Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984 in White Plains, New York, and was raised in
nearby Dobbs Ferry. He was born into a well-educated family and developed an interest in
computer programming at an early age.

At the age of 12, Zuckerberg created a messaging program named Zucknet that he implemented
as an inter-office communication system for his father's dental practice. Due to his early signs of
success, his parents got him a computer programming tutor while he was still in high school, and
they enrolled him in a prep school in New Hampshire.

After graduating from prep school, Zuckerberg enrolled in Harvard University.

Success Story
While many intelligent people attend Harvard University, Mark Zuckerberg became known
quickly as the go-to computer programmer on campus. By his sophomore year, he had already
built two programs: CourseMatch and FaceMash. Both programs became wildly popular, but the
university shut down the latter program after it was deemed to be inappropriate.

Based on his acclaim on campus, Zuckerberg partnered with friends to create a social networking
site that allowed Harvard students to connect with each other. The site officially went live in
June 2004 under the name "The Facebook," and Zuckerberg ran it out of his dorm room.

After his sophomore year, Zuckerberg dropped out of college to pursue what was then called
Facebook full-time, and the website reached 1 million users by the end of 2004.

This explosion of user growth attracted the attention of many venture capital firms, and
Zuckerberg eventually moved out to Silicon Valley in 2005. Facebook received its first round
of Venture capital (VC) investments from VC firm Accel Partners, which invested $12.7 million
in the site that was still only open to Ivy League students.

By the end of 2005, however, Facebook was opened up colleges and other schools, causing the
website to reach 5.5 million users. Since 2005, Facebook has received numerous acquisition
offers from the likes of Yahoo and Microsoft, has been through legal battles, and has increased
the number of its users all the while.

As of 2015, Facebook has over 2 billion monthly active users, and it is valued at a market cap of
$272 billion as of July 2015. Zuckerberg, who owns nearly 423 million shares of Facebook
stock, has become one of the youngest multibillionaires in history.

Net Worth & Current Influence

Thanks to Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has a net worth of $34.8 billion as of July 2015. At the
age of 31, this makes him one of three billionaires with a net worth higher than their current age
in billions of dollars.

When it comes to influence, Zuckerberg has signed the Giving Pledge, which means he will
donate at least 50% of his net worth to philanthropic causes before he dies. In 2010, for example,
he donated more than $100 million to save the Newark school system in New Jersey.

Most Influential Quotes

"The biggest risk is not taking any risk ... In a world that's changing really quickly, the only
strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks."

This is a perfect example of Zuckerberg's thought process. As someone who has created products
since the age of 12, he knows that taking risks is necessary to achieve success.

"Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough."

This type of "ask for forgiveness and not for permission" attitude has helped Zuckerberg build
one of the most influential companies of all time.