Mark Zuckerberg is an American business magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is the co-founder and now chairman and CEO of Facebook. With more than $61.9 billion, he is the 16th richest person in the world according to the latest Forbes list of billionaires. At age 23, he became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire in 2007.
Personal Information
Complete Name –> Mark Elliot Zuckerberg
Birth Date –> May 14, 1984 (Age 38)
Hometown –> White Plains, New York, United States
Height –> 5′7″
College –> Harvard University (Dropped out on his sophomore year)
Course –> psychology and computer science
Family
Wife –> Priscilla Chan (married 2012)
Children –> 2 (Maxima Chan Zuckerberg and August Chan Zuckerberg)
Father –> Edward Zuckerberg (dentist)
Mother –> Karen Kempner
Siblings –> 3 sisters (Arielle, businesswoman Randi, and writer Donna)
Mark’s father was a dentist while his mother was a psychiatrist. He has three other siblings. At 12, he was already doing programming and to further enhance his computer skills, his father hired a special tutor and at the same time, he enrolled the young programmer in a graduate course at the nearby college.
After attending an elite high school, Mark enrolled at Harvard University, with a major in psychology but most his subjects were not related to computers. He continued to write programs “just for fun”. Then, on February 24, 2004, he launched Facebook from his Harvard dormitory room. The reception was good so he enlisted the help of his 4 roommates in order to spread it to other schools. At this point, some individuals came out to complain that Mark had stolen their ideas. These complaints were eventually settled.
Mark dropped out of college and moved to Palo Alto, California with his friends where they officially run the website as a business. He was 19 years old then. The first serious investor was Peter Theil who gave $500,000 as an angel investment and became a member of the board. This investment put the total valuation of the company at $4.9 million. The number of users then was approaching the 1 million mark. Soon, many companies offered to buy Facebook but Mark refused to sell.
On May 18, 2012, Facebook was finally listed at the New York Stock Exchange. The initial price of $38 went up to $38.23, raising $16 billion for the company. At that price Facebook was worth $90 billion and Mark had a personal fortune of $19 billion. The number of users was approaching 1 billion at this time.
As of today May 14, 2020, Facebook has a market capitalization of $574.18 billion while the number of users during the first quarter of 2020 went past 2.6 billion mark.
Mark is married to Priscilla Chan since 2012. The couple has two children, Maxima Chan Zuckerberg and August Chan Zuckerberg.
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