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Unlikely Heroes

Mark Zukerberg

He was placed on probation at Harvard, sued by two former classmates for $65 million and forced to testify before Congress for a data breach that may have impacted 87 million Americans. But Mark Zuckerberg, innovator of the social media world, has soldiered on despite all odds to create an online kingdom that has forever changed the way we socialize.

The early years

Mark Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains, N.Y., and raised in nearby Dobbs Ferry. At age 12, the young Zuckerberg created “Zucknet,” a platform used for inter-office communication at his father’s dental practice.

Zuckerberg attended the Academy of Phillips Exeter, an exclusive preparatory high school in New Hampshire. For his senior year project, Zuckerberg wrote a music player called the Synapse Media Player, a precursor to iTunes Genius. The program utilized artificial intelligence to study the user’s listening habits and recommend music the user might enjoy. Both Microsoft and AOL expressed interest in buying Synapse at $1 million and hiring Zuckerberg as a developer, but he turned them down and went on to Harvard University.

A Harvard legend

At Harvard University, Zuckerberg quickly built a name for himself as the go-to computer programmer on campus. During his sophomore year, Zuckerberg hacked the Harvard University student database to create Facemash, a controversial program that randomly selected two students of the same gender and posted their pictures, asking viewers to vote on their attractiveness. The administrative board at Harvard came down hard on Zuckerberg for acquiring private information. The coding genius was forced to take down the site and was placed on probation. Zuckerberg was duly chastised, but he had learned an important lesson about the addictive quality of an interactive social network.

Facebook is born

In November 2003, Harvard students Divya Narendra and twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss approached Zuckerberg for help in creating a social network for Harvard students. “UConnect” would feature photos of each student, along with their personal information and useful links. Narendra and the Winklevoss twins wanted Zuckerberg’s help with the programming. Zuckerberg agreed, while harboring an idea for a social network of his own.

On Feb. 4, 2004, Zuckerberg, along with roommates Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz, and friend Eduardo Saverin, launched TheFacebook.com, an online directory to connect Harvard students. The site, managed out of Zuckerberg’s dorm room, became an instant hit. When asked to comment on the network for the Harvard student paper, The Crimson, Zuckerberg said, “I have no idea why it’s so popular. I was pretty surprised.” Zuckerberg also reassured the Harvard student body that the program would never be used for profit and would likely not be expanded beyond Harvard. Just one month later, though, TheFacebook was open to students attending Stanford, Columbia and Yale. Soon afterward, the expansion included all Ivy League and Boston-area schools. Zuckerberg dropped out of college after completing his sophomore year to pursue full time the development of his website, now called Facebook.com. By the end of 2004, the site had 1 million users. One year later, with the site open to high school students as well, the user base ballooned into 5.5 million. In September 2006, the website was open to anyone over the age of 13 and within three months, boasted a staggering 12 million users. Less than a year later, in October 2007, that number had exploded to 50 million.

The explosive growth rate attracted interest among venture capital firms, including Accel Partners, which invested $12.7 million in Facebook in 2005. Since then, the company has received multiple acquisition offers from the likes of Microsoft and Yahoo, but Zuckerberg refused to sell. He remains CEO and president of Facebook. The pioneering social media platform hosts an average 1.62 billion daily users and has a market cap of $598 billion.

In January 2010, TIME magazine named Zuckerberg Person of the Year.

“The social network created by Mark connected almost every tenth person on the planet,” Richard Stengel, TIME editor-in-chief, said.

The social media platform hatched in a Harvard dorm room has become a worldwide phenomenon.

Under attack

Zuckerberg’s road to fortune and fame was far from smooth.

First, in September 2004, the coding genius was sued by the Winklevoss twins and Narendra for allegedly stealing their idea for UConnect and using it to create Facebook. The case dragged on for years, until Zuckerberg agreed to pay a settlement of $65 million in 2008.

Ten years later, Facebook was under investigation again, this time on a much larger scale.

On March 17, 2018, The New York Times reported that political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had harvested personal information of 80 million Facebook users through the Facebook app, “This is Your Digital Life.” The data was allegedly used to support political campaigns, including those of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

In April 2018, Zuckerberg testified before Congress, taking full responsibility for the hack. He reassured the public that the company would strengthen its security measures to protect against further data breaches; however, the public was skeptical. Facebook lost an estimated 15 million users after the scandal broke, and the publicly traded company fell $35 billion in value.

Facebook has faced several smaller breaches since what has been dubbed “The Great Hack,” but Zuckerberg has persevered through them all.

Net worth and personal life

In 2010, Forbes magazine featured Mark Zuckerberg as the youngest billionaire on its famous list. Zuckerberg’s net worth at the time was $4 billion. In 2015, Zuckerberg took seventh place in Forbes’ ratings of the 400 richest people in the United States, with a net worth of $40.3 billion.

As part of his business strategy, Zuckerberg has made a point of purchasing any business that poses a potential threat to Facebook. This includes the acquisition of Instagram in April 2012 and WhatsApp in October 2014.

The most recent statistics on Facebook users show that there are 2.6 billion active monthly users on the social media platform. Every 60 seconds, there are 317,000 status updates, 400 new users, 147,000 photos uploaded and 54,000 shared links on Facebook.

Zuckerberg has given generously to numerous causes, including a donation of more than $100 million for the school system of Newark, N.J. Most recently, Facebook has matched $10 million of donations to the CDC to help fund research for COVID-19.

As of May 5, 2020, the company has a market cap of $600.8 billion. Zuckerberg owns over 375 million Facebook shares and has a worth of $78.6 billion.

He and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, live in Palo Alto, Calif., with their two daughters, Maxima and August.

Unlikely Heroes

Steve Jobs

He spent his early school years dreaming up pranks and he couldn’t make it through the fourth grade without bribing from his teacher. He dropped out of college after just six months and was ousted from the company that he co-founded. But Steve Jobs went on to build an empire that revolutionized the world.

This is his story.

The early years

Born on Feb. 24, 1955, to his biological parents Joanne Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali, Jobs was soon adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs and named Steven Paul Jobs. The Jobs family lived in Mountain View, Calif., part of an area that later would become known as Silicon Valley.

A brilliant child with a creative mind, Jobs was easily bored in school. His extraordinary performance on exams prompted the school administrators to suggest he skip a grade, but his parents rejected the idea.

The young Jobs was fascinated by electronics. His father, a machinist by trade, often would invite Jobs to work with him on electronics in the family garage. Under Paul Jobs’ tutelage, the small boy learned how to take machines apart and then reconstruct them, a hobby that filled him with confidence and proficiency with electronics.

Jobs was introduced to his future business partner, Steve Wozniak, while attending Homestead High School. The two bonded instantly over common interests and, in Wozniak’s words, “an independent attitude about things in the world.” They kept up steady contact until Apple’s official launch several years later.

He spent his early school years dreaming up pranks and he couldn’t make it through the fourth grade without bribing from his teacher. He dropped out of college after just six months and was ousted from the company that he co-founded. But Steve Jobs went on to build an empire that revolutionized the world.

This is his story.

The early years

Born on Feb. 24, 1955, to his biological parents Joanne Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali, Jobs was soon adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs and named Steven Paul Jobs. The Jobs family lived in Mountain View, Calif., part of an area that later would become known as Silicon Valley.

A brilliant child with a creative mind, Jobs was easily bored in school. His extraordinary performance on exams prompted the school administrators to suggest he skip a grade, but his parents rejected the idea.

The young Jobs was fascinated by electronics. His father, a machinist by trade, often would invite Jobs to work with him on electronics in the family garage. Under Paul Jobs’ tutelage, the small boy learned how to take machines apart and then reconstruct them, a hobby that filled him with confidence and proficiency with electronics.

Jobs was introduced to his future business partner, Steve Wozniak, while attending Homestead High School. The two bonded instantly over common interests and, in Wozniak’s words, “an independent attitude about things in the world.” They kept up steady contact until Apple’s official launch several years later.

After graduating from high school, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Ore., but dropped out after six months. For the next year and a half, he drifted aimlessly, taking the occasional creative class at Reed. After a short 1974 stint as a video game designer for Atari, he flew off to India on a quest for spiritual fulfillment that ended in experimentation with psychedelic drugs.

Launching Apple

In 1976, at 21 years old, Jobs was ready to make his mark in the world of technology. His singular goal: “To put computers in the hands of everyday people.”

Together with Wozniak, Jobs launched Apple Computer, a small corporation based out of the Jobs’ family garage. Jobs sold his Volkswagen bus and Wozniak traded in his beloved scientific calculator to help fund the venture. They were ready to do anything to make it happen.

The pair pooled their smarts and skills to create computers that were small, cheap and accessible to the common consumer. With Jobs in charge of marketing and Wozniak working on production, the Apple I was rolled out, retailing at $666.66. The personal computer earned the young corporation $774K. The Apple II followed soon after, increasing the company’s sales by 700 percent in just three years to a staggering $139 million.

Apple Computer became a publicly traded company in 1980, with a market value of $1.2 billion by the end of its first day of trading. When the company reached this milestone, Jobs asked marketing expert John Sculley of Pepsi-Cola to take over the role of CEO for Apple.

The company was riding a high wave of success when it hit a sudden dip. The next few products Apple launched had considerable design flaws, leading to many recalls and growing consumer disappointment. IBM soon surpassed Apple in sales and the company struggled to reclaim its footing.

In 1984, Apple released the Macintosh, marketing the desktop computer as youthful and creative. The Macintosh sold well, but still could not compete with IBM’s PCs.

Sculley believed Jobs was hurting the company and urged Apple’s executives to subtly push him out. Jobs was given a more marginalized position, which triggered his departure from the company in 1985.

NeXT and Pixar

After leaving Apple, Jobs launched a hardware and software enterprise called NeXT, Inc. The tech company created a specialized operating system, but the everyday consumer wasn’t enamored by the product.

While working on the development of computer-generated graphics for animated movies, Jobs, in 1986, took interest in Lucasfilm, Ltd. He acquired the company and turned it into Pixar. The company dabbled in several small projects with varying degrees of success until the release of the hit movie Toy Story in 1995. Jobs was named executive producer of the film. Pixar thrived under his leadership, becoming one of the most successful animated movie studios of all time, producing titles like Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. The company merged with Walt Disney in 2006, making Jobs Disney’s largest shareholder.

Apple purchased NeXT in 1996 for $429 million and asked Jobs to return to a leadership position in Apple. Jobs agreed, assuming the role of interim CEO from 1997 to 2000, and then becoming permanent CEO until his eventual resignation in August of 2011.

Reinventing Apple

When Jobs accepted the role of CEO at Apple, he quickly put together a new management team, modified the stock options and started rolling out a line of innovative products.

The first product launched under Jobs’ reinstated leadership was the iMac. The personal computer didn’t offer improved performance or functionality over any competing product, but it looked fantastic and a bit different from the norm. Consumers were hooked. More than 800,000 iMacs were sold within five months.

From there, Jobs went on to build an empire. Branding Apple as a company that only did several things and did them extraordinarily well, he rolled out ground-breaking products like the iPod in 2001 and the iPhone in 2007. Apple products revolutionized the world, creating a dynamic shift in technological demands and in the way we interact with people on a daily basis.

Jobs’ true genius was his marketing. He played the public like a fiddle. Before the release of any product, he’d drop subtle hints about its release to the press, providing just enough details to whet their appetite without revealing anything concrete. He’d also purposely and consistently leave a gap between a new product’s anticipated demand and its supply, creating a frantic rush toward its purchase. Finally, he charged a premium for every Apple device.Through his brilliant marketing and branding, Apple products became status symbols and the company acquired a cult-like following.

Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003, but continued serving in his capacity as CEO until his resignation on Aug. 24, 2011. He died just a few months later, on Oct. 5.

Steve Jobs was a legend whose imprint on the world will be felt for years to come.