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Mark Zuckerberg : The Founder & CEO of World’s Biggest Social Network

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The inventive programmer and the youngest billionaire of the world, Mark Zuckerberg needs no introduction. The CEO and the founder of Facebook, the largest social media network, was once the captain of the fencing team of his school. The young entrepreneur was always interested in programming and used to develop games based on the sketches, his artist friends made. Having a few lawsuits in his name and films made on his life story, Zuckerberg is among the few programmers who have established themselves as the smartest entrepreneurs of the world.

Early Life

Mark Zuckerberg aka Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains, New York, and grew up in the suburbs of Dobbs Ferry, New York. His father Edward Zuckerberg, a dentist and mother Karen (née Kempner), a psychiatrist, belonged to a Jewish family. He was a bright student and always topped in the class. He completed his schooling from Ardsley High School and Phillips Exeter Academy, in New Hampshire. He excelled in mathematics, astronomy, physics and won many prizes in quiz competitions of his school. By the end of his school, he became proficient in French, Hebrew, Latin, and ancient Greek.

Mark Zuckerberg
Image Source: articlebio.com

Zuckerberg owned his first PC Quantex 486DX, on the Intel 486, when he was in middle school. He, eventually, grew an interest in programming languages and ended up learning Atari BASIC Programming form his father. He also received a private tuition to learn more about programming. Soon, he started developing small applications and developed a program, that connected the computers of his father’s office, through a messenger named ZuckNet. During his final year, at the high school, he joined a company name Intelligent Media Group, that worked to build a music player Synapse Media Player. The media player was developed using AI technology, that enabled it to create a playlist based on the music choice of the user. The music player even grabbed the attention of Microsoft and AOL.

Founding Facebook

After completing his school, due to his outstanding performance, he managed to get admission in one of the top universities of America, the Harvard University. By creating some useful software and games, he had already made his reputation as a programmer. He adopted Computer Science and Psychology as his major subjects. His first software at his college was the CourseMatch. The software helped the students to choose the right course and help others with their choices.

In the summer of 2003, Zuckerberg created a website for the students of the Harvard, named as Facemash. The project was developed during one his insomniac nights. The website was inspired by the college yearbook Facebook, that included the profiles of the students having their personal details and pictures in it. The concept behind Facemash was to compare two students based on their appearance. Most of the students enjoyed using it and the others complained about Zuckerberg, saying that he was using their personal data, without permission. The site got shut down within two days and Zuckerberg had to apologise to the students.

After the failure of Facemash, he started working on his new project, The Facebook. Zuckerberg launched the website after one month, i.e., on 4 February 2004. The website was basically designed for the students of Harvard, to help them connect with each other, easily. The website became an instant hit, and just after a year, it expanded to other colleges and schools, in the city. In the second year of his college, he left his studies in between, to work full-time on The Facebook. The founder of PayPal, Peter Thiel, became its first angel investor, by investing $500,000. Soon, Facebook had 50 million registered users, and Zuckerberg started receiving offers to sell Facebook, from large companies, like Yahoo. Even receiving offers worth billions, he never accepted one. Although, he himself acquired many major projects like What’s App and Instagram.

The Lawsuit

On the initial launch of Facebook, three of Zuckerberg ‘s seniors at the University, Divya Narendra, and twin brothers Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, accused Zuckerberg of stealing their idea. According to them, Facebook was based on their idea, that was to create a platform to connect the students of Harvard. They even claimed that they had hired Zuckerberg to work on their website. Later, they even sued him for the same. In the end, there was a settlement between them, for 1.2 million Facebook shares.

Personal Life

Zuckerberg married his longtime girlfriend and fellow student from Harvard, Priscilla Chan, on 19 May 2012. The couple has two daughters Maxima Chan Zuckerberg and August Chan Zuckerberg.

In July 2018, Zuckerberg became the third richest person in the world $81.6 billion net worth. Although, within a week, his net worth was tumbled nearly $20 billion, eliminating him from the position of the third richest person.

Reid Hoffman : The Mind Behind the Largest Corporate Social Network

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Sometimes, it takes a long process for a person to understand and choose the right way that leads to his goals. Only a few can dream to help others achieve their dreams and bring out a positive change in the world. But if one truly wants to accomplish his dreams, he will find out a way. Same is the story of the infamous American internet entrepreneur and the venture capitalist- Reid Hoffman, who had initially dreamt about changing the world through his motivational speeches and eventually, reached out to a bigger platform and definitely have brought out his share of change.

Early Life

Reid Hoffman was born to William Parker Hoffman Jr. and Deanna Ruth, on 5 August 1967. He was born in Palo Alto, California and spent most of his childhood in Berkeley. He did his high school from The Putney School and earned his Bachelor Science degree in Symbolic Systems & Cognitive Science, from Stanford University. He was awarded a Marshall Scholarship and hence went to the Wolfson College, Oxford University to pursue a Master in Studies in Philosophy in 1993. He had also received a Dinkelspiel Award in his graduation from Stanford University.

Career

As a child, he always loved playing the tabletop roleplaying games. So in 1982, when he was just 12, he got his first job as an editor at a game developing company named as Chaosium. His work at the company was quite impressive, and in 1984, with the release of Chaosium’s ‘Borderlands’, a role-playing game, he got his name featured on its box, at the time he was just 14. He always wanted to become an influential person so that he can bring a change in the world. He had thought of becoming a professor. But soon he realised that writing books and reaching people can be a long way. So he diverted his mind towards entrepreneurship.

Reid Hoffman
Image Source: twimg.com

After graduating, he went to do an internship at Inglenook, a winery, followed by a job at Apple Computer. In Apple, he worked on a social network named as eWorld. After working for some time in Apple, he took a job at Fujitsu and in 1997, found his first company named as SocialNet.com. Soon after, setting up SocialNet.com, he joined PayPal as the COO, in 2000. His boss at PayPal, Peter Thiel says about Hoffman that he was a firefighter-in-chief at PayPal. At Paypal, he was responsible for most of the high-level jobs like payment infrastructure, government, legal issues, etc., that he handled efficiently under a great pressure.

Founding of LinkedIn

After eBay acquired Paypal, in 2002, Reid Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn, a professional social media network, with his old colleagues from SocialNet.com and Fujitsu. He also received some investment from his colleagues from Paypal, Peter Thiel and Keith Rabois. LinkedIn became a huge success and Hoffman became its founding CEO. Today, Hoffman holds a share worth $2.34 billion in Linked in and he serves as the Executive Chairman of the company. By 2014, LinkedIn had spread in more than 200 countries, with over 332 million members. In June 2016, Microsoft offered him an amount of $26.2 billion in cash for the acquisition of LinkedIn.

Investment, Writing & Motivational Speeches

LinkedIn was a huge success, after which, Hoffman found his interest in investment. He is one of the Angel investors, who are happily ready to invest in potential startups. It is said that Hoffman was the one who arranged the $500,000 angel investment meeting between Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel. Along with Peter, he had also invested in Facebook initially.

Reid Hoffman always wanted to become a positive influence the for its betterment. His desire of becoming a motivational speaker and writing books was always alive. He started writing from local blogs, followed by his ‘LinkedIn’s Series B Pitch to Greylock: Pitch Advice for Entrepreneurs’ and ‘LinkedinInfluencr’ blogs on LinkedIn. In February 2012, he released his first book ‘The Start-Up of You’ with co-author Ben Casnocha, that became the bestseller in New York and was critically acclaimed. In July 2014, he came with another release, ‘The Alliance’ with Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh.

Hoffman also started a podcast named as ‘Masters of Scale’ on 5 May 2017, where he discusses various counterintuitive business theories with successful entrepreneurs.

Personal Life

Hoffman got married to Michelle Yee, in 2004, and the two live in Palo Alto, California. Hoffman is also in Philanthropy and is a member of many NGOs. In 2016, he donated $20 million to a charity Biohub.

Jack Dorsey – The Founder of Twitter

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Today, every successful entrepreneur aims towards giving the world something which will make the lives of people easier. In order to achieve success, an entrepreneur must think of benefitting the people in any way possible. Therefore, with the help of technology, several apps are being launched which are bringing the world closer. One such entrepreneur is Jack Dorsey, who has made a tremendous contribution to bringing the world closer with his revolutionary ideas.

Early Life

Born on 19th November 1976 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, Jack Dorsey was a computer lover from the early years of his life. His parents Tim and Marcia Dorsey continuously supported and encouraged his passion for computers. Tim worked as an engineer in a company manufacturing mass spectrometers, while Marcia was a housewife.

In his teenage years, Jack spent hours studying the early versions of IBM. His first ambitious idea was to build a live map of New York City, displaying small moving dots, which would represent ambulances, taxis, police vehicles, fire brigades, etc. After moving to a new place Jack would go on long late night walks in the city to get a visual idea for his map.

Jack Dorsey
Image Source: wikimedia.org

As a child, Jack faced a stuttering problem while speaking, so he used to keep quiet most of the time. But, taking control over this weakness was what made him a survivor and ready to face more difficult challenges and how to solve them. Therefore, he would sign up for various oratory competitions. After several failed attempts, he finally managed to speak normally.

Jack attended high school at Bishop DuBourg in St. Louis, Missouri. Then he further went to attend the University of Missouri of Science and Technology, but, soon transferred to New York University. He was an active member of computer club during his high school. Jack’s first computer programming experience was at the age of 14 when he wrote few programs for taxi dispatching and firefighting services. He made this programs using an open source platform and they are still used by some taxi companies even today.

Early Career

Jack initially applied for an internship at Mira Digital Publishing Company in the summer of 1991. And just within a few weeks, he was leading a team of programmers. This was quite a sight when a teenager was leading a team in their thirties. His second company was Dispatch Management Services Corp. Jack got a job at this company in an unusual way. He hacked the company’s website and contacted the manager explaining the loophole in their company’s software. He was immediately hired as a programmer and here’s where Jack was first introduced to an idea which would later become biggest social networking platform – Short Messaging Services (SMS). He also learned about a program through which a dispatcher could track the movements of couriers in real time.

This led him to move to Oakland and start his own company of dispatching taxis and emergency services, through the internet. However, the dot-com bubble left him jobless and for the next five years, he focused on freelancing.

Birth of Twitter

Later, with the idea of SMS, he was hired by ODEO, which specialized in Internet Startups. Here Jack met other talented programmers including Biz Stone. Jack discussed his idea of short messaging services with Stone, and they both went on to make the first prototype of Twitter. On March 21, 2006, Twitter took first entry into the microblogging service when Jack twitted the very first tweet, “just setting up my twttr”. The service was officially launched for the public in June 2006.

When ODEO ran into financial crises, it also caused a funding problem for Twitter. But, Fred Wilson soon showed interest in the company and offered Jack about a half-million dollars cheque. Later, Evan Williams and Noah Glass also came aboard Twitter. As per a recent survey, by SimilarWeb analytics tool, Twitter gets 2.2 billion visits per month.

Founder of Square

Jack did not stop at the success of Twitter but moved on to create some more exciting projects. His next successful venture was set up in 2010 called Square – a café POS system and mobile payment company. The unique feature of this product is its size. It is small square-sized hardware, which is inserted into the headphone jack. It has a magnetic reader to read credit/debit cards. Due to its small size and great potential Starbucks invested $25 million, on August 8th, 2012 in Square.

Jack Dorsey is counted as one of the most successful and genius people in the world. As of 2015, his net worth was calculated to be $2.3 billion. Today, Twitter is actively used by politicians, celebrities, and artists across the globe. And, Square is on the path to change the mobile payments industry.

How Deep Kalra Booked His Entrepreneurial Journey Through MakeMyTrip

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An ambitious dream begins with a huge risk, courage and self-confidence. This is the story of a man from India who put everything on risk to become one of the leading business giants. This is the story of Deep Kalra, the founder of MakeMyTrip.com, a leading Indian online travel company that ensures smooth travel and comfortable stay.

Deep is a MBA graduate from India’s pioneer business school Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He has completed a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from St. Stephens College, Delhi. Soon after completing his MBA, Kalra took up the job opportunities with big MNCs like GE Capital, ABN AMRO Bank, etc. But the entrepreneur inside him had already started to sprout.

Deep Kalra
Image Credit: MakeMyTrip

In 1995, Deep left his job with the Bank and joined hands with an American bowling company. With the boss not around, Deep was bit lost initially. But, he took full ownership and led the team. In the coming years Deep Kalra would manage to lay more than 200 bowling lanes across India on his own. This single handed experience boosted Deep’s confidence by multiple folds and he decided to put a foot in his own start-up.

The Start-up Story
Deep soon resigned from AMF to focus on his own venture. It was this time when he realized the magnificent potential that Internet platform held in its store. And this boom in the online community was a perfect place to launch his big business idea.

India was still getting used to the internet platform but the percentage was growing day by day. On one hand, there was a super fast platform which connected the whole world in seconds and on the other hand people were still standing in queues to buy travel tickets. The other problem Deep observed was the messed up online travel booking platform. These observations then altogether gave birth to an organized online travel booking platform ‘India Ahoy’,in 2000, which later was renamed to MakeMyTrip.com. Deep received an initial fundimg of $2 million from eVentures and was in the market to lead the travel industry along with his co-founders Keyur Joshi, Rajesh Magow and Sachin Bhatia.

The Ups and Downs in MakeMyTrip Journey
Launching an online travel booking platform back in 2000, when Indians were still not clear about the basic concept of Internet, was a challenge in itself. So, the founders had to play the game strategically. Therefore, MakeMyTrip’s initial years were dedicated to serve the US-to-India travelling community. This was a baby step towards success but added value to their status in the market.

The Fall
Kalra faced his biggest fallback two years after the launch of MakeMyTrip.com when the dotcom market crashed taking down every last piece of information. This resulted in a drastic crash on all the company’s team. As the head of the company Deep had to take some difficult decisions to save the company. The decision included reducing MMT’s staff to almost half the original number and put a complete halt on his and some of his colleagues’ salary for 18 months.

The Rise
The crash of dotcom market taught Deep Kalra some valuable lessons which he would implement in his company’s future. The coming years proved to be the Golden Period in MakeMyTrip’s career. This was the time when Indian Railways, Indian Aviation and other domestic and international flight companies were stepping into the online platform. Deep Kalra, without wasting any time, grabbed this opportunity and decided to broaden his business spectrum. MakeMyTrip was no longer just an overseas travel booking platform. It was now for the Indian domestic market too.

The company provided added features like holiday packages, hotel bookings, and railway tickets. The company’s customer base and revenue was increasing at an unimaginable pace. In 2008, when rest of the world was facing the demon of recession, MMT was entering the 1000 Crore club. But Deep marks the company’s biggest achievement till date as its listing on NASDAQ, an US stock exchange.

Setting an Example
Launching MakeMyTrip was the biggest risk that Kalra took. But this risk is what made him a pioneer in the travel industry. The success of MakeMyTrip, has in turn, tremendously boosted the confidence of young entrepreneurs in India. So be it from bridging the gap between Indian and foreign investors, revolutionizing the traveling industry in the country to inspiring Indian youth to take risks and succeed, Deep Kalra has proven himself to be the man whose vision and ambition created history.

WhatsApp founder, Jan Koum: Journey from a cleaner to billionaire

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Building up dreams takes not much effort but turning them into life sometimes require more than an age. But if you firmly decide to follow your dreams until they become a reality, no power in this world can hinder your way.  Jan Koum, the co-founder and CEO of the most popular mobile app, WhatsApp, once worked as a cleaner. It was his hard work, commitment and passion that Facebook who rejected him once for job acquired WhatsApp for whopping $19 billion.

Jan Koum

Jan Koum was not born in riches; his father was a construction manager and mother, a housewife. Despite the financial crisis, the family lived in peace in a small village of Ukraine. But the uprisings brewing in Ukraine disrupted even their little happiness and he had to move to California along with his grandmother and mother when he was 16. However, his father could never make it to meet them after. The life for him changed to worse. Although they got a small apartment there but their daily needs remained unfulfilled. He had to wait in long queues to collect food stamps. He had to take up a job as a cleaner in a grocery shop to support his family while his mother took the job of babysitting to meet their ends. In all Koum then was leading a miserable life with little hope and scope for the betterment of their situation.

Love for computers and professional journey

Despite all these troubles Jan didn’t compromise with his studies and while studying in his high school he began developing love for computers and programming. By the time he completed his schooling he had already mastered in computer networking and was no less than a self-taught engineer. He then got himself admitted in San Jose State University to complete his education and at the same time took up a job successfully at Ernst & Young to meet up the expenses on his education. There he worked as a security tester which further intensified his passion for computers. Because of his love for programming and networking he finally managed to buy a computer at the age of 19. While working on an assignment of Ernst & Young where he had to test the security level in Yahoo’s advertising system, he met Brian Acton who then worked at Yahoo and later became the co-founder of WhatsApp.

Later Koum got a job at Yahoo as an infrastructure engineer while still pursuing his studies. But then came a time when he had to choose between two, either to continue his college or to secure his job at Yahoo. Although the decision was quite a risky one as his whole life depended upon this decision yet without much dallying he chose Yahoo. He worked for about 9 years there and developed close bonds with Brian Acton who held same interests as Koum.

Rejection by Facebook

After serving 9 years in Yahoo Koum found him getting clogged at the same place as the company did not offer him much scope to work in the field of social media which always allured him. And then again he took one of the most difficult and important decisions of quitting his job in 2007. Brian Acton too left the company at the same time to follow their interests in social media. Both then applied in Facebook and Twitter for jobs but got rejected. Yes! Jan Koum was not welcomed by Facebook and Twitter.

In 2009, he bought an iPhone and this is where sprouted the idea of WhatsApp. On looking at Apple app store, Koum felt the need and possibility for an application that could facilitate easy and cheap communication. He approached Acton with his idea and the duo then got themselves engrossed in the making of this app. They named it as WhatsApp Inc. in February 2009 and finally launched it in 2010.

WhatsApp

Today, WhatsApp is most popular app in 109 countries with more than one billion users. However, everything didn’t work as planned after the app was launched as it kept crashing in the initial phase and also the duo were finding it hard to promote the application. Their relentless efforts failed and after few months Koum decided to call off the whole project. But then Brian Acton came forward as a support system and infused hope in him and then the slope of their success never face a downfall. In October 2009, WhatsApp Inc raised $250,000 in seed funding. WhatsApp gained much popularity and the number of downloads kept increasing with 200 million users in February 2013 and crossed 1 billion in February 2016. Witnessing the rapid growth and increasing popularity of the app, Facebook acquired the app for $19 billion in the year 2014. As per the records, WhatsApp has become the most popular application for messaging and is used by one billion people today.

WhatsApp

Image Credit: Wikimedia.org, Jan image Credit: Flickr: Dan Taylor

WhatsApp on Desktop: What You Can and Can’t Do With it?

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Checking WhatsApp messages at work, without peeking into your phones every now and then away from the prying eyes of the bosses, is easily possible thanks to the launch of WhatsApp Web: the desktop version of the popular mobile-messaging app.

 

“Today, for the first time, millions of you will have the ability to use WhatsApp on your web browser,” read the announcement on company’s blog much to the elation of millions who are most of the time working on the desktop for work and other purposes.

 

Before you jump to install the desktop app, you should know the strengths and limitations of the app. The web client currently supports Google Chrome browser only and works with Android, Windows Phone or Blackberry device (not iPhone).

 

To Install WhatsApp on Desktop, all you need to do is open https://web.whatsapp.com in your Google Chrome browser and scan the QR code that you see there inside of WhatsApp on your mobile phone. The new service will be launched on your desktop and you can freely chat with your friends and colleagues on your desktop.

 

Points to be kept in mind

The first thought that might have come to many minds after hearing the announcement was- Can I now use WhatsApp only on desktop, independent of mobile phone. Sorry, that isn’t the case.

Your phone has to stay connected to Internet. The two devices- mobile and desktop- are paired. So, if by any chance you lose the internet connection on your mobile phone or switch it off, the desktop version will shut down as well.

 

Secondly, you have to ensure you are using the latest version of WhatsApp on your phone in order to use the web client.

 

What You Can Do With WhatsApp Desktop Version

Send and Receive Messages on Desktop: Since the web client is an extension of your phone, you can easily chat with your friends on desktop. All the messages between your smartphone and desktop are synced. Which means all messages sent and received on desktop are automatically available in your mobile phone too.

 

Chat with your colleagues: If your colleagues are on your WhatsApp too, you can quickly exchange messages or any other work related information with them via WhatsApp web client. That way, WhatsApp can promote productivity at workplace too!

 

Participate in Running Group Chats: You can chat in the groups that were started on your mobile.

 

What You Can’t Do With WhatsApp Desktop Version

  1.  Can’t use it on your iPhone: The service doesn’t work with iPhone at present. WhatsApp gave the following reason for the same on its blog, “Unfortunately for now, we will not be able to provide web client to our iOS users due to Apple platform limitations.” We guess iPhone users have to wait a little for the service since they plan to support this in coming time. For the time being, users have to keep checking their mobile phones to check every message you get on WhatsApp. Just make sure you don’t do that too often at work; it doesn’t cast a good impression.
  1.  Can’t use it on Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.: As we told you in beginning itself, the service works on Google Chrome only at present. Surprisingly, Google’s own product- Google Hangouts will now suffer with WhatsApp latest release since Hangouts were most commonly being used to exchange messages at workplace.
  1.  Can’t use independently of your mobile phone: Like we said before, your mobile phone needs to stay connected to internet in order to use the service on your desktop.
  1.   Can’t create new groups, leave old ones or block users: WhatsApp users can’t create a new group using the desktop version. Neither can you leave old ones. To block users spamming you, you have to use your mobile phone too.

This was a long awaited feature since other messaging platforms like Facebook, Google Hangouts and Wickr already synced messages between smartphone and computer. Other popular mobile messaging apps, including Line, WeChat, iMessage, Viber, etc. also already had desktop versions. Over 700 million users use WhatsApp and the desktop version will expand the use of this platform. It only gets better for WhatsApp with each passing day. Give WhatsApp Web a try and tell us how you like it.