckNet which transmitted information from the computers in their house to his fathers office as his father worked from home.

Mark worked with Intelligent Media Group to create a music player called the Synapse Media Player. The player used machine learning to know user’s hearing habits. The player was posted to Slashdot and was rated 3 out of 5 in the PC Magazine.

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CourseMatch And Facemash

Before Zuckerberg got into Harvard, he already had a reputation as a genius in programming. In his 2^nd year in the university, he created CourseMatch, an application which helped users choose their class based on the preferences of other students and also helped them organise study groups.

Shortly after, he built another program called Facemash. Facemash compares pictures of students and the best looking person can be selected from a collection of photos. The site was shut down as it affected the school’s network and prevented students from accessing the internet. It also infringed on the personal privacy of students as some students complained that their pictures were used without permission.

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Just Before Facebook.

The Winklevoss brothers and their friend Divya Narendra who were seniors at Harvard then, met with Mark Zuckerberg to help them create a social network called HavardConnection.com.

Mark instead, went ahead to build TheFacebook with his college roommates. Few days after officially launching the site, the Winklevoss brothers and their friend Divya Narendra accused Zuckerberg of deceiving them and using their idea for his own site. They filed a lawsuit against him. Mark lost the case and gave the trio a settlement of 1.2 million Facebook shares.

The Launch of Facebook.

On the 4^th of February 2004, Mark Zuckerberg officially launched Facebook. The name was inspired by ‘face book’, a year book for students in American universities.

The operations of the site was limited to Harvard University until Mark thought to extend it to other schools. He achieved the expansion with the help of his roommate and schoolmates Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, and Chris Hughes.

The platform kept on expanding until it became popular and used worldwide. As at December 2018, the social network had more than 2.3 billion active monthly users. Facebook went public in February 2012, with an initial public offering (IPO) $104 billion.

After three months of going public, the company started selling out its stock to the public. The social platform can be used on electronic devices like phones, tablets, and laptops with an internet connection. The majority of the company’s income comes from onscreen advertisement and data access sold to third parties. 

Other Interest Of Mark

Mark is an astute entrepreneur with foresight. Other products he has ownership stakes in are Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, GrokStyle, Facebook Messenger. He registered a company called Libra Networks in Geneva, Switzerland on the 2^nd of May, 2019 with Facebook Global Holdings as a stakeholder. Its aim is to create financial and technological services to help with cryptocurrency payments.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Philanthropic Activities.

• Internet.org was established in August 2013. Zuckerberg partnered with 6 other tech companies through facebook to provide affordable internet service to developing and under developed countries.
• Education foundation was established on the 22^nd of September 2010. Through the foundation Mark Zuckerberg gave $100 million to Newark Public Schools, New Jersey.
• The Giving Pledge took place on the 9^th of December 2010. Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett signed an agreement promising to give at least half of their assets to charity overtime. They urged other wealthy people to do same.
• In compliance to ‘The Giving Pledge’ Zuckerberg and his wife disclosed that in their lifetime, they would give most of their assets to promote equality amongst humans.
• Zuckerberg donated 18 million Facebook shares to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the value of the shares at the time was $990 million on the 19th of December 2013.
• In October 2014, Mark and his wife gave $25 million to fight the Ebola virus disease.
• Mark and Chan Zuckerberg disclosed on the 1st of December 2015, that they would give 99 percent of their Facebook shares (worth about $45 billion at the time) to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
• The Chan Zuckerberg initiative pledged $600 million to Biohub to facilitate interactions and collaborations between scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University in 2016.

Awards and Recognitions of Mark Zuckerberg.

• Member of the advisory board of Tsinghua University Business School, China.
• World’s youngest self-made billionaire in 2007.
• MIT Technology Review TR35 listed Mark Zuckerberg as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under 35years in 2007.
• Time Magazine awarded him as person of the year in 2010.
• He was named as one of the 100 most influential and wealthiest man in the world by Time Magazine in 2010.
• Vanity Fair magazine tagged Mark Zuckerberg as number 1 on its Top 100 list of “most influential people of the Information Age” in 2010.
• Facebook made fortune 500 list and Mark Zuckerberg became the youngest CEO at 28 in 2012.
• The Chronicle of Philanthropy put Mark and Chan Zuckerberg’s name at the top of their annual list of 50 most generous Americans in 2013.
• His donation to Silicon Valley Community Foundation was seen as the biggest philanthropic activity on record in 2013.
• Business Insider tagged Zuckerberg as one of the “Top 10 Business Visionaries Creating Value for the World” in June 2016.
• Forbes list of The World’s Most Powerful People ranked him 10th in December 2016.
• America’s number 1 Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40 in 2016.
• The Richest Person in America’s 50 Largest Cities according to Forbes in 2016.
• Honorary degree from Harvard on the 28th of May 2017.
• Listed as number 4 on Forbes richest in Tech 2017.
• Only under 50 in Forbe’s list of the richest 10 people in 2018.
• The only under 40 in Forbe’s 20 top billionaires list in 2018.
• Richest Person in Every State according to 2018.
• He was listed as the 13th World’s Most Powerful People in 2018.
• Forbes number 8 Billionaires list in 2019.

Mark Zuckerberg Net Worth.

According to Forbes, Mark Zuckerberg has a net worth of $68.5 billion.

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