Background

Ethnicity: Mark Zuckerberg was raised in a Reform Jewish household. He is a descendant of immigrants from Germany, Poland, and Austria.

Mark Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains, New York, the United States, and was raised in nearby Dobbs Ferry, a small Westchester County village about 21 miles north of Midtown Manhattan. He was born into a well-educated family and developed an interest in computer programming at an early age.

Zuckerberg’s father, Edward Zuckerberg, ran a dental practice attached to the family's home. His mother, Karen, worked as a psychiatrist before the birth of the couple's four children - Mark, Randi, Donna, and Arielle.

Education

Zuckerberg began using and programming computers in middle school, with the active support of his father. Edward taught the 11-year-old Mark Atari BASIC. At the age of 12, Zuckerberg created a messaging program named Zucknet that he implemented as an inter-office communication system for his father's dental practice. He also developed computer games, such as a computer version of Monopoly and a version of Risk set in the Roman Empire. To keep up with Zuckerberg's burgeoning interest in computers, his parents hired private computer tutor David Newman to come to the house once a week and work with Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg was an exemplary student. He attended Ardsley High School before transferring to Phillips Exeter Academy, in New Hampshire, in his junior year. During his time there, he earned several prizes in science and classical studies. He also went to the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth summer camp. Zuckerberg is reportedly fluent in French, Hebrew, Latin, and ancient Greek. He also served as the captain of the fencing team at his prep school.

For his senior project at Exeter, Zuckerberg wrote a music player called the Synapse Media Player that used artificial intelligence to learn the user's listening habits and recommend other music. He posted it online on AOL and it received thousands of positive reviews. Both Microsoft and AOL offered to buy Synapse for $1 million and hire Mark Zuckerberg as a developer, but he turned them both down and instead enrolled at Harvard University in September 2002. He had already garnered a reputation as a programming prodigy. He was pursuing degrees in psychology and computer science and was a member of Alpha Epsilon Pi and Kirkland House.

By his sophomore year at the Ivy League institution, he had developed a reputation as the go-to software developer on campus. It was at that time that he built a program called CourseMatch, which helped students choose their classes based on the course selections of other users.

During his sophomore year, he developed a program that he named Facemash, which allowed the students to pick the best-looking person from a selection of photographs. It was an astounding success, but it bogged down the network at Harvard, people's pictures were being used without their permission, and it was offensive to people, particularly women's groups, on campus. Zuckerberg ended the project and apologized to the women's groups, saying he thought of it as a computer experiment. Harvard put him on probation.

Based on the buzz of his previous projects, three of his fellow students - Divya Narendra, and twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss - sought him out to work on an idea for a social networking site they called Harvard Connection. This site was designed to use information from Harvard's student networks in order to create a dating site for the Harvard elite. Zuckerberg agreed to help with the project but soon dropped out to work on his own social networking site. After his sophomore year, Zuckerberg dropped out of college to devote himself to his new company, Facebook, full time.

Career

Zuckerberg dropped out of college to pursue what was then called Facebook, full-time. The website reached one million users by the end of 2004. In 2005, Zuckerberg's enterprise received a huge boost from the venture capital firm Accel Partners. Accel invested $12.7 million into the network, which at the time was open only to Ivy League students.

Four months later Facebook opened to registration by high-school students. Meanwhile, foreign colleges and universities also began to sign up, and by September 2006 anyone with an e-mail address could join a regional network based on where he or she lived. About that time Zuckerberg turned down a $1 billion buyout offer from Yahoo!, but in 2007 Facebook struck a deal with Microsoft in which the software company paid $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook; two years later Digital Sky Technologies purchased a 1.96 percent share for $200 million.

In 2008 Zuckerberg’s net worth was estimated at about $1.5 billion. In May 2012, Facebook had its initial public offering, which raised $16 billion, making it the biggest Internet IPO in history. In April 2012, Zuckerberg acquired mobile photo-sharing app Instagram for $1 billion in cash and stock. Initially, it was an iOS application developed by Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom. Now the Instagram application is available on Android OS as well.

In 2013, the turnover of Facebook, Inc. reached $7.87 billion and net income - $1.5 billion. The growth rates are also impressive: three years turnover has increased six-fold. The basic earnings of Facebook come from contextual ads on the pages of the social network. The growing number of users and the time they spend on the site are converted into advertising revenues. 85% percent of cash-flow that went through the company last year was earned through contextual advertising. At the beginning of January 2013, Facebook Inc. started testing the service of paid private messaging. Facebook charges $1.00 for a private message that you can send to the users who are not on your friend list. And the message goes directly to their Inbox folder, instead of the Other one. But Facebook went further and realized that some users are worth more than a $1. If you want to send a message to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and get into his inbox, you might have to pay $100 for this exclusive option.

In August 2013, Facebook, Samsung, Ericsson, MediaTek, Opera Software, Nokia, and Qualcomm launched a project called Internet.org to usher in better and more affordable access to selected internet services in under-developed and developing countries. Zuckerberg has met world leaders, such as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the technology infrastructure in those countries. While Facebook is banned in China, the people of the country hold Zuckerberg in high regard.

In March 2014, Facebook closed the acquisition of Oculus Rift for $2 billion. Oculus Rift is virtual reality hardware engineered by Oculus VR Company headed by Palmer Freeman Luckey. Facebook paid $400 million in cash plus 23.1m Facebook shares, with a further $300 million in incentives if it hits certain milestones in the future. In October 2014, Mark Zuckerberg completed the purchase of WhatsApp for $22 billion. Facebook paid $4.59 billion in cash and 177,760,669 shares in the company. WhatsApp is an instant messaging application founded by Jan Koum and Brian Acton in 2009.

In December 2015, Zuckerberg and his spouse, Priscilla Chan, set up Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a limited liability company, with the aim to "advance human potential and promote equality in areas such as health, education, scientific research, and energy." They also announced the founding of Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, a San Francisco-based independent research center that will bring together engineers, computer scientists, biologists, chemists and others in the scientific community. A partnership between Stanford University, the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of California, Berkeley, Biohub will receive initial funding of $600 million over 10 years.

In June 2019, Facebook announced it was getting into the cryptocurrency business with the planned launch of Libra in 2020. Along with developing the blockchain technology to power its financial infrastructure, Facebook established a Switzerland-based oversight entity called the Libra Association, comprised of tech giants like Spotify and venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz. Despite providing assurances that Facebook would withdraw from the Libra Association if the project failed to garner approval from regulators, Zuckerberg faced pointed questioning from skeptical lawmakers who cited the Cambridge Analytica fiasco and other past transgressions.

On October 30, 2019, Facebook released Q3 earnings. The company reported that daily active users averaged 1.62 billion for September 2019, an increase of 9% year-over-year. Monthly active users totaled 2.45 billion, an increase of 8% year-over-year. As of January 30, 2020, the company has a market cap of $598 billion. Zuckerberg owns over 375 million Facebook shares and holds 60% of voting rights in the company.

Achievements

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  Mark Zuckerberg co-founded the social-networking website Facebook out of his college dorm room at Harvard University. Zuckerberg left college after his sophomore year to concentrate on the site, the user base of which has grown to more than two billion people, making Zuckerberg a billionaire many times over, also making him the world's youngest billionaire in 2008. The birth of Facebook was portrayed in the 2010 film The Social Network.
  
  In January 2010, TIME magazine named Facebook founder, CEO, and 26-year old billionaire Mark Zuckerberg the Person of the Year 2010. Mark Zuckerberg has a net worth of $78 billion as of January 29, 2020. He was awarded CEO of the Year accolade at the 6th annual Crunchies in 2013. In 2016, Forbes named him the 10th most powerful person in the world.
  
  In May 2017, several years after dropping out of Harvard, Zuckerberg received an honorary degree from the college at its 366th commencement ceremony.

Works

More photos

• design

  • Facebook 2004

  • Wirehog

    2004

Religion

Mark Zuckerberg grew up Jewish but later came out as an atheist. However, he has since stated that he has changed his position on the subject. In 2016, he said: "I was raised Jewish and then I went through a period where I questioned things, but now I believe religion is very important."

Politics

The Facebook cofounder and his company's political action committee have given tens of thousands of dollars to political candidates of both parties in recent years, a relatively small amount given the vast sums of money flowing through the election process. Zuckerberg is registered to vote in Santa Clara County, California, but does not identify himself as being affiliated with the Republican, Democrat or any other party.

Zuckerberg is a major contributor to Facebook’s political action committee, called Facebook Inc. PAC. He’s given $25,000 to the PAC since 2011, according to federal records. The Facebook PAC raised nearly $350,000 in the 2012 election cycle. It spent $277,675 supporting federal candidates; Facebook spent more on Republicans ($144,000) than it did on Democrats ($125,000).

In the 2016 elections, Facebook PAC spent $517,000 supporting federal candidates. In all, 56 percent went to Republicans and 44 percent went to Democrats. In the 2018 election cycle, Facebook PAC spent $278,000 supporting candidates for federal office, mostly on Republicans, records show. Zuckerberg did, however, give his largest one-time donation to the Democratic Party in San Francisco in 2015 when he cut a check for $10,000, according to Federal Election Commission records.

He has sharply criticized President Trump's Republican immigration policies, saying he was "concerned" about the impact of the president's first executive orders.

Views

Since amassing his sizeable fortune, Zuckerberg has used his millions to fund a variety of philanthropic causes. Zuckerberg has donated money for education and immigration reforms. He supports the Black Lives Matter movement and instructed that the said phrase be written on the company walls. The most notable examples came in September 2010, when he donated $100 million to save the failing Newark Public Schools system in New Jersey.

Then, in December 2010, Zuckerberg signed the "Giving Pledge", promising to donate at least 50 percent of his wealth to charity over the course of his lifetime.

In an open letter to their daughter, Maxima, Chan and Zuckerberg revealed that they have decided to donate 99% of their Facebook shares to the initiative during their lives. They have also donated money for various other causes and services, including the battle against Ebola virus disease.

In September 2016, Zuckerberg and Chan announced that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), the company into which they put their Facebook shares, would invest at least $3 billion into scientific research over the next decade to help “cure, prevent and manage all diseases in our children's lifetime." Renowned neuroscientist Cori Bargmann of The Rockefeller University was named the president of science at CZI.

Since 2011, Zuckerberg has been a vegetarian and once said he would only eat meat if he has killed the animal himself.

In 2010, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s movie The Social Network was released. The critically acclaimed film received eight Academy Award nominations. Sorkin’s screenplay was based on the 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires, by writer Ben Mezrich. Mezrich was heavily criticized for his re-telling of Zuckerberg's story, which used invented scenes, re-imagined dialogue, and fictional characters.

Zuckerberg objected strongly to the film's narrative and later told a reporter at The New Yorker that many of the details in the film were inaccurate. For example, Zuckerberg had been dating his longtime girlfriend since 2003. He also said he was never interested in joining any of the final clubs.

Quotations: "By giving people the power to share, we're making the world more transparent."

"When you give everyone a voice and give people power, the system usually ends up in a really good place. So, what we view our role as, is giving people that power."

"A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa."

"I think a simple rule of business is, if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress."

"The thing that we are trying to do at Facebook, is just help people connect and communicate more efficiently."

"The basis of our partnership strategy and our partnership approach: We build the social technology. They provide the music."

"Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff you are not moving fast enough."

"People don’t care about what you say, they care about what you build."

"Give everyone the power to share anything with anyone."

"If you just work on stuff that you like and you’re passionate about, you don’t have to have a master plan with how things will play out."

"People can be really smart or have skills that are directly applicable, but if they don’t really believe in it, then they are not going to really work hard."

"Our society needs more heroes who are scientists, researchers, and engineers. We need to celebrate and reward the people who cure diseases, expand our understanding of humanity and work to improve people’s lives."

"I look at Google and think they have a strong academic culture. Elegant solutions to complex problems."

"Instead of building walls, we can help build bridges."

"Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend."

"Advertising works most effectively when it’s in line with what people are already trying to do."

"Whatever you build, build with care. Anyone who has built something big, has done it with care."

"We look for people who are passionate about something. In a way, it almost doesn’t matter what you’re passionate about."

Membership

During his Harvard years Mark belonged to Alpha Epsilon Pi.

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  Alpha Epsilon Pi , United States

Personality

Mark Zuckerberg is the king of social networks, but by all accounts, he's not that sociable. People who know Zuckerberg describe him as intense, aloof, and laser-focused on his inventions. Considering his intelligence, it's not surprising that he is called a "robot" fairly regularly, whether by friends, coworkers, or followers. The New Yorker describes his manner of speaking as resembling an instant message, with the same brisk, pointed directness. Facebook investor Reid Hoffman, when interviewed by the Washington Post, described the young CEO as extremely quiet, even during company meetings, because he's "always thinking." 

Mark is an introvert by nature and unlike other CEOs, he is seen communicating very less during presentations to investors. He has a habit of keeping a schedule, maintaining the structure, and controlling the necessary resources to achieve what he desires. Mark Zuckerberg even keeps a leather notebook which he calls "The Book of Change" which contains all the ideas for the future direction of Facebook.

Believe in product and team is the greatest personality trait of Mark Zuckerberg just like Henry Ford. He believes a great team is all you need to be successful. He knows very well that you cannot build a great company all by yourself. You need to know how to build just the right relations with the people.

Mark Zuckerberg is an aggressive but encouraging leader. It is true that Mark Zuckerberg gets aggressive when he doesn’t get the results on time. His teammates define him as a person who demands constant innovation as well as growth. That is the reason that he has made the atmosphere inside his office so free that the people may independently think and innovate. He always pushes his employees to deliver more than what is required of them. He is over assertive and wants to get things his way. But he knows when to stop and give away as well. He encourages his people to strive and do better. Mark is always open to suggestions and gives his employees the time to put up innovative ideas to him. He might seem to be firm and stubborn but he very well knows and tries his best to not be a control freak.

Zuckerberg looks up to Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso. He has Einstein’s quote, "Make things as simple as possible but no simpler," and Picasso’s insight that, "All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once you grow up," as his favorites on Facebook. He’s also an admirer of Steve Jobs.

He’s always been interested in ancient languages such as Latin, and he can speak Mandarin. One of his favorite books is The Aeneid, and one of his favorite TV shows is The West Wing, which was created by Aaron Sorkin, the man who also wrote the movie based on the creation of Facebook, The Social Network.

In 2014, when he was the third-richest man in the world, he bought a black Volkswagen GTI with a manual transmission - which costs around $30,000. However, he did reportedly pay for an Italian Pagani Huayra supercar around the same time. The car starts at a cool $1.3 million. Zuckerberg also likes to spend his money on privacy: In October 2014, he shelled out around $100 million for 700 acres of secluded land on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. In Palo Alto, Zuckerberg reportedly bought his 5,617-square-foot home for $7 million in 2011 and then spent an additional $45 million on the four houses and land around it for the sake of privacy.

Physical Characteristics: Height - 175 cm.

Weight - 70 kg.

Eye Colour - Hazel Grey.

Hair Colour - Goldish Brown.

Zuckerberg suffers from red-green colorblindness and sees the color blue best, which is why blue dominates Facebook's color scheme. Zuckerberg reportedly once said, "Blue is the richest color for me. I can see all of blue."

Interests

• video games

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Plato, Albert Einstein

• Politicians

  Orrin G. Hatch, Marco Rubio, Paul D. Ryan, Charles E. Schumer

• Writers

  Virgil, Orson Scott Card, Moisés Naím, The Muqaddimah by Ibn Khaldun, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, Why Nations Fail by Daren Acemoglu and James Robinson, The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley, Portfolios of the Poor by Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford, Orlanda Ruthven

• Artists

  Pablo Picasso

• Sport & Clubs

  running, fencing, tennis

• Athletes

  Samyr Laine, Yankees

• Music & Bands

  Daft Punk, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, Eminem, Green Day

Connections

While Mark Zuckerberg was still attending Harvard, he met a biology student named Priscilla Chan at a fraternity party. They started dating sometime in 2003. Chan went on to study medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. In September 2010, Zuckerberg and Chan began living together, and on May 19, 2012, they were married. Today, Chan is a pediatrician and philanthropist.

Chan underwent three miscarriages before giving birth to their daughter, Maxima, in 2015. In February 2016, the couple announced Maxima’s Chinese name, Chen Mingyu. Their second daughter, August, was born in August 2017.

Father:

Edward Zuckerberg

Mother:

Karen Zuckerberg

Spouse:

Priscilla Chan

The day after Facebook went public, Zuckerberg and Chan got married. The relatively low-key event was actually a surprise wedding: Guests thought they were celebrating a med school graduation party for Chan. Zuckerberg designed Chan's ruby ring himself. Chan walked down the aisle with Beast, the couple's Hungarian Sheepdog, who they adopted in 2011.

In December 2015, Chan and Zuckerberg pledged to donate 99 percent of their Facebook shares, valued at $45 billion, to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a political action company that focuses on health and education. As of 2016, they have pledged more than $4.6 billion to charities.

Sister:

Randi Zuckerberg

Randi Zuckerberg is the elder sister of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, a company where she was Director of Market Development until 2011.

Sister:

Donna Zuckerberg

Donna Zuckerberg is a classicist, writer, and Editor-in-Chief of Eidolon.

Sister:

Arielle Zuckerberg

Arielle Zuckerberg is the youngest sister of Mark Zuckerberg.

Daughter:

Maxima Chan Zuckerberg

When Zuckerberg welcomed Max, he announced he would be taking two months of paternity leave to spend with his family.

Daughter:

August Zuckerberg

opponent:

Cameron Winklevoss

Cameron and his brother are known for co-founding HarvardConnection (later renamed ConnectU) along with Harvard classmate Divya Narendra. In 2004, the Winklevoss brothers sued Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for $65 million, claiming he stole their ConnectU idea to create the popular social networking site Facebook.

opponent:

Tyler Winklevoss

Winklevoss co-founded HarvardConnection (later renamed ConnectU) along with his brother Cameron and a Harvard classmate of theirs, Divya Narendra. In 2004, the Winklevoss brothers sued Mark Zuckerberg for $65 million, claiming he stole their ConnectU idea to create the much more popular social networking service site Facebook.

Friend:

Joe Green

Joe Green is a close friend of Zuckerberg and the president of a 501(c)(4) lobbying group called FWD.us.

References

• Think Like Zuck: The Five Business Secrets of Facebook's Improbably Brilliant CEO Mark Zuckerberg
• The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World
• Facebook: Cracking the Code: Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Greste, Anne Davies, Janine Cohen
• Mark Zuckerberg: A Biography of the Facebook Billionaire
• Bloomberg Game Changers: Mark Zuckerberg: Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Corona, Nina Weinstein
• Mark Zuckerberg
• Facebook Legacy: How Mark Zuckerberg is Changing the Whole Social Media Game
• Mark Zuckerberg: Creator of Facebook
• The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal
• Top 10 Visionaries that Changed the World: 500 Life and Business Lessons
• The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google
• Becoming Facebook: The 10 Challenges That Defined the Company That's Disrupting the World
• Mark Zuckerberg's Life Lessons & Secrets to Success: Entrepeneur Millionaire Startup
• Business Life of an Icon: Mark Zuckerberg: From Creating a Social Website in a Dorm Room to Becoming an Icon of the New Millennium
• Facebook’s Existential Threat Ignored by Addicted Users: Mark Zuckerberg Fools Congress, Credibility Plummets
• Mark Zuckerberg Biography: What It Took To Invent Facebook and More?