Mark Zuckerberg Biography & Net Worth

Mark Zuckerberg Biography & Net Worth

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is an American internet entrepreneur and philanthropist who is best known for being one of the founders of Facebook, a social media platform of which he currently serves as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. A New York native, Mark attended Harvard University where he studied psychology and computer science. During his time in college, he and four friends Chris Hughes, Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum, and Eduardo Saverin, launched Facebook from their hostel. What was initially designed to connect students on college campuses witnessed a massive expansion in the next few years and beat all others to become the biggest social media platform in the world. As of the start of 2019, Facebook had gained more than 2.27 billion monthly active registered users. Asides working with Facebook which he also founded, Mark Zuckerberg has been involved with many other projects as well, including a file-sharing program “Wirehog”, and a group of several companies dedicated to providing affordable access to preferred internet services in under developed countries, known as “Internet.org”.  Mark Zuckerberg net worth makes him one of the wealthiest people on the planet. Since 2010, he has been included on the 100 wealthiest and most influential people lists by ‘Time’ magazine. He has also been named the 10th most powerful person in the world by Forbes magazine.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Early Life

He is the only son of Karen and Edward Zuckerberg. His father worked as a dentist while his mother was a psychiatrist. Mark has three siblings. He was born in White Plains, New York, United States on 14 May 1884. He was raised in a Jewish household in Dobbs Ferry, New York. He is a descendant of immigrants from Austria, Germany, and Poland.

He attended Ardsley High School briefly and then transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy, in New Hampshire. During his time there, he won many prizes in science and classical studies due to his outstanding performances and brilliance. It is said that he is fluent in Latin, ancient Greek, Hebrew and French. He attended Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth summer camp and also captained his prep school’s fencing team.

Starting from his earlier days in school, Mark Zuckerberg began creating software programs. After gaining some lessons in programming from his own father, he learnt some more useful skills from software developer David Newman. One of his first programs known as Zucknet is considered to be a forerunner of AOL’s Instant Messenger.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Career

Mark studied psychology and computer science in the University, and used the knowledge he acquired in his short time in college combined with the programming skills he had learned earlier to build a software which has helped improve communication in the world today. Initially what was started as a website that would connect friends and lovers on school campuses, his idea has transformed into a massive platform that links up humans from many corners of the world.

In 2004, Mark and four friends Chris Hughes, Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum, and Eduardo Saverin,  created Facebook, and had to quit their studies at Harvard University in order to pay full attention to their invention. Today, as its Chief Executive Officer, Zuckerberg has led Facebook to acquire other big platforms like Instagram and Whatsapp. He is also renowned for his philanthropy and generous acts of helping the society in several ways.

Awards & Achievements

Mark is regarded as one of the coolest Chief Executive Officers in the world. He has made name for being the youngest Billionaire in the world as per this writing. He has been featured on several lists by several magazines and media houses including Time, Forbes, Maximum and many others. He is rated one of the most influential people alive, and has reigned among the top ten richest men on the planet for many years running.

Personal Life & Family

While Mark Zuckerberg was still a student of Harvard, he met Priscilla Chan at a party. She was a biology student at that time. After moments of understanding and building a connection between each other, the duo started dating in 2003. While Mark abandoned his educational pursuit in order to focus on Facebook with his other friends, Priscilla continued her education and went on to attend the University of California, San Francisco where she studied medicine. In September 2010, they lovebirds started living together in a house Mark rented house in Palo Alto. They got married on 19 May 2012, in their backyard.

Before they had their first daughter Maxima in 2015, Pricilla Chan suffered three miscarriages. Their second child, August, was born in August two years later.

Mark Zuckerberg Net Worth

Mark is regarded as the youngest billionaire in the world, and as per this writing, he is the seventh richest person on earth, behind the likes of Mukesh Ambani, Steve Ballmer,  Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. He has built his massive fortune and empire through social networking platforms and also from investing in several other smaller ventures. With the acquisition of competing applications WhatsApp and Instagram, Mark’s wealth and influence has so far increased beyond expectation. Out of the top 100 wealthiest people on the planet, Mark is the youngest. Out of the top 30, he is the youngest by over a decade. It has been reported that he earns a yearly salary of $1 per year. Yes, you read that right. Just like many other successful executives in the world today, Zuckerberg choose to pay himself a low salary in order to increase the profits of his company. The logic behind this is that when the company makes best use of profits, it increases the general value of their stock holdings, and this is where the executive’s factual wealth comes from. Other executives of leading companies like Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, and Larry Page, each earn just $1 per year in salary.

An American technology entrepreneur, Mark Zuckerberg net worth is $107 billion as of this writing. On May 18 2012, Facebook IPO’d at roughly $38 dollars a share. Mark is said to own 400 million shares of Facebook. This signifies that means at the IPO, the young CEO ended the day with a net worth of around $15 billion. He has promised to give away 99 percent of his wealth to charity. His 2018 share sales spawn ed $5.3 billion worth of proceeds. In 2019 he sold Facebook shares worth about $1.86 billion.

Zuckerberg and his wife Chan own roughly $175 million worth of land and real estate. Some of their most noteworthy real estate possessions include 700 acres in Hawaii, many homes in Palo Alto, and a townhouse in San Francisco.  Mark owns a number of homes. The main home he lives in with his family is a modest home in Palo Alto which he bought for $7 million in 2011. The following year, he started buying up the properties near his home, and it cost him $43 million. In 2013, he acquired a massive townhouse in San Francisco for $10 million. The two properties he bought in 2014 cost him $100 million. He added the property nearby three years later, and paid more than $45 million for it. As recent as 2018, Mark acquired two private waterfront estates on Lake Tahoe for $59 million. He is a lover of all the fancy things life has to offer, and it’s believed he truly deserves all he has achieved considering how hard he has worked to make a name for himself and claim a place among the world’s elite.