Mark Zuckerberg is the co-founder and the CEO of Facebook. He is an American with a German ancestor, an entrepreneur, and a software programmer with a current net worth of $95.6 billion.
The early life of the programmer
He was born in the year 1984 in New York. His father, Edward Zuckerberg, was a dentist in Dobby Ferry, while his mother, Karen, was a psychiatrist. He is the only boy in a family of four children. Together with his sisters Ariella, Randi, and Donna, they grew up in Westchester village in New York.
Education
Mark joined Ardsley High School, where he excelled well in all subjects. After high school, he transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. That is where his success and talents were visible. He participated in various competitions and won.
It was in high school that he developed the urge to operate computers. He complained a lot about other people’s software, so he wanted to write codes that could satisfy his desires.
His father taught him the first language, Atari Basic Programming, which gave him a partial view of programming knowledge. His parents went ahead to get a tutor who was good enough to handle him. Zuckerberg was challenging his father too much. Developer David Newman was a tutor to the young software developer.
After a while, he surprised his father by building a program like the current Messenger Lite. It could communicate between computers in the house and his fathers in the office. This was the beginning of his journey as a programmer.
At a tender age, he joined a media company named Intelligent Media Group and built a music player known as Synapse. It uses the art of artificial intelligence as it mimics the voices of various artists. The app could collect data and learn the user’s listening habits; then, it could suggest another song.
He joined Harvard in 2002, taking a bachelor’s in Computer Science. He created various software, launched them, and gave them out free of charge to various companies. It was in 2004 that the idea of developing social network software.
Mark Zuckerberg and thefacebook.com
At the time, Harvard was looking ahead to having a platform that would enable everyone to communicate. He started working on such a website, and after a certain period, the website was ready to be launched.
He launched thefacebook.com(currently Facebook) alongside his friends in the Harvard door room. His team comprised of Dustin Moskovitz, McCollum, Edward Saverin, Chris Hughes. Together they campaigned for Facebook among the university students. His father, Edward, loaned him some money that he used for launching.
It started getting popular even toward nearby universities. He hired a group of interns from Harvard to extend the software development so that it could cover other areas in the world. He drops out of school to concentrate on his company. Read more about billionaires who dropped out of school.
As the website grew, he turned it into an entrepreneurial center by partnering with companies. But unfortunately, his colleagues sued him. He had to give out the companies shares because they helped him in the development and maintenance.
Net Worth
According to Forbes, he is ranked number three after Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos. His net worth added up to $103.3 billion. He has an ownership of 13% in his company Facebook. Also, he has $225 million in real estate and $2.88 billion in cash. He is the youngest-ever self-made billionaire in the world. In 2020, he became among the top people in the world to cross the $100 billion mark in the world.
Also Read: Mark Zuckerberg continues to create more jobs for people.
Personal life
He married his wife, Priscilla Chan, in a funny situation. He invited his guests and surprised them. The marriage happened the day his wife was graduating from medical school. They have two children. The elder sister Maxima Chan Zuckerberg and the youngest August Chan Zuckerberg. They both live in Palo Alto, California.
Mark Zuckerberg family- Image from Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg as a Philanthropist
Both have started an organization for charity donations. Mark said he would give out his 99% of Facebook shares to support the world’s SGD problems. They want to improve education quality, reform criminal justice, and allow the US immigration system. They want to improve housing affordability as they eradicate some diseases. Read more about their 18-year relationship here.
In 2019, Time Magazine ranked Mark among the top 100 influential people in the world. They termed how his little success has changed the world at large.
In 2012, he forced himself to become a vegetarian due to the love of animals, but currently, he takes meat as usual. Despite having all those billions, he doesn’t drive expensive cars. After making some money with Facebook, he bought all the houses surrounding his compound.
He is colorblind with blue eyes that is the reason why he loves blue as his Facebook color. Read more on how Facebook’s primary color is blue here. His company’s Facebook users are almost 17% of the world’s population. Facebook also owns Instagram and WhatsApp. He earns a salary of 1 Dollar per year from his company.
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