Sean Parker Biography & Net Worth

Sean Parker Biography & Net Worth

Sean Parker is an American entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist. He started out at a young age and combined with his friend Shawn Fanning to found one of the fastest growing business, Napster, along. He joined Facebook when the company was just a five-month-old and served as its first president. Apart from the two tech giants, Parker has co-founded several other prominent companies such as Plaxo, Brigade, Causes, and Airtime. He has also played an instrumental role in the United States’ launch and growth of the Swedish music streaming service, Spotify. Mr. Parker is also an avid philanthropist who enjoys contributing to many societal causes. He has contributed widely to cancer research and also established the Parker Foundation which aims at three key areas: Global Public Health, Civic Engagement, and Life Sciences. He has been recognized for his many efforts and has even won a number of awards in acknowledgement of his philanthropic and leadership work.

Sean Parker’s Biography & Career

Sean Parker was born in Herndon, Virginia, United States on 3 December 1979 to Bruce and Diane Parker. While his father, Bruce Parker worked for the United States government as an oceanographer, his mother, Diane, was a TV advertising broker. His father gave him lessons on computer programming on an Atari 800 when he was at the young age of seven.

As a child, Parker was zealous about reading, and this habit helped him in self education and the acquisition of knowledge. He suffered from asthma since his childhood days, and has allergies to particular foods. During his teen days, enjoyed programming and hacking, and was once caught by the authorities for hacking into the network of a company called Fortune 500. Since he was underage at that time, it was ruled that he serves a community service at a local library.

For his education, Sean attended William Taft Elementary school after which he joined Oakton High School in Fairfax County, Virginia. After a couple of years, he enrolled in Chantilly High School for his junior and senior schooling.

He met Shawn Fanning online while surfing the internet when he was fifteen years old. The two bonded well and eventually became friends and started working towards realizing their dreams. The two friends met two years later and founded Napster in 1999. It was initially created as a file-sharing software for music. In less than one year of the creation of their first project, they had millions of users on their app. However, their company was condemned by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), among others, so they were forced to close down.

In 2002, Parker came up with a brilliant software called Plaxo. It is like an address book that works with Microsoft Outlook. The app which went on to amass more than 20 million users is regarded as the first software that instilled virality into it. However, two years after the launch of Plaxo, Parker was ousted by the investors.

After coming across Facebook by accident in 2004, Sean Parker contacted Mark Zuckerberg and eventually joined the company as its first ever president. He brought in Peter Thiel as the first investor of Facebook, and is responsible for facebook.com’s smooth user interface and also its photo-sharing function.

In 2005, following investigations, Parker was linked to a drug bust. This prompted him to step down from his position as president at the Facebook Company.

Moving on with his life, and in a desperate attempt to solidify his shaky career and strengthen his public image, Parker started to collaborate with several companies and also invest in some of them. He was introduced to Swedish app Spotify in 2009, and he started working with the company’s founder Daniel Ek to promote Spotify in the United States. He also invested in the company and also heads strategic positions.

Sean Parker is also famed for founding Airtime.com along with his friend and business partner Shawn Fanning in 2011. In 2013, he invested in the mobile app WillCall, which enables its users pay for concerts and shows using only their mobiles.

In 2014, Parker became an advisor to “The People’s Operator”. In that same year, he announced his backing for Brigade. It is a civic engagement service which demands that actions be taken by politicians

Awards & Achievements

In 2013, the Cancer Research Institute awarded Sean Parker the Oliver R. Grace Award for Distinguished Service in Advancing Cancer Research. His efforts towards cancer research have also earned him a place in Time magazine’s ‘Healthcare 50’ list. In addition to other honors, his cancer related work also fetched him the Pontifical Key Philanthropy Award from the Vatican in 2016. The same year, he was awarded the Jefferson Foundation Award for Outstanding Public Service by a Private Citizen.

Sean Parker won the Kemp Leadership Award for his function in Opportunity Zones program in 2018. That same year, Wired Magazine included him on its ‘Icons’ list for his contributions to research in genome editing and DNA programming in fighting cancer.

In 2011, he appeared on the cover of Forbes Magazine and also appeared on an issue for Vanity Fair.

Parker ranked at position 72 in the 2016 list of Forbes’ billionaires. Some of his biggest career achievements include his role in the founding of Napster and Airtime.

Personal Life & Family

Sean Parker has been married to American singer-song writer Alexandra Lenas since 2013. Together, they have two children: a son named Zephyr Emerson and a daughter called Winter Victoria.

Sean Parker Net Worth

Parker was always interested in programming from a very young age, and was considered a genius when he was a boy. He showed to be creative and intelligent when he was a child and also loved reading and learning. Growing up, his attitude towards acquiring knowledge helped him achieve many things including being hired by the C.I.A.

Today, Sean Parker net worth is currently $3 billion. Most of his fortune comes from his investments in a number of businesses and companies which turned out profitable for him. He also holds shares in many already massively successful companies, and continues to look out for other early start-ups to invest his money in. Also a notable philanthropist, Sean Parker utilizes his wealth for philanthropic efforts, and currently serves as the President of The Parker Foundation, a philanthropic organization he founded to support the research of cancer.