Biography of Mark Zuckerburg - Assignment Example

Biography of Mark Zuckerburg, the Founder and CEO of Facebook From simple, child’s play drawings, to more serious stuffs just for fun within the halls of residence in the university dormitories, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg has broken the odds to become one of the youngest billionaires on the planned earth. The second born in a well-educated family, Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984, and raised in the suburbs of New York, Dobbs Ferry together with his three sisters Arielle, Randi and Donna by two able parents, Edward Zuckerberg, a dentist by profession, and Karen who worked as a psychiatrist (Kirkpatrick, 2010). Raised Jewish, Zuckerberg was officially ushered into the ‘bar-hood” at the age of 13 according to the Jewish customs, and has since then identified and/or described himself as atheist (Vara, 2007). Zuckerberg got interested in computers in his elementary school days and had his first PC Quantex 486DX with an Intel 486 processing chip at the age of ten. Noting the queer interests, his father took charge and taught the young lad the basics, the Atari BASIC Programming inclusive; the latter of which he used to develop “ZuckNet,” a messenger program that allowed the exchange of messages between their house and his father’s clinic (Furgang, 2013). His father would later install the program in his clinic to enable easy communication between him and the receptionist. Impressed with the progress, David Newman was hired to coach him privately. As Zuckerberg himself recalls, the private lessons would take his skills to even great heights: "I had a bunch of friends who were artists. They'd come over, draw stuff, and I'd build a game out of it" (Lüsted, 2011, p. 21). At the age of 16, Zuckerberg transferred from Ardsley high school, where he excelled in unconventional classical studies, to the prestigious Philips Exeter academy; he claimed to have both written and spoken command of four foreign languages namely French, Hebrew, Latin, and ancient Greek in his application to the latter. He went ahead to win different prizes in physics, math, and astronomy as well as classical studies in his new school. Though a man of many huts given the many undertakings that saw him captain the school’s fencing team at one point in time, Zuckerberg remained fascinated with the development of new software. He thus registered Intelligent Media Group, a software programming venture while still in high school. He pulled another first by developing Synapse, a music player program that could analyze a user's listening habits and recommend song choices; a program that attracted the attention of IT giants Microsoft and AOL offering attractive, packages to the developer in vain. He instead proceeded to join Harvard University for further studies. In second year in campus, he developed CourseMatch, a program helped students with their subject selections based on the choices of other students for easy connections should study groups be deemed necessary. Soon after the CourseMatch success, he developed FaceMash, a comparative online application that gave the students the opportunity to select the best looking person from a choice of two random female photos; a site that not only crushed the institution’s server in its debut weekend, but also earned him fame in addition to a disciplinary action that forced him to apologize in public for indecent conduct (Kirkpatrick, 2010). Months later, the overtures of Winklevoss twins to create HarvardConnection.com powered on the idea to resuscitate the social network idea hitherto shut down on a new platform, and so Facebook was born. With a substantial number in their network, Zuckerberg and colleagues moved to the Silicon Valley where they secured their first funding from the PayPal founder Peter Thiel (Kariv, 2013). Several investors, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates, soon trooped in with more investments. Though a lot of lawsuits have been filed, particularly by the twin brothers with claims of stolen ideas in the creation of Facebook, the company has since become a multibillion revenue venture, hitting over one billion users in 2012. Zuckerberg has since married his longtime girlfriend Pricilla Chan, and live happily together in Palo Alto, California. Facebook, without a doubt, has grown to what it is today courtesy of the skills that its CEO and founder, Mark Zuckerberg has employed over the past decade of its existence. Though he may have stated on a shaky foot, his leadership qualities has grown leaps and bounds to prove to the whole world that he has what it takes to take his brainchild, Facebook, to even greater heights. Zuckerberg modeled his leadership style along the lines of those qualities wielded by Apple founder, Steve Jobs. His is aggressive and encouraging. Coming from a background with full knowledge that software development is but a process that requires time, patience and creativity in solving complex problems, Zuckerberg has done much create a stress free workplace to free up innovations. Like any other CEO of a giant company, he does challenges people to deliver within certain time limits considered reasonable; doing so while maintaining an open relationship with the highest attainable expectations possible in the company that now owes him his life. As noted in one of the articles in the Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg ‘prefers to be part of an ongoing discussion about a product as opposed to being its dictator” (“Memo Offers Clues to Zuckerberg Management Style,” 2012). To be sure, the relaxed, open working environment is known to be the working culture in many successful ventures such as Google, for it fosters communication and helps in rallying the workforce towards a unified objective. He a non-sentimental genius; strives at all times to look at ideas with fresh eyes; and above all prefers experiencing ideas in real time, that is, playing with proposed ideas — a trait carried over since childhood. Zuckerberg’s greatest strength over of the course of his career is that he is persistent and keeps tabs with ideas for perfections. It is quite evident that Mark is motivated more by what he does than anything else, and spends most of his time crystalizing ideas. Obstacle, setbacks, and outright failure have the possibility of dampening people's ambitions. In the words of Steve Jobs, “half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance”. Zuckerberg was in every sense a different personality. He never felt discouraged. Apart from his determination that has since paid massively, Zuckerberg is quality is goal-oriented and detailed at it. He has stayed fully focused on the tasks at hand, despite innumerable court cases. He has led his team, fining tuning ideas every moment to propel Facebook into becoming one of the most successful ventures of the 21st century. He more than willing to give up everything to achieve his goals; not even the highly desirable Harvard degree could stand between him and his objectives. Nonetheless, Zuckerberg’s has come under a lot of scrutiny, with many questioning the validity of his leadership model. To fair enough, Zuckerberg has had a checkered history of non-conformance to the social norms, and has indeed had his share of public failures. His indecent conduct of posting pictures of female classmates online for other students’ opinion stands out as a disrespectful act on others dignity on total disregard of the institutional/social codes of conduct. His history is also marked by lack of social prowess and confidence in public settings to be considered as a powerful leader. Steve Jobs’ keynote addresses, particularly during inaugurations of new Apple products, made him a capable CEO in the eyes of both investors and customers. Zuckerberg has had something of a lesser appeal in terms of his confidence. The self-made billionaire, Zuckerberg, has surprisingly warmed up towards his role as the CEO of a company worth billions of dollars with tremendous improvements in public appearances. Being awake to the fact that his leadership skills are not on a par with his entrepreneurial acumen, Zuckerberg has surrounded himself with experienced men and women to help deliver. He brought in Sheryl Sandberg, former Google Chief Operating Officer, in the same capacity, who in turn has done a great deal of work to moderate the concerns from investors, particularly when the company stock prices begun a downward trend right the IPO. He continues to learn from past mistakes and lack of career experience to overcome the obstacles in his way. While other factors obviously had a contributory effect to the success of Zuckerberg and his brainchild, Facebook, it took perseverance and a steady focus to get him where he is today. A great leader of all-time, his foresight and belief in own abilities are perhaps the most desirable leadership qualities that a leader can ever have. He believes in possibilities and examines data in a three dimensional perspective; enjoys extrapolating the abstracts to reality. References Furgang, K. (2013). Money-making opportunities for teens who are computer savvy. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. Kariv, D. (2013). Female entrepreneurship and the new venture creation: An international overview. New York: Routledge. Kirkpatrick, D. (2010). The Facebook effect: The inside Story of the company that is connecting the world. New York: Simon & Schuster . Lüsted, M. A. (2011). Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook Creator. North Mankato, Minnesota: ABDO Publishing. Memo Offers Clues to Zuckerberg Management Style. (2012, Feb 1). The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970204301404577173291881189570 Vara, V. (2007, November 28). Just how much do we want to share on social networks? The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB119621309736406034 Read More