Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is a man who needs no introduction. He’s best known for founding and leading Facebook, arguably the most popular social media platform in the world right now.
But what many people don’t think about is that he is pretty wealthy, considering how much he has been earning not only for this social media platform but also for his other investments. Now, is his wealth as much as to consider him a billionaire? Or maybe just a millionaire? Either way, it is a lot of money.
In this blog post, we’ll dive into his life and business ventures to see how he became such an example of success and get to know his actual net worth.
Who Is Mark Zuckerberg? His Early Years
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains, New York. His father, Edward Zuckerberg, was a dentist, while his mother, Karen, was a psychiatrist. Mark has three sisters: Randi, Donna, and Arielle as his three sisters.
The magnate was raised in Dobbs Ferry in New York’s Westchester County.
Zuckerberg started using computers in middle school and began writing software. In the 1990s, his father taught him BASIC Programming and then hired David Newman, a software developer, to teach him privately.
For his sophomore and freshman years, Zuckerberg attended Ardsley High School, where he excelled in classes and then transferred to the private school, Phillips Exeter Academy.
There, he was a star academically, winning prizes in math, astronomy, and classical studies. He was the captain of Phillip Exeter Academy’s fencing team and took a BASIC graduate course at Mercy College while in high school.
He also created a program called “ZuckNet,” which linked all computers in the Zuckerbergs home to those in his father’s dental office.
It worked much like AOL Instant Messenger, which was launched the year after Mark created ZuckNet. In high school, he also created a music player called Synapse Media Player.
The media player listened to the user’s listening habits. AOL attempted to purchase Synapse and hire Zuckerberg. Microsoft tried to hire Zuckerberg and also offered Synapse several million dollars. He decided not to sell it nor work for Microsoft and instead was focused on enrolling at Harvard, which he did in fall 2002.
But were his years in college as productive as anyone would believe?
Zuckerberg was a programmer prodigy when he arrived at Harvard.
When enrolling, he decided to study computer science and psychology. He was a member of Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity and Kirkland house.
During his sophomore year, he created CourseMatch, a program to make class selection decisions based upon the opinions of others and form study groups.
Not long after, Facemash was created. This allowed users to select the most attractive person from a set of photos. Harvard had to shut down Facemash after it overwhelmed its servers within the first weekend of it being live.
In January 2004, Zuckerberg started writing code for a new website. Zuckerberg launched “Thefacebook” on February 4, 2004. However, only a few days later from its launch, three Harvard seniors complained about him stealing and using ideas to create a website that was a competitor for their ideas which he presumedly was helping them with.
Zuckerberg left Harvard during his sophomore year to start working at Facebook and make sure his project was growing as he had visualized by this point.
An Empire in A College Room: Facebook
In 2004, when Zuckerberg started Facebook in his college room, he didn’t expect that it would make him make so much money that it is hard to count.
After leaving college to continue working on this project, he, Moskovitz, and some friends moved to Palo Alto, California, where they rented a small house used as an office for Facebook during spring 2004.
Peter Thiel, who then invested in the company, met Zuckerberg over the summer. The group initially planned to go back to Harvard, but they decided to stay in California.
Major corporations had offered to purchase the company. Still, they declined each of the offers, and instead, Zuckerberg sought advice from Peter Currie, former Netscape CFO, about financing strategies for Facebook in 2009.
Zuckerberg announced that Facebook had reached 500 million users on July 21, 2010. Facebook, a vast social network, has made Mark Zuckerberg the richest man in the world.
Over the years, Facebook gained relevance to the point of hitting $15 billion in net worth in 2012, and the big social platform hasn’t stopped there.
Despite some legal issues, Facebook bought platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp and insisted on buying Snapchat when the social media platform became popular a few years ago.
How Much Does Zuckerberg Make?
For someone who sure earns a lot of money, he decided not to pay himself a salary.
For many, this would mean nothing considering that he owns 15% of Facebook in stock, but when a person decides not to pay himself (in this case) a salary, this means they don’t have external income from the business.
This is the case for Zuckerberg, who decided to pay himself $1 per year in order to help the company increase its profit. You can call it a way to “sacrifice” oneself for the greater good, and, in this case, it has paid off quite handsomely.
However, going back to the stocks and shares, these are what they are actually worth when it comes to their net worth and money so far.
A great example is to go back to May 18, 2012. In this year, a share was worth $38 only, but Mark doesn’t own 1 or 2 only. The magnate owns 400 million shares, making him a billionaire with a fortune of $15.2 billion.
In 2017, Mark had a net worth of $56 billion, which increased the following year to $71 billion.
However, in 2019 and 2020, it decreased to $62.3 billion and 54.7 billion respectively to finally increase to $97 billion starting 2021.
Forbe’s real-time net worth tracker places Zuckerberg’s net worth at $132.3 billion as of July 2021.
But why has his net worth decreased and then jumped back to where it was or even more?
Mark has committed to giving away 99% of his wealth over his lifetime in 2015, and in 2017, he announced that he would sell chunks of his shares regularly to help fund his foundation, The CZI (Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative).
In 2018, his share sales brought in $5.3 billion and sold $1.86 billion in Facebook shares only in 2019.
Over 90% of Zuckerberg’s fortune comes from Facebook shares and investments despite some personal businesses.
Besides cash or money, we can count that he owns $200 million in real estate around the USA and has paid millions for terrain like $145 million for 840 acres on Kauai (Hawaiian Islands).
Can You Start A Business in Your Room?
If there’s something Zuckerberg has taught us before anything else: you can start a business from anywhere.
Many believe it is a matter of having a suitable space, time, and location. However, you never know when a billionaire idea will be born, and this also applies to other opportunities that might not make you one of the wealthiest people like Mark (yet), but it sure is a great start.
Therefore, if you had any idea in mind or feel like you are not going anywhere because of where you are, well, spoiler alert: the place doesn’t matter, just make sure to get started.
Be it in your bedroom, kitchen, office, or college while drinking with some friends, you can cross paths with a business idea that can be revolutionary and take you step by step to your final goal.
That being said, do we believe you can start something as big as Zuckerberg? Absolutely.
However, you indeed need a lot of time, money, and help to make it possible. Therefore, what about starting with something reachable and as easy as starting it today?
Digital real estate has proven to be quite a handful when it comes to making money without all the struggle for funds, time, and equipment.
You will need investment, but it won’t take you bankrupt nor make you spend a lot of time despite the effort you have to invest when starting.
But before getting there, what is this opportunity about?
Is Digital Real Estate Even Real?
If you don’t feel acquainted with the term, you might feel safer when we mention local lead generation.
This business model is all about building sites for businesses that are trying to:
- Build a presence online.
- Bring leads/clients their way.
However, building websites, managing them, and making sure they’re generating leads isn’t simple, and it can cost a lot of money when you don’t know how to do it. As a result, companies decide to rely on people who actually know what to do.
This is when your role starts. You will be handling the building, generation, and keeping the websites live to continue bringing leads.
When you’re done creating the site and finally generating leads, you will get paid for PER lead based on a commission established with your client.
The secret to generating leads doesn’t lie in paying ads but instead relying on organic traffic by ranking the site on Google.
All this could sound like a lot of work, and it is when you are ignorant of most of the terms, actions, and steps needed to make it possible.
However, it doesn’t require talent, it is simple to learn, and you won’t spend your savings on this.
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