Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg

In 2010 Time magazine called Zuckerberg the man of the year

Mark was born and raised in one of the wealthy districts of New York. He was brought up with his three sisters in a Jewish family of a dentist (father) and a psychiatrist (mother). Even in primary school began to show increased interest in programming. And with the advent of the first computer, he plunged into his hobby with his head. Then Mark studied in the sixth grade. His first major achievement in programming - the computer version of the board game "Risk" - Mark created by the beginning of the ninth grade.

Being still a student, together with a friend writing a program for MP3 - player Winamp. With the help of this program, the computer not only analyzed the music interests of the user, but also independently created suitable playlists for him. After the new program was placed for free access to the network, Microsoft Corporation offered Zuckerberg for his offspring about two million dollars. However, Mark refused the deal - as it turns out later, the future billionaire and founder of the Facebook network has a complex and unpredictable character.

Despite his incredible enthusiasm for computer programming, young Zuckerberg finds time for both studying and for practicing his favorite sport - fencing. Mark remarkably had time in natural sciences and in mathematics, and, immersing himself in antiquity, he studied the ancient languages. His interest in the languages ​​of antiquity was so strong that one day Mark devoted his summer vacation to the visit to the summer school of the courses of the ancient Greek language. As a result - the ability to freely read and write on the classic language Wallpapers. Despite this, when entering the university, a young man chooses a completely unrelated to the languages ​​discipline - psychology.

He studied Zuckerberg in Harvard, where he was almost ruled out for breaking the university database. He posted photos of students on his website in pairs, urging users to vote for a more attractive one. In just four hours the number of visitors to the site increased to five hundred thousand. The management of the educational institution chopped off the resource, obliging Zuckerberg to apologize to the allegedly injured students. However, this idea was so approved by the students that they demanded an immediate restoration of the resource from the administration of the university. After re-opening the resource for just two weeks, half of all Harvard students were registered there. And by the middle of the spring, in the list of users of one of the first social portals Facebook were also students of such notable high schools, as Yale and Stanford.

Thanks to the convenience of the hierarchical system that organizes users into groups, courses and many other parameters, as well as the possibility of placing photos and any other personal information, Facebook becomes incredibly popular among students. The main advantages of Facebook are that it is a social network for searching real people for real people. Also here you can independently define a group of users, which will be available to your profile.

Accidental acquaintance with Sean Parker, who is a cult figure of the Internet and one of the creators of Napster - a program for file sharing - turned Mark's life in a different direction. Thanks to Parker Zuckerberg gets acquainted with an experienced businessman and co-founder of the PayPal payment system Peter Thiel, who after a fifteen-minute conversation with Mark decided to invest it for 500 thousand dollars. Zuckerberg leaves school at the university, writing a statement on indefinite academic leave, and completely devotes himself to work.

At first glance, $500,000 is a fairly large amount, but it was not enough to fully meet all the financial needs of a new start-up. Mark and his company had to rent premises in Palo Alto. The working conditions were completely uncomfortable - there was not enough furniture for everyone, rooms with servers were not ventilated, and the California heat above 45 degrees Celsius did not work.

In the fall of 2004, Facebook counted more than a million users. And six months later, thanks to the help of Peter Thiel, the company receives a serious investment of $12.7 million from Accel Partners, so in the autumn of 2005, the number of active users reaches a five-million mark.

After a while, the portal rules were slightly changed. With a valid e-mail address, anyone could become a Facebook user. According to the Forbes magazine, the 23-year-old founder of Facebook is the 785th in the list of billionaires in the world and the owner of 1.5 billion dollars. Mark Zuckerberg is rightfully considered the youngest billionaire in history.

Becoming a billionaire, Zuckerberg practically did not change the student's lifestyle, to which he was accustomed, nor his worldview. He lives in a rented apartment in Palo Alto with a minimum of amenities, sleeps on the floor, on the mattress. He gets dressed in shabby things. To the office of his company (now it is 3 modern buildings) gets on foot. He understands that it's impossible to manage a solid project without special knowledge and experience, and therefore hired a manager from Google Sheryl Sandberg to control all current operations of Facebook.

The behavior of Mark Zuckerberg is called super-extravagant. One day one of the Microsoft executives offered to arrange a business meeting at 8:00 am. The young genius refused, explaining that at this time he was still asleep. Another time he was offered on the day off to negotiate the bosses of Yahoo !, it was neither much nor little about the amount of a billion dollars. Zuckerberg again refused, as he planned to spend the weekend with his girlfriend. Personally, I do not see anything normal in this. After all, when two parties meet, one side offers a time for a meeting, rather than appoints, two parties agree on the time.