Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg Mark was born in 1984, so he was only twenty-five at the time of this interview and twenty when he founded Facebook. At the end of 2009, Facebook had 350 million users and more than 1,000 employees, with headquarters in Palo Alto, California, and nine branches around the United States as well as seven international offices. Three rounds of venture capital amounting to $40 million had funded the company. In 2007 Facebook sold a 1.6 percent stake to Microsoft for $240 million, rejecting a competing offer from Google. This would indicate that Facebook had a market value of $15 billion at the time of the sale. All this growth and potential value amounts to an amazing achievement for someone so young. It may have only been possible because Mark was a prolific software designer from the age of ten and wrote programs to solve the problems that he encountered in high school and college. He founded Facebook while he was at Harvard studying psychology and computer science; he later moved the company to Palo Alto. He is both the founder and CEO, responsible for setting the overall direction and product strategy for the company. He leads the design of Facebook's services and development of its core technology and infrastructure.