Mark Zuckerberg: biography, interesting facts and photos. Biography of Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook
A fascinating success story of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook! About how a simple programmer managed to make a billion-dollar fortune for himself!
Today I want to talk to you about the founder of a huge social network - Facebook.
Who created it? How did this brilliant idea come to the creator?
How did he make it come true?
So, let's go find out...
The youngest billionaire, the father of Facebook, a computer genius, a cynical bastard, a traitor, a man who walks over corpses to his goal, an insane eccentric - in just 30 years of his life Mark Zuckerberg deserves all these characteristics.
Son, you are a genius
The future cult personality was born in the state of New York into a fairly wealthy, decent Jewish family.
Already at the age of 10, it became clear that the boy connected his future with programming.
The fact is that it was at this age that he received his first computer as a gift.
Mark, like his peers, did not leave the new toy, but his interest was not limited to finding information for tests and visiting interesting sites.
He became seriously interested in programming, began reading specialized literature, and at the age of 12 became the author of a program that made it possible to exchange messages.
The first user of the program was his father.
It is clear that such a talented young man should have found a place at the best university in the country.
Harvard believed in the uniqueness of the future billionaire and gladly accepted him into its ranks. But Mark Zuckerberg never had the opportunity to show off his graduation cap and gown.
Fellow students Moskowitz, Severin, McCline, Hughes, with whom Mark Zuckerberg started this project, they gradually removed themselves, although some were forcibly removed.
Facebook was able to move to a new level when the founder of the then nascent empire met the legendary programmer Sean Parker, who, having become the president of Facebook, attracted his first large investments and showed that it was possible to earn big money from advertising.
Sean also soon had to say goodbye, as he was charged with drug possession.
Meanwhile, Facebook continued to develop rapidly, already bringing billions to its creator.
Billionaire? Oh well
Today, a person who is a member leads a fairly modest lifestyle, receiving a salary of $1.
His wife was a close friend of many years, not particularly beautiful.
He drives a small Volkswagen and even rides a bicycle.
IN ordinary life wears cheap jeans and T-shirts, and you will never see him in fashionable clubs, luxury resorts or social gatherings.
The dollar billionaire doesn't have his own huge house with a swimming pool and other material benefits due to his status.
But he donates millions to charity and is part of a group whose members pledge to leave at least 50% of their wealth to charitable foundations.
He remains the same infantile and eccentric genius who introduced the fashion for social networks.
It seems that he was just lucky to become rich and famous, but this is far from the case.
And a few more facts
from the success story of Mark Zuckerberg and the creation of his “brainchild”
watch in the video:
Your goal Mark Zuckerberg achieved through colossal labor and enormous talent, although the methods he chose confuse many.
But Mark does not know how to live differently: he is used to sweeping away from life everything that bothers him: be it material wealth or unnecessary people.
Most likely, this is why he won, and, as we know, winners cannot be judged.
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They have reason to think so.
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Mark Zuckerberg. Photo Getty
Since the beginning of 2017, the head Facebook Mark Zuckerberg by US state. He dines and chats with locals, and visits historical sites to get to know his social media audience.
While Zuckerberg insists his surprise tour is just for informational purposes, coupled with changes in the entrepreneur's views, it raises questions about whether the social network leader is preparing to launch a political career or is trying to restore Facebook's tarnished reputation.
Rumors about the presidency
Mark Zuckerberg has ambitious goals that he sets for himself every year. In 2013, he decided to meet new people every day. In 2014 - write letters of gratitude daily. In 2015, he opened his own book club and produced 23 books in a year. In 2016, Zuckerberg ran almost 590 kilometers. In January 2017, his promises took on a different scale: the head of Facebook announced his intention to visit all American states by the end of the year.
Since then, articles about the political ambitions of the entrepreneur began to appear in Western media. , and put forward theories according to which Zuckerberg is thinking about running for president of the United States and is working on his image to do this.
The theory was reinforced by Zuckerberg's open religious views, without which no one is active, cooperation with former presidential campaign managers and a critical attitude towards the current government.
In addition, journalists were alarmed by the recent head of Facebook receiving an honorary doctorate from Harvard University (he dropped out of Harvard back in 2005). Formally, a person without a higher education can become the President of the United States, but the last leader of the country without a diploma was Harry Truman, who left office in 1953.
From South Carolina to Wisconsin
Mark Zuckerberg says the purpose of his trip to the United States is to see how the people brought together by Facebook really live.
In March, he visited an Episcopal church in South Carolina where nine people were killed in 2015. A month later, Zuckerberg visited Ohio at a rehabilitation meeting for drug addicts who use and (in 2015, 33 thousand people used them in the United States). He's in a juvenile detention center in Indiana and has criticized the local reform system. In Alabama, Zuckerberg met with the crew of a shrimp boat. In Mississippi I visited a historical cemetery, in Michigan I discussed Trump’s immigration law with Muslims, in Texas I spoke with priests, and in Dallas I spoke with police officers. In early May, the head of Facebook visited a family farm in Wisconsin: he fed cows, rode a tractor, played with newborn kittens and dined on livestock meat.
By June, Zuckerberg 15 states out of 30 planned.
Mark Zuckerberg drives a tractor for the first time in Wisconsin, May 2017. Photo from personal Facebook page
For security reasons, each location was given only a few hours' notice of Zuckerberg's arrival. Security and personal photographers travel with the head of Facebook. Like The New York Times, Zuckerberg is visiting states that have lost active Democratic representation or journalistic attention focused on Donald Trump.
Zuckerberg's journey by Mashable journalist Louis Matsakis. According to her, the Facebook founder visits stereotypical tourist places, the problems of which have already been revealed and repeatedly emphasized, and does not seek to take a fresh look at the country.
According to the journalist, this route is connected with Zuckerberg’s fear of exposing himself to attack, and the possible purpose of his journey is to restore Facebook’s reputation after the last presidential election.
Map of marked states where Zuckerberg has already visited. Click to enlarge image
Connection to the 2016 elections and criticism of the government
Following Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 election, Facebook was bombarded with accusations of indirectly supporting the president. Allegedly because large quantity fake news generated by the algorithms of the social network feed and its section for popular media materials, voters formed a false impression of the candidates, which influenced Trump’s victory.
Twitter and Google are also responsible for spreading false information, but the main blow fell on Zuckerberg's social network. BuzzFeed analysis showed that in the last three months of the presidential campaign, fake political news actually turned out to be more popular on Facebook than real news.
Facebook has been condemned by politicians, including Barack Obama, and general dissatisfaction with Trump has deepened Americans' attitudes toward the social network, which allegedly helped put the Republican in the White House. Zuckerberg initially called the allegations false, but then stepped up the fight against misinformation.
From left to right: Amazon founder, Alphabet executive and Facebook board member meeting with Mike Pence and Donald Trump. Photo Getty
Over the past few years, Zuckerberg has regularly met with leaders of various countries. In 2011, he communicated with then US President Barack Obama, in 2012, in Moscow for a meeting with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, in 2014, the importance of Facebook with the Prime Minister of India and the President of Mexico, in 2015 with the President of Brazil, and in the summer of 2016 year the possibility of returning the social network to China and with the head of the Vatican.
Something changed in December 2016. Then Donald Trump held a conference with representatives of major technology companies, including Google, Tesla, Apple, Amazon and Facebook. The meeting was mostly attended by company heads, but Facebook was represented at the event by board member Sheryl Sandberg instead of Zuckerberg.
The journalists were never explained why the head of Facebook did not come to the meeting. And in January 2017, Zuckerberg issued Trump's decree on immigrants. That same month, he became two former presidential campaign managers for George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The head of the social network explained that they will be involved in a charitable organization founded by Zuckerberg's wife.
Political career potential
By law, the President of the United States must be at least 35 years old. In November 2020, when the country holds new elections, Zuckerberg will be 36 years old. His current political views are unknown.
Zuckerberg before leaving the Vatican, August 2016. Photo from personal Facebook page
However, journalists made assumptions about Zuckerberg on January 25, declaring that he was not going to run for president. According to the entrepreneur, he is focused on developing the Facebook user community and working on the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative charity project.
However, the Facebook founder may change his mind in the future. Before the start of the 2016 presidential race, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said several times that she did not plan to participate in the elections. In case Zuckerberg is using similar tactics, Vanity Fair journalist Nick Bilton's main talking point for critics of his presidential campaign is personal data security. Mark Zuckerberg's company has the personal data of more than two billion people, and all of it can be used to his advantage.
I have never been a philanthropist or populist. What forced him (at least in words) to declare war on sponsors and declare that the social network will be returned to ordinary people?
But no agency will report the news that “our cat gave birth to kittens yesterday,” while for a particular user this may be much more interesting than reports about the war in Zanzibar. Moreover, the lion's share of such “news” turned out to be fake when checked. As a result, the inexperienced user stopped believing any news at all, even the most truthful ones.
Riot on the ship
FB management was thinking about returning to user-friendly policies a couple of years ago, when Facebook announced that the social network would begin to pay more attention to the posts of users’ friends, rather than reprints from the New York Times or political campaigns of Bernie Sanders.
The last straw, as Wired writes in its gigantic (more than 40 pages!) investigation, was not only the irritation of users at the fact that they were fed news according to the menu approved by the Facebook trending team (a team in manual mode deciding which messages are worthy of publication and which are not).
“ dissident", current or former FB employees).
"Since 2016 Facebook company is experiencing a real civil war. Anyone who doesn’t share Zuckerberg’s anti-Trump views could be shown the door and woken up in the middle of the night,” Wired sources say.
It was the voluntary ranking of posts that caused a loud scandal in December last year. Then one of the users was unable to come to the aid of a dying friend offline, because the Facebook trending team considered his posts too gloomy and did not publish them on the feed. (Why the caring friend did not contact the dying man through any other channel, history is silent, but the logic of Facebook is quite clear: gloomy content scares off the reader, and he hurries to go look at cats on another resource).
During the existence of Facebook, a whole generation of users was born and united into communities, for whom from the very beginning it is not a social network, where the bulk of posts is user-generated content (content created by the users themselves), but an aggregator of other people’s content, the expert points out.
All efforts when creating such services, and Facebook is the first of them, are aimed only at taking the maximum possible amount of time from a person and keeping his attention for as long as possible - Sean Parker, ex-president of Facebook
As Zuckerberg’s former comrade Sean Parker warned, their brainchild works on the principle of a drug dealer: once a user gets hooked on a needle, he won’t go anywhere until his death.
“With the two billion audience that Zuckerberg claims, this ship has tremendous stability. Mass departure of the audience is possible only in one case: if the same massive negative hype arises around Facebook. There is more than enough of this kind of hype now, but it is mainly content producers who are making the noise - that is, media professionals, and this is of no interest to any cat lovers. And it is these latter who make up the critical mass of content consumers,” points out Reedus’ interlocutor.
The Titanics also sink
That even social networks with tens of millions of users are not immune from troubles was shown by the sad story of the once popular My Space, as well as Live Journal, which is better known to the Russian audience. True, the number of LJ/LJ users never even at its peak rose above 40 million, of which over 2.6 million were in the Russian-language segment (data from 2012, on the eve of which a disaster began with this resource).
Moreover, in the case of LiveJournal, its Russian-language version outlived the original American one, not least through the selfless efforts of the now deceased Anton Nosik. But even the genius of the head of the blog service (until 2012) of the SUP company could not bring out of, to use an aviation term, a “stall” project, which at some point “missed” a cardinal change in trend among social network users around the world: a move away from long philosophical written discussions about existence to “clip” consciousness - on which the phenomenon of success of microblogs like Twitter (as well as Instagram) was based. This was a generational change that LiveJournal managers either missed or ignored.
However, the head of FB plans to do exactly what killed Live Journal - return to the concept of the time when many of the current users of his social network were not yet alive. True, this may be a deliberate risk - after all, the FB audience itself is visibly maturing, and the younger audience prefers “updates” on Snapchat and Telegram. However, FB developers in this case keeping their nose to the wind, trying to lure the “renegades” back with the help Instagram service, where almost nothing is required to write at all (an effort that is almost too much for the vast majority of members of Generation Z).
Talented people are talented in everything. Fencing, programming, knowledge of languages, psychology are far from full list hidden possibilities a young, purposeful guy, Mark Zuckerberg. He managed to turn his favorite pastime into a profitable business, creating a world-famous social network. Today, Facebook is one of the five most visited sites, and its founder became the youngest billionaire on the planet. What brought an ordinary guy to success?
Mark Zuckerberg: biography, first steps
The future programmer was born into a family of doctors in the town of White Plains (USA). Zuckerberg's father found himself in dentistry, and his mother in psychiatry. Mark Elliott has 3 sisters - the eldest Randi and the younger Donna and Ariel.
Mark's acquaintance with information technology happened quite early, at 10 years old. The guy received a gift from his father, Edward Zuckerberg, - the first PC. The surprise was an investment in his son's future education. Computers and digital radiography were just beginning to be used in the workplace, and the elder Zuckerberg actively took advantage of this advantage. Edward became the first mentor in Mark's life, teaching him the Basic programming language. The child was so carried away by the new activity that within a couple of years he was writing the ZuckNet program to improve the work of his father’s dental clinic. The program allowed Edward, who was in the office, to communicate with his family and assistants.
IN free time talented child created computer games and received additional knowledge from a private tutor.
Zuckerberg's versatility
Programming wasn't Mark's only area of expertise. While studying at Phillips Exeter Academy, the smart guy was interested in literature, mathematics, languages and fencing. In his university resume, Mark indicated knowledge of languages such as French, Latin, Ancient Greek and Hebrew. Often in literature classes, Zuckerberg quoted passages from original works.
The future billionaire's sporting achievements were also outstanding. His passion for fencing led to the dominant position of captain in the school team.
First successes in programming
Despite being successful in many fields, Mark's heart and soul belonged to programming. While studying at the academy, Zuckerberg wrote the Synapse program with his classmate Adam D'Angelo. The invention was music player, capable of analyzing the owner’s tastes and, according to the information received, creating playlists. This program was created for personal use, but the creators shared it with the public on a special website. The creation was noticed by two well-known companies, Microsoft and AOL, and Zuckerberg received an offer to sell the product and then working together. However, the guy decided to refuse the world IT giants, justifying his decision with the words that “inspiration is not for sale.”
Instead of concluding an agreement with world leaders, Zuckerberg entered the prestigious Harvard University to major in Psychology.
University studies
At Harvard, Mark diligently studied psychology, not forgetting about improving his programming skills. Zuckerberg was a member of the Jewish student society Alpha Insilon Pi, studied diligently and attended computer courses.
The second year of study was marked by the creation of two computer programs. The first invention, called CourseMatch, helped students decide on course choices based on the experiences of other students. The second creation was called Facemash and lasted only 2 days. The program consisted of choosing the most attractive one out of two students. Thus, a list of the most popular students at the university was formed. The invention had real photographs of students, which became the reason for a large number of complaints and the closure of the project. Zuckerberg admitted to hacking the Harvard database, but explained his behavior with the usual desire to joke.
Soon everyone forgot about the failed joke. However, the incident became decisive for three of his fellow students, who were selecting a team to create a new project, HarvardConnection.com. Mark was assigned important role in social network programming. Zuckerberg accepted the offer, but soon left the project due to being busy with another creation.
Birth of Facebook
Work on the site started in January 2004. Sophomore student Mark Zuckerberg registered a domain called thefacebook, and already in early February the project was seen by the world. Initially, it was a social network for communication between Harvard students. Within a day, about a thousand people registered on the site, and a month later, a good half of the students had their own page on the social network.
The site's growth required more people to work on it. Classmates Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskowitz, Andrew McCollum, and Chris Hughes joined Mark. Thanks to efforts and financial investments, within a few months the network became available to Stanford, Columbia and Yale universities. Over time, the list expanded to include Ivy League universities, higher education institutions in Canada and the United States.
The development of the social network was rapid and successful. In the summer of 2004, Facebook was created, with Sean Parker as its president, and general director occupied by Mark Zuckerberg. The guy decided to take an example from Bill Gates and quit his studies at Harvard, devoting himself entirely to the project.
A new page in the history of Facebook began in 2005, when the facebook.com domain was acquired. From that moment on, Mark Zuckerberg’s social network not only became a place for students to communicate, but also gave anyone the opportunity to plunge into the electronic world.
Three years later, Mark Zuckerberg was recognized as the youngest billionaire in the world, and his project continued to flourish. Today, the Facebook network has more than 1 billion users.
Below are some interesting facts about Mark:
Meeting your future wife
Mark Zuckerberg met his wife Priscilla Chan at one of the student parties at Harvard. They dated for nine years and finally legalized their relationship in 2012. The wedding ceremony took place in the circle of relatives and friends. Initially, the event involved celebrating the successful completion of his future wife's studies and the placement of Facebook shares on the stock exchange. However, the couple gave an unexpected surprise and announced their wedding.
The billionaire's chosen one has American and Chinese roots. The girl studied at the Faculty of Biology at Harvard, and then at the Medical College in San Francisco, in the Department of Pediatrics. In 2015, Priscilla began working to open a special school that would incorporate educational and health promotion elements.
Despite their enormous fortune, the couple are not regulars at parties and social events, preferring board games and walks in nature.
First experience of fatherhood
Mark and Priscilla for a long time dreamed of adding to the family, but the girl had miscarriages. In December 2015, Mark Zuckerberg's first child was born. Maxim's daughter Chan (Max) lit up the social network with her appearance just a few days after birth. The non-superstitious Mark Zuckerberg posted a photo with a child on his personal Facebook page. The happy dad took two months off to enjoy the joy of fatherhood.
Charity
In 2010, the billionaire joined the charity Pledge of Giving, which encourages wealthy people to give half of their wealth to benefit those in need.
Mark Zuckerberg with his wife and children (they are still part of the plans of the young married couple) will give 99 percent of the Facebook shares (today about $45 billion) that they own to charity. The joyful couple made this statement after the birth of their daughter. The future should offer opportunities for everyone, regardless of their social status and financial well-being.
In addition, Zuckerberg supported the Diaspora project, which was a direct competitor to Facebook. Mark allocated for the development of a social network with open source 100 thousand dollars. The billionaire showed concern for the development of public schools in Newark. Mark Zuckerberg donated $100 million to improve them.
Visit Russia
In 2012, Mark Zuckerberg flew to Russian Federation. After staying on its territory for three days, the young billionaire managed to complete many important missions. One of them was a meeting with the Prime Minister of Russia. Mark also gave a lecture for MSU students. To attend the meeting, you had to register. The number of applicants exceeded the capacity of the audience, so a lottery was held among those who signed up. At the lecture, the billionaire shared with the audience the history of the creation of the famous social network and told his story. In addition, Zuckerberg took part in several Russian programs and was actively involved in international conference created by him. The conference discussed the benefits Facebook networks, the main one being the huge number of active users.
Mark Zuckerberg's titles
Mark Zuckerberg has already won the following titles:
- The youngest billionaire in the world according to Forbes magazine.
- Time magazine's Person of the Year 2010.
- The most tastelessly dressed billionaire according to GQ magazine.
Mark Zuckerberg, whose photo you see in the article, is a young, successful man. He managed to achieve a lot thanks to his perseverance and hard work. Let's wish him success and prosperity!
Business Insider conducted its own investigation and revealed the details of this story
Business Insider spoke with people who were at the origins of Facebook, with sources close to the company, studied documents and personal correspondence of Zuckerberg, and in its own way told this corporate story, which became the central storyline of the film." Social network".
Ahead of $16 billion IPO Facebook, it became known that the co-founder of the company Eduardo Saverin renounced his US citizenship to save on taxes.
The only reason this is possible is that Saverin no longer works at Facebook. In 2005, he left the company after his partner Mark Zuckerberg eroded his share and removed him from business.
Saverin's exit from Facebook became the central plotline of the film "The Social Network." “Of course, “The Social Network” is just a movie. But it is based on a true story. This is the story,” writes Business Insider. “The story of Saverin’s conflict with Zuckerberg, who, in his opinion, defrauded him of a huge stake in Facebook shares. And the story of how Zuckerberg solved a problem at Facebook that could have prevented the company from becoming the internet giant it is today."
As the publication emphasizes, the narrative is based on the testimony of people who were at the origins of the company, sources close to it, as well as on the basis of correspondence between Zuckerberg and his confidants and first lawyers.
Eduardo Saverin
How it all began
In late 2003, Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg asked a Harvard student named Eduardo Saverin to put $15,000 in a bank account that they could both access. As Mark told him, money is needed to pay for servers to host a site that he wants to develop. The site will be called TheFacebook.com. Eduardo agreed.
Why did Zuckerberg choose Saverin as his first business partner? Zuckerberg himself does not talk about this, but the publication draws some conclusions thanks to instant messages that he wrote at different times.
In one message, Zuckerberg described his new partner, Saverin, as "the head of an investment society." Severin was rich, Zuckerberg suggested, because "apparently insider trading is not illegal in Brazil."
Zuckerberg also partnered with Saverin because he gave the impression that he knew a thing or two about business. Saverin was the kind of guy who wore sharp suits to lectures, and many people, including Zuckerberg, thought he had ties to the Brazilian mafia.
Zuckerberg: Eduardo will pay for my servers.
Friend: There are suckers born every day.
Zuckerberg: He thinks he will make money.
Friend: what do you think?
Zuckerberg: I don't know about business.
Zuckerberg: I'll be satisfied if I do something cool.
So it appears that Zuckerberg was getting closer to Saverin because he had money and an understanding of how to make it work. Zuckerberg himself, meanwhile, wanted to “do something cool.”
So, Saverin’s money was received to pay for the servers, and in February 2004 TheFacebook.com was born. This instantly becomes a sensation at Harvard. Students from other universities immediately demanded an expansion of the site, and Mark and his colleagues granted their request.
By April, the site was so successful that Zuckerberg, Saverin, and a third Harvard sophomore named Dustin Moskowitz founded a limited liability company, The Facebook. Two months later, on June 10, 2004, Harvard officials noted the amazing popularity of thefacebook.com.
This was the best moment in the relationship between the co-founders.
Gathering Storm
Six months later, Zuckerberg and Moskowitz moved to Palo Alto, where they decided to continue working on the project in a rented house. Saverin went to New York for an internship at Lehman Brothers.
As can be seen from instant messages During this period, before Zuckerberg left for the West Coast, he asked Saverin to work on three things: “Start a company, get funding and create a business model.”
Almost immediately after the move, the relationship between the co-founders began to deteriorate.
At first it was just a cultural misunderstanding. One awkward instant message exchange shows how different the lives of Zuckerberg in Palo Alto and Saverin on the East Coast were:
Saverin: so you guys often go to parties and stuff?
Zuckerberg: We don't have fun at all.
Zuckerberg: But that's OK because business is fun.
Saverin: hah, yes, this is entertainment. Although, seriously, nothing fun?
Zuckerberg: That's enough.
But then Saverin did something that really angered Zuckerberg: he launched unauthorized advertisements on Facebook. What’s even worse is that these advertisements were required for a project that Saverin created single-handedly – the employment site Joboozle.
Zuckerberg exploded email:
"You're building Joboozle knowing that at some point Facebook will probably want to make some sort of job search service. What's amazing to me is that you're doing a project that will eventually compete with Facebook, and that's "That's bad in itself. But advertising it on Facebook, even for free, is just vile."
But what finally destroyed the relationship between Saverin and Zuckerberg was Facebook's need for funding.
As TheFacebook.com became more popular, it increasingly needed money to continue growing. Finding investors was not difficult. Already in July famous people Silicon Valley likes Mark Pincus, Ride Hoffman and Peter Thiel are lining up to give Zuckerberg money for development. Things were going so well that Mark soon decided to commit himself to the company and not return to Harvard.
But there was a challenge: getting Saverin to complete the conversion of the company under Delaware law, a critical step in securing financing agreements.
The situation was becoming critical because without external funding, TheFacebook.com could only develop with money from the Zuckerberg family.
Ultimately, Zuckerberg decided to fix the problem by getting rid of Saverin.
In a message to Moskowitz, he explained why:
"He had to start a company, get funding and create a business model. He failed on all three counts... Now that I'm not going back to Harvard, I won't have to worry about getting beaten up by Brazilian thugs."
"Dirty Tricks"
When Zuckerberg and Moskowitz moved to Palo Alto in June 2004, they met Sean Parker, an Internet startup founder best known as the co-founder of Napster. Parker soon joined TheFacebook.com.
Parker's first task was to do what Saverin should have done but didn't: help Facebook raise money. Parker managed to get money for Napster, and he had connections in Silicon Valley. He was quickly able to prove that he was capable, and Zuckerberg only strengthened the idea that Saverin was not valuable to the company.
But there was one problem: How could Zuckerberg remove Facebook's third-largest shareholder and co-founder from business?
After meeting with Peter Thiel, who would soon become Facebook's first outside investor, Mark and Sean discussed Saverin's problem via instant messages. Zuckerberg hinted at a cool solution based on some of the "dirty tricks" used by Thiel.
According to Parker, Thiel learned these tricks from one of the Valley's legendary venture capitalists, Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital (the company that funded Google, Yahoo, PayPal, Zappos and many other big tech companies).
Parker: Peter (Thiel) tried some dirty tricks. It's all very much like Moritz's classics.
Zuckerberg: huh, really?
Parker: Only Moritz does it better.
Zuckerberg: This is pathetic.
Parker: I bet he got it all from Mike.
Zuckerberg: Well, now I took it from him and will try it on Eduardo.
In later emails and instant messages, we see what dirty tricks Zuckerberg intended to use to get funding for TheFacebook.com without waiting for Saverin's signature.
His plan was to reduce Saverin's stake in TheFacebook.com by creating a new company in Delaware to replace the old company (a limited liability company registered in April in Florida), and then divide the shares in the new company, but so that Saverin would get nothing . Mark discussed this plan with trusted people over instant messaging services several times.
Here, for example:
Confidant: How are you going to get past Eduardo?
Zuckerberg: I'm going to buy an LLC.
Zuckerberg: And give him fewer shares in the company that bought him.
Trustee: I'm not sure the desire to reallocate shares is worth getting involved in a potential lawsuit.
Zuckerberg: No, I'll do it because now I have to run everything with Eduardo, and this way I can get control.
In another letter, Mark writes:
"Eduardo is uncooperative on everything... We should give our intellectual property to a new company and just win the lawsuit... I'm just going to shut him down and then sue him. And he'll get something, I'm sure, but he deserves something- That…".
Zuckerberg pulled the trigger, sending an email to his lawyer asking him to go ahead with the plan.
In this email, Zuckerberg writes about Saverin: "Is there a way to do this without making it so obvious to him that we are diluting his stake to 10%?"
In the response, Zuckerberg's lawyer offers a prescient warning:
"Because Eduardo is the only shareholder whose stake is being diluted, there is a significant risk that he could demand shares, particularly from Dustin and Mark, but also from Sean."
The plan worked
In mid-summer 2004, Zuckerberg's plan to eliminate his partner went ahead without a hitch.
July 29, 2004 new company TheFacebook.com was founded in Delaware. She acquired the old company.
Before the deal, Facebook shares were distributed as follows: Zuckerberg 65%, Saverin 30%, Moskowitz 5%. After the transaction, the shares of the new company were distributed in a new way: Zuckerberg had 40%, Saverin - 24%, Moskowitz - 16% and Thiel - 9%. The remainder, approximately 20%, went into reserve for future employees. From there, a good chunk of the shares went to Eduardo's replacement, Sean Parker, the new chief executive of TheFacebook.com.
On October 31, 2004, Saverin signed a shareholder agreement that distributed his 3 million shares of common stock in the new company. In addition, through this agreement, he transferred all related intellectual property and voting rights to Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg became the sole director of Facebook.
On January 7, 2005, Facebook issued 9 million shares of common stock in the new company. He took 3.3 million shares for himself and gave 2 million to Sean Parker and Dustin Moskowitz. This share issue immediately diluted Saverin's stake in the company from approximately 24% to less than 10%.
Mark's plan was a success - Eduardo was eliminated as a partner.