Sheryl Sandberg

Sheryl Kara Sandberg (born August 28, 1969) is an American businesswoman. She is the current chief operating officer of Facebook. Prior to Facebook, Sandberg was Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google. She also was involved in launching Google's philanthropic arm Google.org. Prior to Google, Sandberg served as chief of staff for the United States Department of the Treasury.

Early Life and Career

Sheryl Kara Sandberg was born in 1969 in Washington, D.C., United States, the daughter of Adele and Joel Sandberg and the oldest of three siblings. Her family moved to North Miami Beach, Florida when she was two years old. She attended public school, where she was "always at the top of her class." Sandberg taught aerobics in the 1980s while in high school.

In 1987, Sandberg enrolled at Harvard College and in 1991, graduated with a A.B. in Economics and was awarded the John H. Williams Prize for the top graduating student in economics. While at Harvard, Sandberg met then professor Larry Summers who became her mentor and thesis adviser. Summers recruited her to be his research assistant at the World Bank, where she worked on health projects in India dealing with leprosy, AIDS, and blindness. She was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

In 1993, she enrolled at Harvard Business School and in 1995 she earned her M.B.A. with highest distinction. After business school, Sandberg worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company. From 1996 to 2001, Sandberg served as Chief of Staff to then United States Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers under President Bill Clinton where she helped lead the Treasury’s work on forgiving debt in the developing world during the Asian financial crisis.

Facebook

In late 2007, Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Facebook, met Sandberg at a Christmas party held by Dan Rosensweig; at the time, she was considering becoming a senior executive for the Washington Post Company. Zuckerberg had no formal search for a COO but thought of Sandberg as "a perfect fit" for this role. They spent more time together in January 2008 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and in March 2008 Facebook announced hiring Sheryl Sandberg away from Google.

After joining the company, Sandberg quickly began trying to figure out how to make Facebook profitable. Before she joined, the company was "primarily interested in building a really cool site; profits, they assumed, would follow." By late spring, Facebook's leadership had agreed to rely on advertising, "with the ads discreetly presented"; by 2010, Facebook became profitable. According to Facebook, Sandberg oversees the firm's business operations including sales, marketing, business development, human resources, public policy and communications.

Personal life

In 2004, Sandberg married David Goldberg. Goldberg later became CEO of SurveyMonkey.

From : www.wikipedia.org

Sean Parker

Sean Parker (born 1979) is an American technology businessman and entrepreneur. He co-founded Napster, Plaxo, Causes, and Airtime. He was Facebook's founding president. As of the third quarter of 2011, Parker's net worth was estimated to be $2.1 billion.

Early Life

Parker was born in Herndon, Virginia to Diane Parker, a TV advertising broker, and Bruce Parker, a U.S. government oceanographer. When Parker was 7, his father taught him how to program on an Atari 800. Parker’s father, who put his family over his entrepreneurial dreams, told Parker "if you are going to take risks, take them early before you have a family."

As a teenager, Parker’s hobbies were hacking and programming. One night, while hacking into the network of a Fortune 500 company, Parker was unable to logout after his frustrated father unplugged his computer. Because his IP address was exposed, F.B.I. agents tracked down the 16-year-old, showed up at his doorstep and seized his computer. Since Parker was a minor, he was only sentenced to community service.

Facebook

In 2004, Parker saw a site called "Thefacebook" on the computer of his roommate’s girlfriend, who was a student at Stanford. Parker had experience in the social networking space as an early advisor to Friendster and its founder Jonathan Abrams, for which he was given a small amount of stock in 2003." Parker met with Mark Zuckerberg, and a few months later, joined the five month old company as its founding president. According to Peter Thiel, Facebook’s first investor, Sean Parker was the first to see potential in the company to be "really big," and that "if Mark ever had any second thoughts, Sean was the one who cut that off."

As president, Parker brought on Thiel as Facebook’s first investor. Within the initial round of funding, he negotiated for Zuckerberg to retain three of Facebook’s five board seats. This gave Zuckerberg control of the company, allowing Facebook the freedom to remain a private company. Additionally, Parker is said to have championed Facebook’s clean user interface and developed its photo-sharing function. Zuckerberg notes that "Sean was pivotal in helping Facebook transform from a college project into a real company."

During a party in 2005, police entered and searched a vacation home Parker was renting and found cocaine. Parker was arrested on suspicion of possession but not charged. This event was subsequently used by Facebook investors to pressure Parker into resigning as company president. Even after stepping down, Parker continued to remain involved with Facebook’s growth and meet regularly with Zuckerberg. The event was later dramatized in The Social Network.

Personal Life

Parker is primarily based in New York City although he frequently travels to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Stockholm, and London for Spotify, Airtime, and the Founders Fund. His $20 million townhouse in Manhattan includes an indoor pool, 30-foot bamboo trees, and an entrance hall adorned with actual subway cars. He is engaged to Alexandra Lenas, a singer-songwriter.

From : www.wikipedia.org

Eduardo Saverin

Eduardo P. Saverin (born March 13, 1982) is a Brazilian-born American internet entrepreneur and investor. Saverin is best known for co-founding Facebook, along with Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. He is reported to have a 5% stake in the company, worth about US$2.75 billion as of January 2011.

Personal Life

Eduardo Saverin was born in São Paulo, State of São Paulo, Brazil, to a wealthy Brazilian Jewish family, and was raised in Miami, Florida, United States. Eduardo's father was a Brazilian industrialist working in export, clothing, shipping, and real estate.

In 1993, after the discovery that Eduardo´s name was on a list made by gangs of kidnappers, according to the wealth of his father, the family decided to move to Miami.

Saverin attended Gulliver Preparatory School in Miami, and went on to Harvard University, where he was a member of the Phoenix S.K. Club, and president of the Harvard Investment Association. While an undergraduate at Harvard, Saverin made $300,000 by strategic investments in the oil industry by taking advantage of lax insider trading regulations in Brazil. In 2006, Saverin graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Economics. He is a brother of the Alpha Epsilon Pi Fraternity (Eta Psi chapter of Harvard University). He is currently living in Singapore since January 2011.

Facebook

During his junior year at Harvard University, Saverin met fellow Harvard classmate sophomore Mark Zuckerberg. Noting the lack of a dedicated social networking website for Harvard students, the two worked together to launch The Facebook in 2004. As co-founder, Saverin held the role of CFO and business manager. As Facebook rapidly expanded to universities across the US, internal conflicts and differences of opinion between Saverin and Zuckerberg arose. The following summer, as Saverin was staying in New York (where he worked briefly as an intern at Lehman Brothers), The Facebook relocated operations to California, having already attracted interest as a fast-growing Silicon Valley start-up.

After outside investors—principally venture capitalist and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and an early employee of the file-sharing service Napster, Sean Parker—took control of the start-up's finances and capital needs and backed Zuckerberg as its CEO, Saverin's direct involvement and influence diminished.

A lawsuit filed by Saverin against Facebook was settled out of court. Though terms of the settlement were sealed, the company affirmed Saverin's title as co-founder of Facebook. Saverin signed a non-disclosure contract after the settlement.

He has liquidated at least $250 million worth of Facebook stock through late venture rounds and secondary markets such as SecondMarket, as of late 2010, according to Forbes Magazine.

From : www.wikipedia.org

Dustin Moskovitz

Dustin Moskovitz (born May 22, 1984) is an American internet entrepreneur who co-founded the social networking website Facebook along with Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin and Chris Hughes. Moskovitz owns a 6% share of Facebook. He co-founded and is CEO of Asana.

In March 2011 Forbes ranked Moskovitz as the world's youngest billionaire on the basis of his share in Facebook. He is eight days younger than Zuckerberg. In September 2010, Forbes 400 estimated that his net worth had soared over the previous year to $1.4 billion as the value of his share in Facebook increased with the rising valuation of the company based on recent investment valuing it at $26 billion.

Background and Education

Moskovitz was born in Gainesville, Florida and grew up in Ocala, Florida of Russian-Jewish descent and attended Vanguard High School, graduating from the IB Diploma Programme. Moskovitz attended Harvard University as an economics major for two years before he moved with Mark Zuckerberg to Palo Alto. He went to work full-time on Facebook.

Facebook

Four people, three of whom were roommates — Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Chris Hughes, and Moskovitz — founded Facebook in their Harvard University dorm room in February 2004. Originally called thefacebook.com, it was intended as an online directory of all Harvard's students to help residential students identify members of other residences. In June 2004, Zuckerberg and Moskovitz took a year off from Harvard and moved Facebook's base of operations to Palo Alto, California, and hiring eight employees. They were later joined by Sean Parker. At Facebook, Moskovitz was the company's first chief technology officer and then vice president of engineering; he led the technical staff and oversaw the major architecture of the site, as well as being responsible for the company’s mobile strategy and development.

From : www.wikipedia.org