- Mark Zuckerberg celebrates his 36th birthday on May 14, 2020
- As Facebook CEO, Zuckerberg has been the face of the social network through its 15-year-history as it’s seen massive growth and has faced many controversies.
- We’ve created a timeline outlining Zuckerberg’s trajectory, from growing up in a New York City suburb to defending Facebook as it’s hit with scandal after scandal.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Through success and controversy, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been regarded as one of the most brilliant minds of his generation.
With a net worth of over $75 billion, the young CEO is credited with creating a social network that has more monthly active users than any single country in the world has people, and his majority voting rights give him complete control of the company – which also means he’s often the focal point of any backlash or scandal.
Over the last few years, Facebook has faced scandal after scandal. It’s been called out on multiple occasions for the way it handles user data, to the point where many have debated the pros and cons of free networks like Facebook that rely on advertisers for revenue. In 2018, Zuckerberg was summoned to give 10 hours of testimony to Congress as lawmakers sought answers about Facebook’s role in various events like the 2016 election and the Cambridge Analytica data-harvesting scandal.
In the midst of the scandals, Zuckerberg has defended Facebook and reiterated the company’s stated mission to connect the world with projects like bringing internet access to areas without less connectivity. Through his charity work, he’s poured millions into education efforts and billions into initiatives for curing the world’s diseases.
Zuckerberg launched Facebook when he was just 19 years old. Now 15 years later, he's celebrating his 36th birthday, on May 14, 2020. Here's a look at the timeline of Zuckerberg's career, from his humble beginnings in a New York suburb to his role as one of the wealthiest CEOs in the world.
While he's now a titan of Silicon Valley, Mark Zuckerberg was raised in the quaint town of Dobbs Ferry, New York. He was born to Edward and Karen Zuckerberg, a dentist and psychiatrist, respectively. He has three siblings: Randi, Donna, and Arielle.
A precocious child, Mark at age 12 created a messaging program called "Zucknet" using Atari BASIC. He also coded computer games for his friends at a young age.
Source: Bio
While attending high school at the renowned Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, he built an early music streaming platform, which both AOL and Microsoft showed interest in. Still a teen, he rejected offers for an acquisition or a job.
Source: Bio
He wasn't just a computer nerd, though. Zuck loved the classics — "The Odyssey" and the like — and he became captain of his high school fencing team.
Source: The New Yorker
Soon after Zuckerberg started at Harvard University in 2002, he earned a reputation as a skilled developer. His first hit was "Face mash," a hot-or-not-style app that used the pictures of his classmates that he hacked from the school administration's dormitory ID files.
"Face mash" got 22,000 page views from 450 people in the first four hours it was up. Harvard quickly ordered it to be taken down, citing copyright and security concerns.
Zuckerberg met his now-wife, Priscilla Chan, at Harvard in 2003. Chan told Savannah Guthrie on "Today" that they met at a frat party thrown by Zuckerberg's fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi.
"On our first date, he told me that he'd rather go on a date with me than finish his take-home midterm," Chan told Guthrie during the sit-down interview in 2014.
Zuckerberg started "The Facebook" with several friends out of his dorm room, and dropped out of school in 2005, after his sophomore year, to focus on the social network full-time.
Zuckerberg wasn't always the polished statesman he is now. In Facebook's early days, he carried business cards that read, "I'm CEO, B---h."
Source: TechCrunch
Zuckerberg's company raised its $12.7 million Series A round of funding while he was barely of legal drinking age. The rest is history.
In 2010, Time magazine named Zuckerberg "Person of the Year."
Not many tech CEOs get to see themselves immortalized on the big screen, but the 2010 movie "The Social Network" put a dramatized version of Facebook's founding story in theaters.
"The Social Network," earned eight Academy Award nominations, but Zuckerberg strongly maintains that many of its details are incorrect.
Throughout Facebook's rise to greatness, Zuckerberg also spent his free time studying Chinese. By the fall of 2014, his Mandarin was so good that he managed to hold a 30-minute Q&A in the language.
Source: Business Insider
Zuckerberg took Facebook public on May 18, 2012. The IPO raised $16 billion, making it the biggest tech IPO in history at the time. Zuckerberg became the 29th richest person on earth overnight.
Source: Business Insider
The day after Facebook went public, Zuckerberg and Chan got married. The relatively low-key event was actually a surprise wedding: Guests thought they were celebrating a med school graduation party for Chan.
Source: Business Insider, San Jose Mercury News
Zuckerberg designed Chan's ruby ring himself. Chan walked down the aisle with Beast, the couple's Hungarian Sheepdog, who they adopted in 2011.
Source: People, Business Insider
The two honeymooned in Italy, flying in on a private jet and staying at a five-star hotel, Portrait Suites, where rooms start at €800 per night. But they still kept it casual at times when looking for something to eat — paparazzi spotted the couple eating at McDonald's while overseas.
Source: Business Insider
In 2015, he and Chan announced they had given birth to a happy girl named Max. "There is so much joy in our little family," Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook.
They also announced their plan to sell 99% of Zuckerberg's Facebook stock over time— worth about $45 billion at the time — to fund a new LCC called The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The initiative funnels money toward issues like personalized learning, curing diseases, and connecting people.
Source: Business Insider
Even before announcing this massive new effort, he and Chan had committed $1.6 billion to philanthropic causes, including donations to the Center for Disease Control and the San Francisco General Hospital, which was eventually renamed after Zuckerberg.
Sources: The Verge, Business Insider
In September 2016, Chan and Zuckerberg pledged $3 billion to curing the world's diseases by the end of this century. "Can we help scientists to cure, prevent or manage all diseases within our children's lifetime?" Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook. "I'm optimistic we can."
Sources: Business Insider, Facebook
In May 2017, Chan and Zuckerberg announced that they had another baby on the way. Their second daughter, August, was born the month she was named after.
Source: Business Insider
In his mid-30s, Zuckerberg is one of a very small group of people who is worth more billions of dollars than years he has lived. Still, he's far from flashy about it — the CEO notoriously wears only a hoodie or a gray t-shirt with jeans.
In 2014, when he was the third-richest man in the world, he bought a black Volkswagen GTI with a manual transmission — which costs around $30,000.
Sources: Business Insider, Forbes
However, he did reportedly pay for an Italian Pagani Huayra supercar around the same time. The car starts at a cool $1.3 million.
Source: Yahoo
Zuckerberg also likes to spend his money on privacy: In October 2014, he shelled out around $100 million for 700 acres of secluded land on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.
He angered locals by trying to force out people who owned small parcels of land sprinkled throughout his estate. He later dropped the lawsuits.
Source: Business Insider
In Palo Alto, Zuckerberg reportedly bought his 5,617-square-foot home for $7 million in 2011, and then spent an additional $45 million on the four houses and land around it for the sake of privacy.
Sources: Business Insider, San Jose Mercury News
He also bought a $10 million mansion in San Francisco, and then proceeded to spend more than $1 million on remodeling and additions — like a $60,000 greenhouse — that took a year to build and reportedly disturbed neighbors in the process.
During the renovation, he allegedly hired people to sit in cars parked near the house at night to save parking spaces for the construction workers.
Source: SF Gate
Zuckerberg hasn't been afraid to spend Facebook's money either: The company has some major acquisitions under its belt, including $1 billion for Instagram, $19 billion for WhatsApp, and $2 billion for Oculus.
However, even Zuckerberg can't always get what he wants. He tried to buy Snapchat for $3 billion in 2013, but CEO Evan Spiegel turned him down. He also reportedly attempted to purchase Musical.ly, the predecessor to TikTok.
Zuckerberg emcees Facebook's annual developer conference every year, where he gives updates on the company's roadmap. Before the conference started to attract thousands of attendees, Zuckerberg would present in flip flops.
Throughout his career, Zuckerberg has appeared to be dedicated to Facebook's mission and office culture. His office is enclosed by glass walls, and he holds regular "Townhall" style Q&A sessions with his thousands of employees.
Today, Facebook's family of apps are used by more than 3 billion people each month. The company makes billions of dollars every quarter by showing users ads.
Source Venture Beat
In May 2017, Zuckerberg returned to Harvard as its youngest commencement speaker ever. There, he also received an honorary doctorate as well.
During his speech, Zuckerberg touched on a range of politically-charged topics, including climate change, universal basic income, criminal justice reform, and "modernizing democracy" by allowing people to vote online.
Besides interacting with other tech executives, Zuckerberg frequently meets with high-profile figures and celebrities, including Snoop Dogg, and former President Barack Obama.
Source: Facebook
Shortly after the 2016 presidential election, Zuckerberg's troubles began, when people blamed Facebook for spreading fake news that led to Donald Trump's win. The CEO brushed off the claims: "Personally, I think the idea that fake news on Facebook ... influenced the election in any way is a pretty crazy idea."
Source: Business Insider
About a year later, the first evidence of Facebook's role emerged. The company revealed that Russian parties spent around $100,000 on roughly 3,000 ads, and that 126 million Americans likely saw Russia-funded posts intended to sway them.
Zuckerberg later admitted that, "calling that crazy was dismissive and I regret it." Facebook executives were also called to testify in front of Congress about the company's role in the spread of election misinformation.
Sources: Business Insider, Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook, Reuters
Zuckerberg has always been passionate about political issues, but he kicked up his rhetoric significantly around the time that Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. However, he's still made time to attend private dinners with Trump at the White House.
Zuckerberg was one of the first tech CEOs to denounce Trump's initial executive order on barring people from predominately Muslim countries from entering the US.
Source: Business Insider
In 2017, Zuckerberg announced that his personal challenge for the year — an annual tradition of his since 2009 — was to visit every US state. The stops he made sparked speculation that he had plans to run for president one day, but he denied the rumors.
In 2018, Zuckerberg said his personal goal for the year was to focus on fixing important issues that Facebook had a hand in and affected the world.
"We won't prevent all mistakes or abuse, but we currently make too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools," Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook. "If we're successful this year then we'll end 2018 on a much better trajectory."
Source: Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook
However, that goal was quickly dashed. In March 2018, it was revealed data analytics company Cambridge Analytica harvested data from over 50 million Facebook users' profiles — a number Facebook later said was closer to 87 million — and used it to target voters during the 2016 election after being hired by the Trump campaign.
Zuckerberg wasn't heard from for days after the news broke, which wasn't lost on users, employees, or the media. Soon after, a movement to #DeleteFacebook gained momentum.
Source: Business Insider
This time, Zuckerberg himself was called on to appear in front of lawmakers in two testimonies that lasted five hours each. Zuckerberg left with a laundry list of requests for answers and action items.
Source: Business Insider
Ahead of the testimonies, Facebook reportedly hired a team of experts to coach Zuckerberg on how to answer Congress' questions and how to be charming. The team was led by a special adviser to President George W. Bush, Reginald J. Brown.
Source: New York Times
Facebook's stock tumbled in the months following the congressional hearings and the Cambridge Analytica scandal. At its lowest, its stock was down 18% from what it had been before the story broke.
However, Zuckerberg's testimony seemed to give hope to investors. As Silicon Valley executive Phil Libin put it: "Mark Zuckerberg presented himself well, or at least as well as possible given the situation. He seemed reasonably well informed, prepared, and authentic."
Also during its contentious 2018, Facebook faced accusations that its moderation efforts weren't adequate in stopping the proliferation of hate speech and disinformation on its network.
Facebook and its family of apps, like Instagram and WhatsApp, were cited as contributing to political violence and deliberate misinformation in Myanmar, India, Germany, the Philippines, Brazil, and more.
Sources: Reuters, Business Insider, Buzzfeed News
In September 2018, Instagram cofounders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger abruptly announced they were leaving Facebook. It was later reported they had left amid "growing tensions" with Zuckerberg, and that the pair was fighting with Facebook leadership over Instagram's "autonomy."
Sources: Bloomberg, Business Insider
The departure of Instagram's cofounders was quickly followed with scathing remarks from WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton, who detailed disagreements with Facebook executives over user privacy. Both WhatsApp cofounders had left the company earlier that year.
"I sold my users' privacy to a larger benefit," Acton told Forbes in 2018. "I made a choice and a compromise. And I live with that every day." A
cton's comments echoed those made by the other WhatsApp founder, Jan Koum, when he left the company in April 2018. Outlets reported Koum and leadership fought over plans for Facebook to weaken WhatsApp's encryption and access user data.
To add to an already scandal-riddled year, Facebook announced in September 2018 it had been hacked. Around 30 million users had their personal information compromised, making it the worst hack in Facebook's 15-year history.
Source: Business Insider
A bombshell New York Times report later revealed how Facebook executives — specifically Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg — fought back against criticism it had received in 2018.
Soon after, internal Facebook documents made public by British Parliament showed how Zuckerberg restricted certain "strategic competitors" from accessing user data in an effort to stay ahead of the competition.
Source: New York Times
In 2019, Facebook spent $23.4 million in 2019 on personal security for Zuckerberg and his family, including $2.9 million for his use of private jets. The year prior, his security costs nearly doubled in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Source: Business Insider
Zuckerberg has faced criticism throughout his tenure as coming across as stilted and rehearsed when he speaks. In a 2019 interview with NBC News, Zuckerberg admitted he's had "a very hard time expressing myself."
Source: Business Insider
In October 2019, Zuckerberg was once again called on to testify in front of Congress — this time, about Facebook's plans for its Libra digital currency. Congressional members also grilled him on the company's content moderation practices and its lack of diversity.
Source: Business Insider
Despite backlash, Zuckerberg has staunchly defended Facebook's positions on freedom of speech, describing the platform's role as a place where users can share a diversity of perspectives and viewpoints.
Source: Business Insider
For 2020, Zuckerberg set a goal for the decade. "My goal for the next decade isn't to be liked but to be understood," Zuckerberg said." After the criticism it faced in dealing with political misinformation in 2016, the company is gearing for a "tough year" with the 2020 presidential election.
Source: Business Insider
(Prachi Bhardwaj, Jillian D'Onfro, Rebecca Borison, and Alex Heath contributed to earlier versions of this story.)