In what appears to be another move towards a megamansion, Sean Parker has bought a third townhouse on West 10th Street in New York City, The New York Post reported.

The new addition is directly adjacent to two other townhouses Parker already owns — one, a $20 million carriage house commonly called "Bacchus House," and the other a $16.5 million home next door.

According to The Post, the most recently purchased home was being renovated in preparation for being listed for sale. It was reportedly set to be listed with Compass for $22 million, but Parker purchased it before the listing was public.

If Parker is indeed planning to combine the three homes into one mansion, he'll have to get the plans approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. If the recent experience of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and Stryker Corporation heir Jon Stryker is any indication, that won't necessarily be an easy task. 

Parker was Facebook's first president and founded Napster, Plaxo, and Brigade Media. He also previously served as a partner at Peter Thiel's Founders Fund. Parker's net worth has been estimated to be about $2.4 billion. 

Parker did not immediately return Business Insider's request for comment.

SEE ALSO: Netscape's billionaire cofounder Jim Clark is selling his Florida mansion for a whopping $137 million

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why Sean Parker’s plan to stream movies still in theaters for $50 could work

Californians overwhelmingly said yes to recreational marijuana on Election Day.

Those in favor of the decision owe a big thanks to billionaire Silicon Valley fixture Sean Parker.

The former Facebook president and founder of Napster contributed $8.5 million to the effort to legalize recreational marijuana in California.

Parker has been radio silent regarding Proposition 64, though his dollars said otherwise.

"If you wanted to invent the perfect funder for a California ballot measure, it would be hard to dream up one better than Sean Parker," Jason Kinney, a spokesperson for the Proposition 64 campaign, told Business Insider."He did this for social justice, not the personal spotlight."

Over the last year, Parker became the single biggest donor of the initiative, by far, according to The Los Angeles Times. Another $4 million came from a nonprofit called the Fund for Policy Reform, which is backed by New York hedge fund billionaire George Soros.

All said, Proposition 64 raised close to $16 million, about four times the amount spent on a failed effort to legalize recreational weed in California in 2010. That money helped fund campaign literature and postage, fundraising events, polling and survey research, and professional services such as legal and accounting, according to campaign finance filings.

The winning bill, which comes 20 years after California legalized medical marijuana, will allow adults ages 21 and over to use, possess, and transport up to one ounce of marijuana for recreational purposes. People can also grow six plants each at home.

The bill imposes a 15% tax on sales of the drug, generating up to $1 billion in new tax revenue annually, according to the Yes on Prop 64 campaign website.

Proposition 64 first got its nickname — "The Parker Initiative" — in fall 2015 when Parker's first contribution became known. The campaign claims Parker had no hand in crafting the specifics or language of the bill, though he expected a "professional and ethical campaign."

"From the outset, he made it clear that he would be supportive but that he wanted the policy experts to write the best policy and the political professionals to run the best campaign," Kinney said. "And that's exactly what we did."

This isn't the first time Parker threw his name or money behind an effort to end the prohibition on pot. He gave $100,000 to the unsuccessful California initiative from 2010 and also contributed $2 million for recreational marijuana in Oregon.

Parker was also a general partner at Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, which has invested heavily in legal marijuana. The media has suggested Parker's role meant he had material gains to make from the success of Proposition 64; however, Parker left Founders Fund in 2015, a year before the firm led a $75 million round for marijuana-focused equity firm Privateer Holdings.

Even in the days leading up to the election, Parker has kept quiet on the bill. Representatives for Parker did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Still, his name often makes the headline of news stories about legalization in California.

Kinney said the so-called Parker Initiative actually has little to do with the tech tycoon.

"This was never about him. It was about the thousands of lives shattered and the billions of taxpayers dollars squandered by a failed war on marijuana," Kinney said. "He didn't want to be a distraction. He wanted the focus where it belongs — on the measure itself."

SEE ALSO: Recreational marijuana is now legal in California

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Billionaires Sean Parker and George Soros have given millions to support marijuana legalization

Last year, the tech billionaire Sean Parker made headlines with his latest startup: a streaming service called Screening Room that would give users the ability to watch major movies still in theaters from the comfort of their homes for $50.

Instantly, people online said Parker was about to change the movie business as he did with the music industry 18 years ago, when he helped create the file-sharing service Napster.

Hollywood power players began to take sides. Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, J.J. Abrams, and Peter Jackson have all praised the forward-thinking philosophy of Screening Room. (They all also happen to be stakeholders.) Meanwhile, other filmmaking giants like Christopher Nolan and James Cameron, along with Kevin Tsujihara, the chairman and CEO of Warner Bros., have spoken out against it, voicing the importance of an exclusive theatrical experience.

But since the initial rush of news and analysis about the venture, the buzz around Screening Room has nearly disappeared — on the internet, but also, more importantly, in Hollywood. And now it looks as though the project may be a flop.

Though Parker and his cofounder, Prem Akkaraju, have promoted the company for the past two years at CinemaCon — an annual event in Las Vegas where studios and exhibitors showcase top titles and innovations — it has gotten little traction because of competition, the industry's naiveté, and the decadelong discussion between studios and theater chains about how to move forward with premium video on demand, or PVOD.

"Everything you've heard in the press about studios and theaters wanting to explore a PVOD window, nothing about that revolves around Screening Room," a source close to the talks told Business Insider.

Hollywood has its own big ideas

Screening Room's main pitch to studios and exhibitors has been that it can bring added revenue to all sides of the equation. (Jackson has said that Screening Room could bring in $8.5 billion a year for the film industry.)

Of the proposed $50 rental fee, which would make a movie available to a viewer for 48 hours, 20% would go to the movie's distributor, a participating theater chain would get up to $20, each customer would receive two tickets to see that rented title at their local theater. Screening Room would take 10%.

Sources told Business Insider that all the bells and whistles Screening Room was selling wouldn't matter until the studios and theaters agree on a PVOD window.

We're not going to share anything with the theaters.

Premium VOD is a term for titles that would be available to rent or buy before being made available on most streaming services or through Blu-ray and DVD releases. Industry players don't want movies to be available on PVOD simultaneously with theatrical releases because the first two weeks of a theatrical run are still when studios and exhibitors get most of a movie's income.

It's more likely that a PVOD window would be established in the period when movies are out of most first-run theaters but haven't yet shown up on streaming services, known in the industry as "the dark zone."

Though PVOD hasn't happened yet, many insiders believe it's only a matter of time. The only service that streams movies while they're still in theaters is the ultra-high-end Prima Cinema, which costs $35,000 to install and $500 a movie rental.

"Eventually, I would imagine — I'm speaking as an observer — the studios will need to find their own platforms and create our own direct-to-consumer opportunities," Stacey Snider, the studio head of 20th Century Fox, said at a conference at UCLA in March.

Fox and Warner Bros. have reportedly considered a $30 rental fee for streaming movies after they've been in theaters for 30 days, while other studios have suggested slightly different options. Disney has said it's not interested in shortening the theatrical-release window.

The holdup is the debate between studios and exhibitors on some major issues, specifically what the price point for PVOD will be and how soon after a movie opens it will be available to stream. Once those questions are answered, Screening Room will be on the minds of those in the industry.

But there's another hurdle: Parker's company isn't the only game in town.

"There are about three other systems out there that are doing similar things and going around talking to theater owners and studios," a source said.

And some studio executives aren't too keen on Screening Room trying to muscle in as the exclusive streaming destination when a movie hits the PVOD window, or its plan to split sales with theaters.

According to one source, a studio head said of Screening Room's proposal that theaters would get up to $20 of each rental fee: "If Screening Room wants to pay it out of their cut, go ahead. We're not going to share anything with the theaters."

Screening Room was frozen out by theater chains

Then there are the struggles Screening Room has had in trying to build relationships on the exhibition side.

According to sources, the company no longer has a deal with the multiplex giant AMC Theaters. And an attempted meeting with the National Association of Theater Owners, which would be a huge ally in starting a dialogue between Screening Room and the major theater chains, stalled after Screening Room wanted the association to sign a nondisclosure agreement. The organization declined to sign it, as the only reason it would want to meet with Screening Room would be to relay the information it received to theater owners.

AMC did not return Business Insider's request for comment, and the association had no comment for this story.

"It seems to me it's often an individual company that comes along and believes it has figured out how to make all the money in the theater space," Barbara Twist, the managing director of the Art House Convergence, which represents smaller theaters and sat in on a Screening Room presentation at CinemaCon in 2016, told Business Insider. "Personally, I have yet to see a new version that ensures that everybody keeps making the amount of money currently being made."

Twist also questioned how beneficial Screening Room could be for theater owners. (Like the major studios and exhibitors, Art House Convergence is against the idea of movies being available on Screening Room or any other service when titles first show up in theaters.)

"There's obviously the piracy issue, but also the economics," Twist said. "They say, 'We'll give the person who rents a title two movie tickets,' but how would they determine the person's main theater they go to? Commercial multiplexes and art houses occasionally show the same titles — who are they going to preference? Same for the rental-fee split. Moviegoers are often loyal to multiple theaters."

However, Twist said her organization, which is made up of a community of 400 independently owned theaters across the country, would be open to sitting down with Parker and Akkaraju.

"We would welcome a discussion along the lines of them saying: 'We have this idea. We would like to help the moviegoing population see more movies. How can we work with you?' rather than a PowerPoint presentation," Twist said.

The elephant in the room: 'iTunes is the logical choice'

Studios don't want to share any of the money they get from Screening Room, exhibitors aren't feeling the love, and there's that issue of piracy — though Screening Room reportedly touted "refined" security measures at CinemaCon this year.

But that's not all: iTunes might make Screening Room obsolete.

For years, iTunes has gotten dibs on movie titles for home viewing before all other providers. Sources say that whenever studios and exhibitors want to go down the PVOD path, they most likely would put their trust in a service they already work with, like iTunes — or build an internal PVOD streaming service — rather than a newcomer like Screening Room.

"If an earlier window gets put in place, iTunes would probably have some say in being part of the earlier window," a source said.

Apple has been in talks with studios about making movies available on iTunes two weeks after theatrical debuts, Bloomberg reported in December. Apple did not respond to Business Insider's numerous requests for comment.

"I think iTunes is the logical choice," said Jeff Bock, the senior box-office analyst for Exhibitor Relations. "It's what everybody has, and if the price point is right, Screening Room is cut out. Nobody needs them. And to build that infrastructure with Screening Room would take a long time. Screening Room has a really tough hill to climb."

Parker did not respond to Business Insider's multiple requests for comment. Screening Room attorney Skip Brittenham had no comment for this story.

SEE ALSO: How an award-winning documentary was allegedly blacklisted by Netflix

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why Sean Parker’s plan to stream movies still in theaters for $50 could work

Who were the people behind Facebook when it was just a startup? And where are they now?

Only two of Facebook's first 20 employees still work at the company — and you can probably guess one of them.

Most left during the social network's early days to work at other tech companies or start their own. Several have become successful investors at large VC firms. Out of Facebook's first 20 employees, only two were women. Many are now absurdly rich, following Facebook's IPO in 2012.

Here's where Facebook's first 20 employees are now:

SEE ALSO: The fabulous life and career of 33-year-old Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

SEE ALSO: 33 photos of Facebook's rise from a Harvard dorm room to world domination

Dustin Moskovitz, Facebook's first CTO, was Mark Zuckerberg's roommate. The two dropped out of Harvard together to move to California and work on Facebook.

Employed by Facebook: February 2004 - November 2009

Position:Cofounder

Where he is now: He's the cofounder and CEO at enterprise software company Asana. He also cofounded Good Ventures, a philanthropic firm with the mission "to help humanity thrive." He has a net worth of nearly $12 billion, according to Forbes.

Chris Hughes cofounded Facebook and served as the site's first spokesman. He later coordinated all social networking aspects of Obama's 2008 campaign.

Employed by Facebook: February 2004

Position at Facebook:Cofounder

Where he is now: After working on Obama's 2008 campaign, Hughes became executive director of Jumo, a startup that tried to utilize social media to change the world. In 2012, he purchased a majority stake in The New Republic and became its executive chairman and editor-in-chief. He put the magazine up for sale in 2016 after it failed to become profitable.

Hughes is now co-chair of the Economic Security Project, a group that wants to make universal basic income a reality in the U.S.

Eduardo Saverin was a Facebook co-founder and its first CFO. He famously sued Mark Zuckerberg and the two reached a settlement.

Employed by Facebook: February 2004

Position:Cofounder

Where he is now: After winning a legal battle with Facebook which let him retain his cofounder status, Saverin began angel investing in startups like Qwiki and Chris Hughes' Jumo. In 2011, Saverin (who was born in Brazil) renounced his U.S. citizenship and moved to Singapore, likely because of the taxes he'd have to pay following Facebook's public offering.

He says he has no hard feelings when it comes to Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg, who ousted him from the company shortly after its launch. Saverin has a net worth of roughly $8.7 billion, according to Forbes.

• Sean Parker's video chat app Airtime is attracting a following in its second incarnation.
• The company's president says millions of people are using the app to virtually hang out and watch content together.
• Original shows are a "gigantic opportunity" down the road.

Airtime flies.

The video chat app was launched by Napster cofounder and former Facebook president Sean Parker with massive fanfare in 2012, only to disappear just as quickly.

But it was reborn last year as a group video viewing/social product, and Airtime now has "has millions of users," according to president Daniel Klaus, who joined the company in 2013 following the initial product's shutdown. According to Klaus, every night "thousands or rooms light up with three to five people, and they hang out and sit and watch videos together."

That's the basic idea of Airtime. Think of Skype or Facetime, but with groups of friends talking to each other, and seeing each others faces in virtual rooms all via their smartphones. And besides talking, friends can share videos from YouTube or playlists from Spotify on Airtime, letting everybody hang out and experience the content together.

Since rebooting last year, Klaus told Business Insider that Airtime has proven particularly popular among teens and college kids, though he predicts the behavior will soon become universal. Currently the average user spends more than 15 minutes a day on Airtime and roughly an hour a month co-consuming content. The biggest Airtime fans come back seven times a day.

"Sean Parker has always had this vision that the next wave of the internet was going to be about being together," said Klaus. "The next whole phase of growth we'll see is that you can be in real time with real people."

Parker – famously portrayed by Justin Timberlake in "The Social Network" – may have been a bit early in his vision. Back in 2012, the original Airtime rolled out with a splashy, celebrity-filled launch featuring the likes of Jimmy Fallon and Snoop Dogg. But the product, which was at the time was likened to Chatroullette, fell flat among consumers.

Klaus said that 2012 was so long ago in terms of the evolution of social media, and more importantly mobile, that it's a completely different era.

Now he thinks the world, particularly young people, are ready. "Humans have sought to replicate real world communications on digital since the beginning of time," he said. "They crave that."

And they're not getting that from existing social media, he added. "I think Facebook is one of the great social products of our time, and one of the great social tragedies or our time. Kids feel bored and lonely. You have 500 friends and you don’t really know anyone."

But as apps like the popular Houseparty have proven, group video chat is gaining steam. So much so that Facebook is actively looking to co-opt the trend, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Denisia Milas, a 21-year old college student from Arizona, said she spotted an ad on Instagram for Airtime two months ago and decided to download it after another group chat app her friends had been using proved glitchy.

Now, roughly twice a week she and her friends watch YouTube videos on Airtime, including one featuring her getting her head shaved. Milas said watching her friends reactions are sometimes as fun as the videos themselves

"It's almost like we are all together," she said.

That's the idea. 

Airtime still doesn't have a revenue model. The company is kicking around ideas for monetization, including potential subscription offerings and microtransactions, said Klaus.

"We have the most sophisticated video engineering team that exists outside of Facebook and Google in North America," he said. "We've spent a lot of time watching how people use video. I don’t believe anybody has figured out an ad unit in live mobile video."

Still, Airtime is also exploring original content. "We think that's a gigantic opportunity," said Klaus, who noted that MTV is trying to revive its former live music show "Total Request Live.""Our platform is where that kind of show should exist," he said. "Those kids don’t even know what MTV is."

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: I tried the newest BlackBerry phone for a week

• Facebook's first president, Sean Parker, has been sharply critical of the social network, accusing it of exploiting human "vulnerability."
• "God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains," he said.
• His comments are part of a wave of tech figures expressing disillusionment and concern about the products they helped build.

Sean Parker, the first president of Facebook, has a disturbing warning about the social network: "God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains."

Speaking to the news website Axios, the entrepreneur and executive talked openly about what he perceives as the dangers of social media and how it exploits human "vulnerability."

"The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them ... was all about: 'How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?'" said Parker, who joined Facebook in 2004, when it was less than a year old.

"And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever," he told Axios. "And that's going to get you to contribute more content, and that's going to get you ... more likes and comments."

Parker added: "It's a social-validation feedback loop ... exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology."

"The inventors, creators — it's me, it's Mark [Zuckerberg], it's Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it's all of these people — understood this consciously," he said. "And we did it anyway."

Facebook did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Some in tech are growing disillusioned — and worried

Parker isn't the only tech figure to express disillusionment and worry by what they helped create. Tristan Harris, a former Google employee, has been outspoken in his criticism of how tech companies' products hijack users' minds.

"If you're an app, how do you keep people hooked? Turn yourself into a slot machine," he wrote in a widely shared Medium post in 2016.

"We need our smartphones, notifications screens and web browsers to be exoskeletons for our minds and interpersonal relationships that put our values, not our impulses, first," he continued. "People's time is valuable. And we should protect it with the same rigor as privacy and other digital rights."

In a recent feature, The Guardian spoke to tech workers and industry figures who have been critical of Silicon Valley business practices.

Loren Brichter, the designer who created the slot-machine-like pull-down-to-refresh mechanism now widely used on smartphones, said, "I've spent many hours and weeks and months and years thinking about whether anything I've done has made a net positive impact on society or humanity at all."

Brichter added: "Pull-to-refresh is addictive. Twitter is addictive. These are not good things. When I was working on them, it was not something I was mature enough to think about. I'm not saying I'm mature now, but I'm a little bit more mature, and I regret the downsides."

And Roger McNamee, an investor in Facebook and Google, told The Guardian: "The people who run Facebook and Google are good people, whose well-intentioned strategies have led to horrific unintended consequences ... The problem is that there is nothing the companies can do to address the harm unless they abandon their current advertising models."

The comments from Parker and others are further evidence of souring public sentiment about Silicon Valley. Once lauded in utopian terms, companies like Facebook have now come under heavy criticism over their role in the spread of "fake news" and Russian propaganda.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 5 easy ways to protect yourself from hackers

• Sean Parker, billionaire and ex-President of Facebook, says one of the biggest advantages rich people have is access to better healthcare.
• Because of this, according to Parker, rich people can live longer and continue to grow their wealth.
• "[G]ive us billionaires an extra hundred years and you'll know what ... wealth disparity looks like," he said.

Sean Parker, the first president of Facebook, revealed recently what he believes to be one of the greatest advantages rich people have.

"Because I'm a billionaire, I'm going to have access to better healthcare," the entrepreneur said at an Axios event at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

Healthcare costs in the US are higher than ever — with many families struggling to keep up with the growing expense. The average annual healthcare costs per person reached $10,345 in 2016, according to data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Parker continued:

"So ... I'm going to be like 160 and I'm going to be part of this, like, class of immortal overlords. [Laughter] Because, you know the [Warren Buffett] expression about compound interest. ... Give us billionaires an extra hundred years and you'll know what ... wealth disparity looks like."

Life expectancy is predicted to increase across the board in the future, but with the ability to afford top-end healthcare, rich people may have an even greater chance of outliving everyone else now, according to Parker, whose current net worth is about $2.6 billion.

Parker is the founder and chair of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, which aims to accelerate cancer innovation. He established the research organization in 2016 with a $250 million grant from his charity, the Parker Foundation.

Parker found success at an incredibly young age after cofounding music-sharing site Napster and then moving on to become the founding president of Facebook. He's developed a reputation as a big spender and a big partier. He's also notoriously outspoken.

At the same event, Parker was sharply critical of Facebook, accusing it of exploiting human "vulnerability."

He's not the first wealthy tech entrepreneur to take issue with the addictive power of digital technology. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs both limited their kids screen time at home.

"God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains," Parker said.

SEE ALSO: Billionaire ex-Facebook president Sean Parker unloads on Mark Zuckerberg and admits he helped build a monster

DON'T MISS: We compared Facebook vs. Google to find which company is better to work for — and the winner is clear

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 'Shark Tank' star Barbara Corcoran: How I went from a 10-kid household and more than 20 jobs to become a real estate mogul

• Comcast is officially pulling the plug on an online address book called Plaxo on December 31. 
• Plaxo isn't well known these days but it is a startup founded by famed Valley entrepreneur and investor Sean Parker.
• Parker's experience at Plaxo greatly influenced the early days of Facebook and is one inspiration for why CEO Mark Zuckerberg locked down his control of Facebook.

Comcast is officially pulling the plug on Plaxo on December 31, 2017. 

Thus ends the long and uniquely Silicon Valley history of this online address book service founded by famed Valley entrepreneur and investor Sean Parker.

Comcast bought the service in 2008 for somewhere between $150 and $170 million, TechCrunch reported at the time.

Parker is perhaps best known for his early involvement with Facebook and as a founder of Napster, the music file-sharing network that collected tens of millions of users in its first year, but suffered a painful death at the hands of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on copyright infringement charges.

Plaxo was Parker's other startup. Although it never became as well-known as other now-dead social networks like LiveJournal or MySpace, it may have been even more influential in paving the way for Facebook than Napster, its co-founder, Todd Masonis, told us back in 2015. 

Here's the long strange story of Plaxo, Parker, and Facebook, according to Masonis and a 2010 article in Vanity Fair about Parker. 

Parker created Plaxo as his redemption

In 2001, the same year Napster got the axe, Parker dreamt up a piece of software that auto-updated users' email address books when one of their contacts moved, changed companies, or got a new phone number. Users could choose to sync their information with friends.

"It was the precursor to social networking," Masonis told Business Insider.

Parker shared his vision with two recent graduates of Stanford, Masonis and Cameron Ring, a childhood friend. They signed on as co-founders and chief architects and built the product.

Despite a slow start, Plaxo was gaining 10,000 to 12,000 members a day by April 2004. But it gained a reputation as being obnoxious because it sent incessant email-requests to web users, prompting them to update their entries in their friends' address books.

With success came trouble. Parker, who often slept on Masonis' couch during Plaxo's rough patches, began showing up to work less often. His unreliability gnawed away at the company's investors, Vanity Fair reported and Masonis confirmed to us.

"He was more interested in the fun part of [building a] startup," Masonis said. "He had been at Napster where they got to go backstage at concerts and spend money on concert tours."

In 2004, the board pushed Parker out from his own company, as was widely reported, citing his erratic schedule. There were also rumors, which Parker refuted, that he had provided drugs to some employees. Parker said he was the subject of a "a smear campaign," and accused board member Ram Shriram of scheming to throw him out and strip him of his stock. 

Parker slipped into a depression, Masonis said, but it didn't last long. "He got kicked out and then immediately ran into Mark Zuckerberg. That's how it all went down," Masonis said.

Plaxo helped Facebook become the social media mammoth it is

Parker only lasted as Facebook's president for about a year, although he stayed on for some time after that in an unofficial capacity. While he was there, he used a lot of what he learned at Plaxo to help shape the social network into the behemoth it is today. For instance:

Parker understood viral marketing. One of the biggest hurdles in creating a social network is that the value only exists for users if their friends are already on it. At Plaxo, Parker conceived of viral marketing campaigns, and had no moral qualms in pinging the hell out of members' contacts until they downloaded the service, too.

By the time Parker linked up with four-month-old Facebook, he had three years' experience figuring out how to get users to join out of the blue.

Parker helped Zuckerberg maintain control of Facebook. At Facebook, Parker negotiated an unusual deal with some of the company's most powerful shareholders— including cofounder Dustin Moskovitz, Peter Thiel, Accel Partners, and other major firms and investors — so that they ceded their voting rights to Zuckerberg, SEC documents revealed. This corporate structure was intended to give Zuckerberg permanent control of the company he founded, so that he can't be jettisoned the way Plaxo booted Parker.

Parker sought revenge on one of Plaxo's most esteemed VC firms. In 2004, Zuckerberg began taking meetings with venture capitalists about raising money for his other startup idea, Wirehog, a peer-to-peer file-sharing service that linked with Facebook. Sequoia Capital reached out.

There was bad blood between Parker and the firm. Sequoia's Michael Moritz was Plaxo's first major investor, and three short years later, he supported the board's decision to fire Parker as its president. So when the chance for revenge surfaced, Parker seized it.

Zuckerberg took the meeting with Sequoia, but purposely blew it, as we previously reported. He showed up late and wearing pajamas. His PowerPoint deck, titled "The Top Ten Reasons You Should Not Invest," listed off snarky reasons such as "We have no revenue," "We will probably get sued by the music industry," and "Because Sean Parker is involved."

Needless to say, Sequoia did not invest in Wirehog or Facebook.

After Parker left, Plaxo faded from sight. Masonis and Ring, the third co-founder, sold Plaxo to Comcast. Comcast continued to operate the service for years, but it wasn't very high-profile.

Meanwhile, the duo used their exit money to open Dandelion Chocolate, a bean-to-bar chocolate-making factory in San Francisco's Mission District.

Parker continues to be one of the most interesting characters in the startup world.

Over the last few years, he served on Spotify's board and helped it lock down deals with US record labels. Parker also launched and quietly shut down the video chat startup Airtime, and donated $24 million to Stanford University School of Medicine to build the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy Research, dedicated to finding a cure for allergies.

Parker continues to invest and advise startups as well. He has backed Moskovitz's current company Asana, Arianna Huffington's latest company Thrive Global, and others. 

SEE ALSO: 50 startups that will boom in 2018, according to VCs

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why Bethany Mota Has A Legion Of 10 Million Fans Waiting For Her Next YouTube Video

• Spotify filed to go public Wednesday in a "Direct IPO."
• In its SEC paperwork, Spotify used the example of Lorde to show how it could launch a music artist's career.
• Spotify says Sean Parker helped catapult Lorde to stardom by putting her on his playlist, "Hipster International."

Spotify filed to go public on Wednesday (in a weird way), and the music-streaming giant used the opportunity to take credit for launching pop star Lorde's career.

In its SEC paperwork, Spotify emphasized that it could help both emerging and established artists by allowing their music to be discovered. 

"One prominent example of how Spotify enabled an aspiring artist to reach a global audience is international pop star Lorde," Spotify wrote.

Here's how Spotify describes Lorde's rise to stardom:

"Lorde started out as a singer-songwriter from New Zealand looking to break out with her new single, 'Royals,' when Sean Parker added her single to his popular playlist Hipster International. After approximately one month, Lorde had jumped past prominent artists such as Katy Perry, Drake, and Lady Gaga to land at the top of Spotify’s Viral Chart, and after eight months, she had reached over 100 million streams on Spotify and was #1 on the Billboard Hot 100."

According to Spotify, we need to add another accolade to tech disrupter Sean Parker's already long resume. After founding Napster when he was a teen, Parker went on to become the president of Facebook (before stepping down), and an early investor and board member at Spotify. Then in 2013, using his ironically named Spotify playlist, "Hipster International" (which currently has 748,778 followers), he shot Lorde to the heights of Katy Perry, Drake, and Lady Gaga.

"I feel like in many ways she's the antidote to disposable pop music,"Parker told Forbes at the time. "I feel like it was accessible to the same people who listen to Katy Perry, for instance, but there's obviously something more authentic and personal to Lorde's music. I got the sense she represents the return to a singer-songwriter approach to songwriting, and yet she has a knack for writing incredibly infectious melodies."

While the extent to which Spotify's existence allowed Lorde to become a star can be debated, it is clear that a placement on Spotify's prominent playlists (like RapCaviar) can help boost an artist's profile.

It is also evident that Spotify wants to position itself to investors as a service that is good for artists, and can help jumpstart their careers.

SEE ALSO: Spotify, the music streaming service that's crushing Apple Music, just filed to go public in a very weird way

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why the World Cup soccer ball looks so different

• Napster founder and Facebook billionaire Sean Parker is an early investor and former board member of Spotify, the Swedish music streaming giant that went public on Tuesday.
• It's assumed the two first initiated contact via a 2009 email that Parker sent to Spotify cofounder Daniel Ek.
• A new book, 'The Swedish Tech Miracle' by journalist Kina Zeidler, reveals how Ek had - unwittingly - spent hours chatting with Parker during his teenage years.
• Sean Parker played a big part in Spotify's global expansion.

Daniel Ek has come a long way.

From scrappy Stockholm suburbs to the boardrooms of Warner and Universal on to a $1 billion New York IPO, the Spotify cofounder's life has the makings of a Nordic noir version of "The Social Network".

And just like Mark Zuckerberg in the 2011 hit movie, Ek's success is partly owed to Napster founder Sean Parker. As an early Spotify investor and board member, Parker would help turn an up-and-coming Swedish music service into a global giant. 

'You guys have finally done it'

It all started in August 2009, when Parker, who had just come across Spotify, wrote an email to Ek (and his colleague, Shakil Khan). Here's how Parker opened what Wired has called "a 1,700-word love letter to Daniel Ek":

Daniel/Shakil,

I've been playing around with Spotify. You've built an amazing experience.

As you saw, Zuck really likes it too. I've been trying to get him to understand your model for a while now but I think he just needed to see it for himself.

Parker, whose Napster had been forcedly shut down in 2001, saw in Spotify a way to finish "the next revolution in digital music," he said in the email. "You guys have finally done it."

Parker wanted in.

Mark Zuckerberg was equally impressed. Within a day of hearing about the Swedish startup, his Facebook status read:

"Spotify is so good."

Shortly afterwards, Ek and Parker would meet up and Sean Parker joined as a board member and investor in Spotify. Parker would play a key role in Spotify's early growth, assisting Ek in negotiating with record labels for access to their songs. 

The music streaming revolution had been set in motion.

'Napshon'

But there's an additional twist to the beginnings of an industry-defining friendship, which belies Parker's email from 2009.

A new book – 'Det Svenska Techundret', roughly translated 'The Swedish Tech Wonder', by Swedish author and journalist Kina Zeidler – which details Spotify's rise, lays bare how Parker and Ek had actually first met years earlier – exchanging thoughts in online chatrooms.

The following passage describes how, when first meeting in person in 2009, the two revolutionaries realized they had known each other since Daniel Ek's teenage days*:

"When Daniel Ek and Sean Parker meet it becomes apparent that they have more in common than the fact they both founded their own online music service. Sean Parker turned out to be "Napshon", an alias that Daniel Ek, during his youth years, has spent several hours chatting with in various chat rooms, virtual meeting places for computer nerds. They don't realize this until now. The two entrepreneurs bond instantly and Parker is also the one who introduces Daniel to Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg. In 2010, Sean Parker invests 11,6 million euros in Spotify."

The rest – all the way to Spotify's IPO filing yesterday – is tech history.

*The passage from 'Det Svenska Techundret' has been translated from Swedish to English by Business Insider Nordic.

Read the full 2009 email from Parker to Daniel Ek here. 

SEE ALSO: Spotify, the music streaming service that's crushing Apple Music, just filed to go public in a very weird way

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: The CEO of one of the largest health insurers in the US explains the problem with healthcare in America

On a foggy day in San Francisco in May, politicians and tech moguls gathered outside Salesforce Tower, the tallest office building west of the Mississippi, to celebrate the skyscraper's grand opening. This was peak San Francisco — a display of power and influence topped off by Marc Benioff holding hands with the mayor of San Francisco as a blessing was said over the cone-shaped, vaguely phallic 61-story tower.

San Francisco is, for better or worse, a tech city. The tech sector creates tens of thousands of jobs annually in the nine-county Bay Area, making it the single biggest engine of the local economy, though that job growth is starting to slow.

As startups blossom, attracting a wave of entrepreneurs and investment dollars, the tech industry has achieved significant clout in local politics. We rounded up the tech and business luminaries who emerged as political power players in San Francisco.

SEE ALSO: Salesforce moved into a new $1 billion skyscraper in San Francisco, and the offices are unlike anything we've seen

Airbnb's Brian Chesky tangled with city officials and hotel unions to keep Airbnb alive in San Francisco.

Title: CEO of Airbnb

Biggest power play: In 2015, Airbnb spent more than $8 million to defeat a San Francisco ballot measure that would have severely restricted short-term home rentals, including those listed through other services such as Craigslist and Vrbo.

Employees of the San Francisco startup have given Gavin Newsom— the politician who helped beat the measure, and who is now running for California governor — $228,000 in donations.

Ron Conway, known as the "Godfather of Silicon Valley," has funneled money into hundreds of startups as well as political campaigns for moderate and tech-friendly candidates.

Title: Angel investor and founder of SV Angel

Biggest power play: Conway, one of the tech industry's most prominent and powerful startup investors, also backs political hopefuls. He's poured reported millions of dollars into local elections, including $275,000 in 2012 to pass a ballot measure that lowered tax rates for tech companies that he invested in such as Airbnb, Twitter, and Zynga.

Conway was a longtime friend and advisor to San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, whose death from a heart attack in December catapulted Supervisor London Breed — a fellow recipient of Conway's political contributions over the years — into the hot seat. Her colleagues on the Board of Supervisors moved swiftly to replace her as interim mayor, saying publicly that they did so to send a message to Conway that "San Francisco can't be bought."

Conway has denied making any attempts to sway the Board of Supervisors' vote.

Salesforce's Marc Benioff has been spreading his billions over several causes near and dear to San Francisco residents.

Title: Cofounder and CEO of Salesforce

Biggest power play: Benioff and his wife, Lynne, want to end family homelessness in San Francisco by 2019, and have donated $11.5 million to Hamilton Families, an organization that puts families on the streets into permanent housing, to do just that.

The San Francisco power couple has contributed millions of dollars to causes from schools to hospitals, writing two $100 million checks to UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland. In 2018, Benioff gave big to sponsor a San Francisco ballot measure that, if passed, will go toward raising teacher salaries.

• On March 14, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the departure of two key executives: chief product officer Chris Cox and head of WhatsApp Chris Daniels.
• Cox and Daniels join a long list of Facebook employees who have left the company.
• We took a look at where 14 of the most important Facebook employees throughout the company's history are now.

On March 14, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the departure of Chris Cox, chief product officer and longtime employee of Facebook.

Cox joined the team in 2005, one year after Facebook’s inception. Cox, along with head of WhatsApp Chris Daniels, now join the ranks of other execs formerly employed at Facebook. Some, like Cox, worked with Zuckerberg for over a decade, while others stayed only a few years.

Read more: Facebook is being abandoned by top executives. Here's everyone who has left since the Cambridge Analytica catastrophe last year.

We took a look at these employees who impacted the course of the company's development, from some of its earliest founding members to its most recent big names. Alongside Cox and Daniels, the list includes Zuckerberg’s Harvard roommates Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The list also includes employees still working for the company, such augmented and virtual-reality vice president Andrew Bosworth and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.

Keep reading for a look at some of Facebook’s most important employees.

SEE ALSO: A red flag in a Facebook exec's goodbye letter shows there's bad blood over Mark Zuckerberg's radical privacy plan

SEE ALSO: Facebook is now 15 years old. Here's a look into the life, career, and controversies surrounding CEO Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg

Years employed at Facebook: 2004-present

Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook during his sophomore year at Harvard University in 2004. Still the company's reigning CEO, Zuckerberg has seen many milestones, from the company's first appearance on the New York Stock Exchange to its acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014 respectively.

More recently, Zuckerberg and Facebook have come under fire for scandals around the 2016 presidential election and Cambridge Analytica's acquisition of Facebook users' personal data. Zuckerberg appeared before Congress in April of 2018.

Source: Business Insider

Chris Cox

Years employed at Facebook: 2005-2019

Chris Cox joined Facebook in 2005 and was one of the company's earliest employees. The chief technology officer built several of the company's core products, including the News Feed. Cox worked with Zuckerberg for 13 years.

News of his departure broke on March 14 and marks the most significant departure from the company in years.

Source: Business Insider, The New York Times

Adam D'Angelo

Years employed at Facebook: 2004-2008

Adam D'Angelo joined Facebook in 2004, and worked at the company for five years as its chief technology officer. He also served as the vice president of engineering, and initially headed the Facebook Platform team building newsfeed and ad targeting infrastructure.

D'Angelo left the company in 2008 to found question-and-answer site Quora alongside another former Facebook employee, Charlie Cheever.

Source: Business Insider, Forbes

• The Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes wants to split Facebook into three companies: Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram.
• He thinks that's the best way to protect users and democracy.
• But it may be easier to regulate one giant company instead of a handful.
• The competition caused by splitting up Facebook might also return social networks to "growth hacking" and other sins from social media's early days.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Last week, Facebook's first spokesman, Chris Hughes, got a lot of attention for writing a New York Times op-ed article arguing that the government should break up the social-media giant.

It helped the headlines that Hughes is a Facebook cofounder — a title he earned by working for the company when it was still headquartered in a Harvard dorm.

Hughes' principle argument is that Mark Zuckerberg is too powerful because he owns roughly 60% of Facebook's voting shares, and Facebook owns a monopoly in social media. Hughes thinks the company should become three separate entities: Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

Maybe Hughes is right.

Maybe the industry and the economy would be better off if Silicon Valley had three more social networks competing for user engagement, advertising dollars, and publishing partners.

I'm not an antitrust expert.

I am, however, a human living in a country and world deeply affected by social networks, and as one of those I wonder if breaking up Facebook is such a good idea.

I wonder if splitting up Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook — thereby inviting lots of new competition in the social-media industry — would inadvertently invite back into our lives one of the most annoying habits of the early social-media industry: "growth hacking."

Back when Facebook was young, it was desperate first to grow past Friendster and Myspace and later to hold off Twitter and Instagram. So it hired people to grow its user engagement as fast as possible, by nearly any means necessary.

The mission, according to the former Facebook president Sean Parker, was to understand how to "consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible."

One thing Facebook did was try to figure out the problem of human addiction — and then use what it learned to help make Facebook more addictive. The aim was to "exploit a vulnerability in human psychology," Parker has said.

The executive who led growth hacking at Facebook was Chamath Palihapitiya. Back in 2013, he would proudly give seminars on the topic. These days he calls the insatiable push for user growth a "Ponzi scheme."

Parker is also publicly apologetic over Facebook's early years.

"God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains,"he said at an event in 2017.

So my questions are …

Is it really such a good idea for the government to break up Facebook and encourage an all-out, no-holds-barred war for your attention among Silicon Valley social-media companies?

Or should the government just effectively regulate the one we're all already addicted to?

Hughes seems to believe the best path forward is breaking up Facebook and then getting Congress to pass laws and create an agency to regulate the newly competitive industry.

Read more:A Facebook cofounder has written a blistering New York Times op-ed arguing that Mark Zuckerberg's social network should be torn apart

That sounds hard. First of all, laws are hard to pass — even Hughes acknowledges that congressional action would be difficult. Second, breaking up a company would face major difficulties in the courts. Third, Silicon Valley companies are known to do everything they can to get around regulations in pursuit of growth.

So it seems as if there is a simpler path: Congress could regulate Facebook as it exists now.

There may still be issues with political will, but right now both political parties are unhappy with the state of social media.

And you may be skeptical that Facebook would simply accede to increased regulation, but of course it would. Not for charitable reasons, either.

Regulations, while meant to protect consumers, can also protect existing players and make barriers to entry higher. For similar reasons, Goldman Sachs favors regulation in the banking industry.

Lloyd Blankfein, the former Goldman CEO, used to tell people heavy regulation of his company was a reason to invest in it:

"All industries are being disrupted to some extent by new entrants coming in from technology. There are some parts of [Goldman's] business where it's very hard for outside entrants to come in, disrupt our business, simply because we're so regulated."

To me, that sounds like something Zuckerberg or Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, would be happy to tell Facebook investors.

Regulating Facebook, rather than breaking it up, would prevent another desperate competition for user attention and advertising dollars. In other words: growth hacking, or maybe something worse.

During its early days, Facebook used to have posters on its walls that said in big block letters: "Move Fast and Break Things."

As the company grew dominant — breaking a lot of things along the way — the posters came down.

Breaking up Facebook would give Silicon Valley and the world three new companies as desperate as Facebook was back then.

And we don't need three, four, or five social networks moving fast and breaking things again.

Rather than going back to the growth-hacking days, regulating the Facebook we have now seems like the best option for the government, for Facebook, and for the average person who relies on the social network.

SEE ALSO: Facebook says breaking up a 'successful American company' isn't the right way to hold it accountable

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: The legendary economist who predicted the housing crisis says the US will win the trade war

• College students accrued more than $1 trillion in debt last year pursuing higher education.
• However, there are incredibly successful tech executives, such as Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, who started multi-billion-dollar companies without ever getting a college degree.
• Here are 23 tech founders and executives who never graduated college, but nevertheless attained massive success.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

It's been consistently shown that college graduates are bound to earn more than those without degrees.

But at the same time, college has become more expensive than it's ever been. Student loan debt reached a record high of almost $1.5 trillion at the end of 2018, according to data from New York's federal reserve bank.

The degree-less tale of tech superstars like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates is folklore by this point, but the Facebook and Microsoft founders aren't the only two influential executives who have risen to the top without finishing college. Of the 2017 Forbes ranking of the 400 wealthiest people in America, 17.5% of those on the list— 70 people — never graduated from college, according to analysis from data visualization company Visme.

The founders and CEOs of other prestigious tech companies — including Twitter, Fitbit, WhatsApp, Tumblr, and Square— also forewent higher education to take on the tech world, and their high-stakes bets paid off.

Here are 23 successful executives in tech who never got their college degrees:

SEE ALSO: Here are all the major US tech companies blocked behind China's 'Great Firewall'

Mark Zuckerberg — cofounder and CEO, Facebook

Zuckerberg never did complete either of his two majors (psychology and computer science). He launched "thefacebook.com" while a student at Harvard University, but he dropped out during his sophomore year to move to Palo Alto and work on his company full-time.

Matt Mullenweg — founder, WordPress

Mullenweg developed the open-source software for blogging platform WordPress as a 19-year-old freshman at the University of Houston, where he was studying philosophy and political science. By the start of his junior year, he left college for a job at CNET in San Francisco.

James Park — cofounder and CEO, Fitbit

Like many successful tech moguls, Park dropped out of Harvard. In 1998, he abandoned his major in computer scienceto pursue a career as an entrepreneur. After a brief stint as a Morgan Stanley analyst, he started Fitbit in 2007.

John and Patrick Collison — cofounders, Stripe

The Collison brothers grew up in Ireland and both came to Boston for college: Patrick Collison at MIT, John Collison at Harvard. They hatched the idea for their first business — an online auction management company named Auctomatic — at a local pub, and dropped out of college to build the company's technology in San Francisco.

They sold Auctomatic in 2008 for $5 million, and became teenage millionaires.

Jack Dorsey — cofounder and CEO, Twitter and Square

Dorsey is a two-time college dropout. He first enrolled at the University of Missouri-Rolla, but he transferred to NYU after two years. He reportedly thought of the idea for Twitter while at NYU, where he dropped out a semester short of graduating and moved to the West Coast to work with a tech company.

Daniel Ek — cofounder and CEO, Spotify

Ek grew up in Sweden, and enrolled in college in 2002 at the country's KTH Royal Institute of Technology to study engineering. He lasted only eight weeks, when he found out his entire first year would be devoted to theoretical mathematics. He soon started taking gigs at various tech companies.

Larry Ellison — cofounder, Oracle

As a kid growing up in Chicago, Ellison planned to attend medical school at USC, get married and have kids, and move to Los Angeles working as a doctor. However, that never happened. He tried getting an undergraduate degree twice — once at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (for two years), and again at the University of Chicago (where he lasted only one semester).

After dropping out a second time, Ellison moved to California amid the burgeoning tech scene.

Sean Parker — cofounder of Napster and former president of Facebook

As a senior in high school, Parker was making $80,000 a year through various programming and coding projects. It was enough money for Parker to convince his parents that he didn't have to go to college, and he instead joined up with Shawn Fanning to launch music-sharing website Napster in 1999.

Evan Williams — cofounder and former CEO, Twitter

Williams grew up in a small town in Nebraska, and enrolled for college at the nearby University of Nebraska-Lincoln. However, he felt college was a "waste of time," and lasted only a year-and-a-half taking as few classes as possible and without ever declaring a major. He then moved to Florida and bounced around various cities doing freelance work and tech jobs.

Steve Jobs — cofounder and former CEO, Apple

Jobs attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, a private university he once said in a commencement speech was "almost as expensive as Stanford." He reportedly dropped out after one semester, but he stayed in the area and attended classes that interested him. One of those classes was calligraphy, taught by a Trappist monk named Robert Palladino, who Jobs later credited with teaching him about typefaces that he later added to the Mac personal computer he developed.

Jan Koum — cofounder, WhatsApp

Koum enrolled in San Jose State University while also working as a security tester at Ernst & Young. While on assignment for EY, Koum was brought on to help out at Yahoo, where he met an employee who went on to be his future WhatsApp cofounder, Brian Acton.

Koum switched jobs to become an infrastructure engineer at Yahoo, and was soon inundated with doing work on Yahoo's servers. Koum said he "hated school anyway," and dropped out to devote his time to Yahoo.

Dustin Moskovitz — cofounder, Facebook and Asana

Moskovitz studied computer science at Harvard, where he was roommates with Mark Zuckerberg. Moskovitz reportedly volunteered to help Zuckerberg work on his new website, and learned a coding language in "a couple of days" to be able to work. Along with Zuckerberg, Moskovitz dropped out of Harvard to move to Palo Alto and work on Facebook full-time.

Travis Kalanick — cofounder and former CEO, Uber

Kalanick, a California native, enrolled in UCLA to study computer engineering. Through the school's Computer Science Undergraduate Association, he met two classmates named Michael Todd and Vince Busam. Kalanick worked with four other students out of Busam's dorm room to develop a peer-to-peer search engine called Scour.

Kalanick dropped out of school in 1998 to work for Scour full-time, and survived by collecting unemployment as the company looked to secure funding.

Arash Ferdowsi — cofounder, Dropbox

Ferdowsi attended MIT and studied computer science. In the summer of 2007, recent MIT graduate Drew Houston reached out to Ferdowsi to team up on an idea for cloud storage service that later became Dropbox. Ferdowsi dropped out of MIT in his last semester to commit himself fully to Dropbox, and worked with Houston out of a small office in Cambridge to build the platform.

Richard Branson — founder, Virgin Group

As a teenager growing up in London, Branson struggled with dyslexia and did poorly in school. His school's headmaster once told Branson that he would either end up in prison or become a millionaire.

As a 15-year-old student still in secondary school, Branson produced a magazine called Student, and dropped out of school to work on the project. Although the magazine failed, he found success in a side hustle selling mail-order records, and turned the business into a successful company called Virgin Records.

Bob Pittman — CEO, iHeartMedia

Pittman grew up in Mississippi, and was already working as an announcer on the radio by the time he was 15 years old. He enrolled in nearby Millsaps College, but he didn't stay for long, and left school to pursue a career in radio. By 18, he was working at a radio station in Pittsburgh as a program director.

David Karp — founder, Tumblr

Karp never even finished high school in New York City — he dropped out at 14. Instead of heading to college, he entered the tech scene, and quickly became the chief technology officer for a now-defunct online messaging board called UrbanBaby that was bought by CNET in 2006.

Michael Dell — founder and CEO, Dell

Dell attended the University of Texas in 1983 as a premed student, but decided by the end of his freshman year that he wanted to drop out. In the summer before sophomore year, Dell sold $180,000worth of reworked PC computers, which was enough to convince his parents he didn't have to go back to college.

Kevin Rose — venture capitalist and cofounder, Digg

By the time Rose enrolled as a computer science student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, he was already working as a technician at a nearby Department of Energy nuclear test site. He dropped out of school at the end of his sophomore year to head to the Bay Area.

Barry Diller — founder and chairman, IAC

Diller grew up in Beverly Hills, and attended UCLA in nearby Los Angeles for college. Diller said he lasted"literally, three weeks" at college before he dropped out, because he "wasn't interested or stimulated." Diller landed a job through a friend in the mail room at the talent agency William Morris, a gig that launched his career in the media industry.

Paul Allen — cofounder, Microsoft

Allen dropped out of Washington State University in 1974 after two years to work as a programmer in Boston, where his friend since grade school — Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates — was attending Harvard. Allen got a job offer from Honeywell, and moved to the Boston area with his then-girlfriend.

Bill Gates — cofounder, Microsoft

Gates left Harvard in 1975 to cofound Microsoft with longtime friend Paul Allen.

When Gates left school, he took it as an official leave of absence. Doing that allowed him to return to school "if things hadn't worked out."

• Not every Facebook employee leaves with a high opinion of the social media giant or its CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
• Cofounder Chris Hughes thinks the company is too powerful and should be broken up. Founding President Sean Parker worries what Facebook is doing to kids' brains. A former strategic partner manager says Facebook has failed its black employees and users.
• The founders of Whatsapp, Instagram, and Oculus — some of Facebook's biggest acquisitions since 2012 — have all left the company.
• We rounded up the parting musings of 12 former Facebook employees.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Facebook has seen its share of talent come and go in its 15 year history, and not always with great things to say. Some former employees have looked back at their time at the social media giant and questioned the value and impact that their work has had on society.

Cofounder Chris Hughes made headlines earlier this year by publicly calling for Facebook to be broken up, becoming the highest profile ex-Facebooker to turn on the company. Of course, there are plenty of insiders who have left Facebook who continue to support it. 

Here are 12 former Facebook employees who have criticized Facebook or CEO Mark Zuckerberg since leaving.

SEE ALSO: Here's why the internet is obsessed with 'number neighbors,' a viral trend where people text phone numbers one digit away from their own

12. Chris Hughes — Cofounder

Chris Hughes, Zuckerberg's Harvard roommate, cofounded Facebook. He left in the company in 2007. In 2019, he says the company is too powerful and is calling for it to be broken up. 

"I've been critical of a lot of the company's decisions over the past year, and (Mark) knows that," Hughes said in an interview with CNN Business in May 2019. "It's not personal beef, but it is personal."

"I've been friends with Mark for fifteen plus years, I dont know if we'll be friends on the other side of this piece," Hughes said in the CNN interview. 

In July 2019, The New York Times reported that Hughes had been in meetings with the FTC, DOJ, and state attorneys about a potential antitrust case against Facebook.

Sources: New York Times, New York Times, CNN Business

11. Palmer Luckey — Oculus founder

Palmer Luckey founded his VR company Oculus in 2012, which Facebook acquired in 2014 for about $2 billion. By 2017, he was out, following a Daily Beast report in 2016 that Luckey was "putting money behind an unofficial Donald Trump group dedicated to 's---posting' and circulating internet memes maligning Hillary Clinton."

In October 2018, Luckey told CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin, "it wasn't my choice to leave." When Zuckerberg testified before congress in April 2018, he said Luckey's departure was not related to politics, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Sources: Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, The Daily Beast, Facebook, CNBC

10. Sean Parker — Founding president

The Napster cofounder joined Facebook as its founding president in 2004. He was arrested — but not charged — for cocaine possession in 2005. According to Vanity Fair, the arrest worried Facebook investors, and consequently "with much anguish, (Parker) agreed to depart."

In November 2017, Parker criticized Facebook at an Axios event, saying "God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains."

Sources: Axios, Business Insider, Vanity Fair

9. Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger — Instagram cofounders

Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger launched Instagram in 2010, and Facebook acquired it for $1 billion in 2012. In 2018, both cofounders left Facebook.

According to The New York Times, disagreements about changes to the service and staffing led to their decision to leave. The Times also reported that the founders weren't happy about the level of control Zuckerberg had begun to assert over Instagram.

At the Wired 25 conference after his departure, Systrom said "there are no hard feelings" towards Facebook, but "No one ever leaves a job because everything's awesome, right?" according to The Verge.

Source: The Verge, New York Times, Business Insider, The New York Times

8. Alex Stamos — Former chief information security officer

Alex Stamos served as Facebook's chief information security officer from 2015 to 2018. According to The New York Times, prior to his departure Stamos "advocated more disclosure around Russian interference of the platform" but colleagues disagreed — his tasks were delegated out consequently. Stamos also reportedly clashed with COO Sheryl Sandberg, once blindsiding her at a board meeting where he began speaking about Russian intelligence operations.

"The truth is there is a bit of a Game of Thrones culture among the executives," Stamos said in a February 2019 interview with CNN. "One of the problems about having a really tight-knit set of people making all these decisions ... if you keep the — the same people in the same places, it's just very difficult to admit you were wrong, right?"

In May 2019, Stamos said Zuckerberg wields too much power and therefore should step down as Facebook's CEO.

Sources: Business Insider, Business Insider, New York Times, CNN

7. Mark Luckie — Former strategic partner manager for global influencers

Mark Luckie, who worked at Facebook from 2017 to 2018, circulated a memo to Facebook employees globally when he left the company and then posted it on Facebook. It's opening line read: "Facebook has a black people problem." Luckie went on to detail how Facebook has failed its black employees and users. He wrote that underrepresented groups are systematically excluded from communication and that racial discrimination at Facebook is real.

Facebook's 2019 diversity report showed that only 3.8% of Facebook employees identified as black, with only 1.5% of technical employees identifying as black.

"We want to fully support all employees when there are issues reported and when there may be micro-behaviors that add up," A Facebook spokesperson wrote to Business Insider around the time Luckie published his memo. "We are going to keep doing all we can to be a truly inclusive company."

Sources: LinkedIn, Facebook, Facebook, Business Insider

6. Chamath Palihapitiya — Former VP

Chamath Palihapitiya worked at Facebook from 2008 to 2011, serving as VP of platform and monetization, and then VP of user growth, mobile & international. 

In November 2017, Palihapitiya criticized Facebook at a talk at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, saying he felt "tremendous guilt" about the effect of social media on society. "In the back, deep, deep recess of our mind, we kind of knew something bad could happen." 

"Chamath has not been at Facebook for over 6 years," Facebook wrote in a response statement. "Facebook was a very different company back then, and as we have grown, we have realized how our responsibilities have grown too."

Palihapitiya consequently backpedaled, writing "I genuinely believe that Facebook is a force for good in the world" in a Facebook post.

Sources: Facebook, Business Insider, Business Insider, Business Insider, LinkedIn

5. Justin Rosenstein — Former engineering manager

Justin Rosenstein worked as an engineering manager at Facebook from 2007 to 2008, during which time he helped develop the Like button. After leaving Facebook, he cofounded digital project management platform Asana in 2008. 

Rosenstein told The Guardian in 2017 that he restricts his own use of social media these days, saying, "Everyone is distracted...all of the time." 

Sources: Business Insider, LinkedIn, Guardian

4. Leah Pearlman — Former product manager

Leah Pearlman also worked on creating Facebook's Like button; in retrospect, she had concerns about the validation feedback loop she created.

In a 2017 interview with Vice, Pearlman said, "You know that episode of Black Mirror, that one where everyone is obsessed with likes? When I saw that I suddenly felt terrified of becoming those people, as well as thinking I'd created that environment for everyone else."

Source: Vice, Business Insider

3. Brian Acton — WhatsApp cofounder

Brian Acton left Facebook in September 2017, three years after it acquired his messaging platform WhatsApp for $19 billion. According to Forbes, Acton's pro-privacy and anti-ads stance for WhatsApp caused friction with Zuckerberg and Facebook.

In February 2018, Wired reported that Acton was working with WhatsApp competitor Signal (which has end-to-end encryption), investing $50 million.

In March 2018, he called for users to #deletefacebook as the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal came to light. 

Sources: Wired, Forbes

2. Jan Koum —WhatsApp cofounder

Jan Koum followed his cofounder Brian Acton out the door of Facebook. In April 2018, Koum announced his intent to leave the company. The Washington Post reported that Koum made the decision "after clashing with (WhatsApp's) parent, Facebook, over the popular messaging service's strategy and Facebook's attempts to use its personal data and weaken its encryption." 

Koum posted on Facebook announcing his departure; Zuckerberg commented, saying "I'm grateful for everything you've done to help connect the world, and for everything you've taught me, including about encryption."

Sources: Washington Post, Verge, Facebook

1. Eduardo Saverin — Cofounder

Zuckerberg's Harvard classmate Eduardo Saverin was the cofounder of Facebook. He managed the business side of Facebook until 2005, when Zuckerberg boxed him out by creating a new Delaware corporation to acquire Facebook's old Florida LLC, distribute new shares to everybody, and leave Saverin out.

Zuckerberg wrote an email to his lawyer asking, "Is there a way to do this without making it painfully apparent to him that he's being diluted to 10%?" about Saverin.

What followed were lawsuits from Facebook and Saverin, Saverin approaching the Winklevoss twins, and Saverin approaching author Ben Mezrich about the book that would become Accidental Billionaires, which would eventually be made into the film The Social Network by David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin in 2010. 

When Saverin and Facebook's lawsuits were settled, Saverin signed an NDA and ceased communication with the press. In a 2012 interview with Veja, a Brazilian magazine, Saverin said, "I have only good things to say about Mark, there are no hard feelings between us." In a 2019 interview with Forbes, Saverin said, "I'm incredibly proud of what Mark has done, to build an institution of its size and value. He'll work hard to get things right."

Sources: Business Insider, Business Insider, Business Insider, Forbes

• Statistics show nine out of 10 startups end up failing— one of the top reasons being lack of cash. So it is no wonder when a company goes bankrupt, its founder or founders may, too.
• In Silicon Valley, it seems failure is a rite of passage. Medium blog posts by founders detailing why a company is folding and how it is best for the "community" have become all too common.
• Many failed CEOs of one startup may go on to found bigger and better companies — but some don't.
• Here are seven tech executives who lost millions, along with the companies they helped build.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Capitalism can be an ugly beast.

According to statistics, nine out of 10 startups are guaranteed to fail— and most of the time it's because a company simply spent all of its money. This means that not only do companies lose millions of dollars, but so do their founders. When companies go broke, the bank accounts and net worths of CEOs typically also take a drastic hit. 

Silicon Valley isn't a place where entrepreneurs are down for long. Failure is seen almost as a rite of passage in some cases — but in others, failure can mean years-long court battles and the possibility of bankruptcy or criminal charges for misleading shareholders. 

Read more:These 10 billionaires have all gone broke or declared bankruptcy — read the wild stories of how they lost their fortunes

The most prominent, widely covered, and dramatized downfall may be that of founder and former CEO of Theranos Elizabeth Holmes, who faces criminal fraud charges alleging she misled not only investors, but policy makers about the capability of her company's blood-testing technologies.

Another example, but with a happier ending, is Napster — the popular, early-aughts music-sharing software, brought down in part by a lawsuit facilitated by metal band Metallica. Though Napster didn't survive, founders Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning recovered — Parker became the first president of Facebook and Fanning has since invested in a variety of startups himself. 

Failure in the tech industry cannot be thwarted — the risk of losing everything seems to be part of the game. 

Here's the tech execs who lost millions and the companies they built.

SEE ALSO: The first jobs of 14 of the biggest tech executives

By now, Elizabeth Holmes, founder and former CEO of blood-testing company Theranos, is a household name. Holmes was able to secure nearly $1 billion in funding, notably from investors like Rupert Murdoch and US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, before questions about the technology and fraud charges against Holmes caused Theranos to shut down.

Theranos was founded in 2003 when Holmes was 19 and attending Stanford University. By 2015, Theranos had a $9 billion valuation.

But a year later, Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou published a story detailing how the company was operating at a limited capacity and had been generating false and unreliable results for patients. By the end of 2017, Theranos was drowning — the company had no money and its board members were leaving. 

Last September, Theranos laid off its workforce and Holmes faced charges of wire fraud. The company shut down just days later for good. Holmes, who Forbes once estimated had a net worth of $4.5 billion, now has an estimated net worth of $0. 

Source: Business Insider, The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, Forbes

Antoine Balaresque and Henry Bradlow founded drone startup Lily Robotics in 2013. By 2015, Lily Robotics had over $15 million in funding and nearly $35 million in pre-sales thanks to a viral video showing the "drone" in action. But just two years later, Lily Robotics shut down, filed for bankruptcy, and was raided by federal agents. The much-sought-after drone? It reportedly never existed.

Lily Robotics pitched itself as a free-following, video-capturing, autonomous drone company. The company captured the gaze of investors like the Winklevoss twins (who famously sued Mark Zuckerberg over Facebook) and firms like Spark Capital (known for funding Twitter and Slack).

Cofounder Balaresque wrote in an email obtained by San Francisco District Attorney that the famed footage of a Lily drone following skiers and kayakers while they trekked through mountains and rivers was shot using a GoPro mounted on a $2,000 DJI Inspire drone. And according to bankruptcy paperwork, Lily was burning through roughly $1 million a month, while customers anxiously awaited their drones. The company filed for bankruptcy, and said in 2017 it plans to refund customers, but it's not clear if anyone has received a refund yet. 

Business Insider tried contacting Balaresque and Bradlow, but they did not respond to requests for comment. According to LinkedIn, Bradlow is now a product manager at e-scooter company Lime. 

Sources: Wired, Venture Beat, Forbes, Business Insider, Vox/Recode

In its heyday, circa 2011, Sidecar was considered a ride-share pioneer, beating even Uber and Lyft to launch. With just a little over $35 million in funding, though, Sidecar cofounder and former CEO Sunil Paul said the company just could not compete with Uber, which raised over $6.6 billion.

Sidecar eventually shut down operations in 2015, yet was able to sell its assets to General Motors the following year.

"Our vision is to reinvent transportation and we've achieved that with ridesharing and deliveries. It is, however, a bittersweet victory," Paul wrote in 2015. He largely blamed Uber's "aggressive" tactics and "anti-competitive behavior" for Sidecar's defeat, even going as far to file a lawsuit against the company last year.

Paul did not immediately respond to request for comment made by Business Insider, but according to his LinkedIn profile, he is now the founder of Spring Ventures, a venture capital firm. 

Sources: Vox, Reuters, Forbes

Napster was founded in 1999 by then-teens Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning as a free music-sharing and file-swapping service. But after several high-profile lawsuits, Napster folded and agreed to pay $26 million to publishers.

By 2002, Wired called Napster "the company that launched the most innovative Internet program."

But Napster was ultimately and very publicly brought down by a multitude of widely-covered lawsuits, including one facilitated by metal band Metallica, crushing the hearts of its 57 million users in the process. 

This colossal failure did not keep the two software engineers down for long, however. Parker went on to become the first president of Facebook (though ultimately left after a scandal) and Fanning has gotten into investing. 

Sources: Wired, Business Insider, AdWeek

Jawbone Health, a wearable health and fitness tracker, raised about $950 million. Jawbone spent nearly $1 billion over the course of a decade, but was ultimately unable to produce a wearable that could compete with rival Fitbit.

Jawbone founder and CEO Hosain Rahman filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy for the company in 2017 with plans to sell some of its assets. J.P. Morgan even sued Rahman alleging he defaulted on loans, but the two parties later settled.

Reuters described Jawbone as "the second largest failure among venture-backed companies." 

None of this deterred Rahman's ability to raise millions of dollars, however — he was able to raise over $65 million for a new company this year.

Rahman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Sources: TechCrunch, Forbes, Axios

The meteoric rise of Aereo, the television/video-streaming startup spearheaded by Chet Kanojia, was shot down by the US Supreme Court in 2014 after the court ruled it violated copyright law in 2014, just two years after it was founded. Five months later, Kanojia and Aereo ended up in court yet again — but this time to file for bankruptcy, according to a blog post written by Kanojia himself, in order to "maximize the value of [the] business and assets."

However, Silicon Valley isn't a place where failed entrepreneurs are down for long. In 2016, Kanojia announced his plan to disrupt the broadband industry by providing cheap, fast internet to customers with Boston-based startup Starry.

Business Insider was unable to immediately reach Kanojia for comment. 

Sources: Forbes, Vox, Business Insider, The New York Times

The story of taxi-hailing app Karhoo is one that can be told in five words: It ran out of money. Just 18 months after launch, Karhoo founder and CEO Daniel Ishag stepped down, and days later, the company announced its plan to shut down.

According to TechCrunch, Ishag never declared how much Karhoo was able to raise, but according to Forbes, the company reportedly blew through $52 million in its short life and ultimately filed for bankruptcy.

When Karhoo closed up shop in 2016, it still owed nearly $2 billion in wages to its workers in cities across the world. However, Karhoo found some hope when Nissan/Renault came in to acquire the failed startup. Ishag did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

According to Business Wire, Ishag has since left the transportation and tech realm and entered healthcare with new venture called Baseline Health Technologies, which uses technology to map human health. 

Sources: Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, Forbes, Business Wire

Shyp, an on-demand shipping startup, was frequently compared to Uber for its potential to disrupt an entire industry — but it just wasn’t in the cards. Shyp was able to raise $60 million in funding from firms like Kleiner Perkins, but was ultimately unable to find success. And when Shyp attempted to raise more money, it was turned down.

Shyp's former CEO and cofounder Kevin Gibbon wrote a blog post in March 2018 detailing the plans to shut down Shyp, saying, "Uber had transformed the way consumers thought about transportation. We could do the same, I was told. And I believed it."

Fortune wrote Shyp's failure illustrates an alarming, if not ever-present trend in Silicon Valley, where gullible CEOs like Gibbon believe "that piles of money last forever, and that attracting famous VCs guarantees success."

Just last month, Shyp announced on Twitter its plan to resurrect, but without Gibbon. Gibbon did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Sources: TechCrunch, Forbes, Fortune, The New York Times 

• Lady Gaga's new boyfriend, Michael Polansky, is a tech CEO who works for Napster cofounder and former Facebook President Sean Parker.
• Polansky attended Harvard at the same time as Mark Zuckerberg, and worked for early Facebook investor Peter Thiel.
• Polansky and Gaga reportedly met through Parker and have been together since at least New Year's. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Lady Gaga has a new boyfriend, and he hails from the tech world.

The singer and actor posted a photo on her Instagram Tuesday with Michael Polansky, a tech CEO who works for Napster cofounder and former Facebook President Sean Parker. 

The couple has reportedly been dating since at least New Year's Eve, and attended the Super Bowl together earlier this week. Here's everything we know about the tech exec. 

SEE ALSO: Jeff Bezos is Lauren Sanchez's 'fiancé,' according to a lawsuit filed by her brother

Michael Polansky has worked in tech for nearly a decade. He attended Harvard at the same time as Mark Zuckerberg and, according to his LinkedIn, went on to work at Founders Fund, the venture capital firm founded by Peter Thiel, the first outside investor in Facebook.

Source: LinkedIn

Polansky later served as COO for Airtime, the secretive video-chat platform founded in 2011 by Napster founders Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning.

Source: Forbes, Crunchbase

Polansky appears to have been involved in several of Parker's other ventures since 2010.

According to his LinkedIn page, he's executive director of the Parkers' charity, the Parker Foundation; he's a board member at the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy; he's managing partner at Parker Ventures; and he's CEO of the Parker Group, which serves as the umbrella organization for all of Parker's other endeavors.   

Polansky and Lady Gaga likely met through events and parties that Parker has hosted and were first spotted together on New Year's Eve in Las Vegas. Polansky also attended the Super Bowl in Miami last weekend with Lady Gaga, appearing in photos with her as they left the game.

Source: Page Six

• Sean Parker got his start as a teenage hacker before cofounding the file-sharing service Napster in 1999.
• Parker later joined Facebook in the company's early days, becoming the founding president of the site at 24. 
• These days, the 40-year-old billionaire is funding philanthropic programs in life sciences, global public health, and civic engagement, and is working to solve economic challenges throughout the US. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Sean Parker found massive success at an incredibly young age.

At 19, he cofounded Napster, a file-sharing service that would change how the world consumes music. 

By 24, he was the founding president of Facebook, a startup that was then tiny but would go on to become the biggest social network in the world. 

The 40-year-old, whose net worth is estimated to be about $2.7 billion, hasn't slowed a bit: he donates millions to philanthropic causes and lives an expensive lifestyle. 

Here's how Parker got his start, ended up at Facebook, and became a billionaire. 

Madeline Stone contributed to an earlier version of this story.

SEE ALSO: Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have feuded for over a decade about space travel. Here are 9 rivalries between some of the world's biggest tech CEOs.

Parker was born in Herndon, Virginia, a city right outside of Washington, DC. When he was in second grade, his dad taught him how to program on an Atari 800 computer.

Source: Forbes

By the time Parker was a teenager, he was able to hack into universities and companies. He once hacked into a Fortune 500 company, but his dad confiscated his keyboard before he could log out. The FBI tracked him using his ISP, but since he was a minor, he was only sentenced to community service.

Source: Vanity Fair

Parker cofounded the file-sharing service Napster in 1999, when he was only 19 years old. Napster became one of the fastest-growing businesses of all time, as well as one of the most controversial. Parker and his cofounder, Shawn Fanning, are often credited with revolutionizing the music industry.

Source: Fortune

After several lawsuits from music associations eventually shut down Napster, Parker went on to found a social-networking site called Plaxo. He was ousted two years later. (Plaxo shut down in 2017.)

Source: Business Insider

Parker joined the Facebook team in 2004, when it was just a fledgling college startup. As the social network's founding president, he would play a huge role in the site's early investments, design, and transition into a viable company.

Source: Business Insider

In 2005, Parker was arrested on allegations of cocaine possession. Though official charges were never filed, the incident contributed, in part, to his departure from Facebook. He stepped down a few months later.

Source: Vanity Fair

Still, Parker influenced Facebook even after formally departing. "I don't think Sean ever really left Facebook," early Facebook investor Peter Thiel told Vanity Fair in 2010. "He's continued to be involved in many ways."

Source: Vanity Fair

He's known for his intense focus. A former colleague told Vanity Fair that sometimes the best way to get ahold of Parker is to "war dial" him — call him 10 or 20 times in a row until he realizes someone really wants to talk to him.

Source: Vanity Fair

Parker was portrayed by Justin Timberlake in the 2010 Facebook movie "The Social Network." Parker was upset by his portrayal as a party boy, saying that Timberlake's character was "a morally reprehensible human being" and that the movie was "a complete work of fiction."

Source: The Next Web

Parker was a managing partner at Thiel's Founders Fund from 2006 to 2014. He was an early investor in Spotify, playing a major role in bringing it to the US, and served on the company's board until 2017.

Source: TechCrunch,Variety

In 2012, Parker and Fanning launched Airtime, a video chat service that was similar to Chatroulette. The service initially flopped, and was relaunched as an iOS and Android app in 2016.

Source: Business Insider

Parker has accumulated a massive fortune over the years — Forbes estimates he's worth $2.7 billion.

Source: Forbes

In 2010, he paid $20 million for a West Village townhouse known as the "Bacchus House" for its party-animal past. Since then, he's scooped up two more properties nearby, creating a three-mansion estate totaling an estimated $58.5 million.

Source: New York Magazine,Vanity Fair

The Daily Mail reported that Parker and then-fiancée Alexandra Lenas were permanent residents of New York City's ritzy Plaza Hotel while their new three-story townhouse was being renovated.

Source: Daily Mail

Parker and Lenas were married in the summer of 2013 in a $4.5 million, three-day ceremony in the woods of Big Sur, California.

Parker's extraordinarily lavish wedding made headlines at the time, since he reportedly spent $4.5 million to create a magical world, complete with goats, a pen of bunnies, a pony, a feast laid on top of white fur, and a 9-foot-tall wedding cake.

All 364 guests — including Jack Dorsey, Mark Pincus, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes — were given Tolkien-esque costumes made by "Lord of the Rings" designer Ngila Dickson to wear during the ceremony. Parker and Lenas even asked Ian McKellen, who plays Gandalf in the films, if he would officiate the wedding in character, which he turned down. Renowned celebrity photographer Mark Seliger shot photos of the wedding. 

Parker faced backlash after the event, since he installed temporary structures in an ecologically sensitive area without obtaining the correct permits from the California Coastal Commission. 

"There are crazy people on Facebook typing death threats," Parker told CNET shortly after. "Psychopaths are hunting me."

He later agreed to a $2.5 million settlement with the commission. 

The couple has two children together, Winter Victoria and Zephyr Emerson.

Source: Us Magazine

In 2014, the Parkers added another property to their portfolio: a nine-bedroom Los Angeles mansion called "The Brody House," which they bought from Ellen DeGeneres for $55 million. The historic property borders the Playboy Mansion and is filled with the Parkers' art collection.

Source: Business Insider,Bloomberg

As of 2010, Parker kept a $100,000 Tesla Model S in Los Angeles ...

Source: LA Times

... and an Audi S5 in San Francisco.

Source: LA Times

Parker is also a philanthropist, and a friend described him to Vanity Fair as "one of the most generous people I know." In 2015, he donated $600 million to launch the Parker Foundation, which focuses on funding programs in life sciences, global public health, and civic engagement.

He also pledged $24 million to develop the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy Research at Stanford, donated $4.5 million to support a malaria-elimination program at the University of California San Francisco's Global Health Group, and used $250 million to establish the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.

Source: Business Insider,Forbes

Parker has donated to both Republican and Democratic political candidates, and he cofounded the Economic Innovation Group, a think tank focused on economic challenges throughout the US.

Source: Politico

Parker also pushed for the "Opportunity Zones" provisions in the 2017 Jobs Act, which aims to draw investment to struggling US communities. "It's designed to have them do something with their capital that's productive, rather than just sitting on a huge amount of Facebook stock or something," Parker said at the time.

Source: Recode, The New York Times

SEE ALSO: Mark Zuckerberg spent almost $60 million on 2 waterfront estates in Tahoe last winter. Here's a look at the 10 properties he owns across the US, from a modest Palo Alto home to a Hawaiian plantation.

It's been 10 years since actor Jesse Eisenberg appeared on movie screens as Mark Zuckerberg in a dramatized version of Facebook's founding story in the movie "The Social Network."

The two-hour-long David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin modern classic holds a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and has raked in close to $100 million in US box office earnings. 

"Mr. Fincher and Mr. Sorkin offer up a creation story for the digital age and something of a morality tale, one driven by desire, marked by triumph, tainted by betrayal and inspired by the new gospel: the geek shall inherit the earth,"film critic Manohla Dargis wrote for The New York Times in 2010. 

While the movie has entertained many over the last decade and earned more than a few fans, one person in particular has remained unimpressed — Mark Zuckerberg. 

In a 2014 town hall with Facebook employees that was livestreamed to his page, Zuckerberg said he had "blocked" the movie out and that, in reality, his life was much less glamorous than the events depicted in the movie.

"The Social Network" mainly follows the journey of Zuckerberg, his Harvard best friend Eduardo Saverin, and Napster cofounder Sean Parker as they build the social media giant — first, in Harvard dorms in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and later from a house in Palo Alto, California. It goes from being "The Facebook" to, simply, Facebook. The movie is based on Ben Mezrich's 2009 book "The Accidental Billionaires."

As Alyssa Bereznak recently recounted in a profile for The Ringer, the publisher of the novel told Brad Stone of the New York Times in 2009 that "this is not reportage. It is big, juicy fun." 

The closing frame of the movie, an extreme close-up of Eisenberg's face, said Zuckerberg was the youngest billionaire in the world. In the decade since, he has become the fourth-richest person in the world overall, with an estimated net worth of $99.2 billion.

Bloomberg estimates that Zuckerberg is worth $99.2 billion and has gained $20.9 billion in wealth year to date. 

A decade ago, the closing scene noted that Facebook had 500 million members in 207 countries and was valued at $25 billion.

As of the second quarter of 2020, Facebook has 2.7 billion monthly users, per Statista, and it's currently valued at $759.6 billion. 

This massive growth over the last decade, for both Zuckerberg and the company, didn't come without hiccups and controversies, including instances of misuse of user data and the spread of fake news on the platform.

In 2018, Zuckerberg testified before Congress about news reports that political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had misused user data to target voters ahead of the 2016 US presidential elections. 

The Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook $5 billion in 2019 over user privacy violations.

It was the largest penalty ever imposed on a company for violating consumers' privacy and almost 20 times greater than any previous privacy or data security penalty worldwide, per the FTC, as well as one of the largest penalties ever given out by the US government. The same month, Facebook reported $2.6 billion in net income for its most recent quarter, which would have been even higher without a $2 billion legal expense related to its settlement with the FTC.

Zuckerberg also went back to Harvard and got his degree, albeit an honorary one.

Instagram Embed:
//instagram.com/p/BUhbwuZDGPx/embed
Width: 540px

Mark Zuckerberg is married to Priscilla Chan, a pediatrician, and the two live in Palo Alto, California, with their daughters, Max and August. They also own properties in Lake Tahoe and Hawaii. 

Eduardo Saverin, played by actor Andrew Garfield, is shown in the movie as the company's CFO in its early days before getting ousted by Zuckerberg and Sean Parker in a dramatic confrontation.

In 2010, Saverin wrote an op-ed for CNBC commenting on the film. "The movie was clearly intended to be entertainment and not a fact-based documentary," he said. 

Two years later, he told Brazilian publication Veja: "Facebook wasn't built out of a Harvard dorm window. And I would never throw a laptop at someone like it appears in the movie. Not even at Mark,"Forbes translated.

Saverin, who was born in Brazil, gave up his US citizenship in 2012 ahead of Facebook going public, and currently lives in Singapore, where he is one of the richest people.

Saverin has an estimated net worth of $14.1 billion, per Forbes. He's now a venture capitalist but most of his wealth comes from his stake in Facebook. 

He founded B Capital in 2016, a venture capital firm which invests in late-stage tech firms, according to Forbes.

He is one of the richest people in Singapore and is married to Elaine Andriejanssen, who works in finance. The couple has one child. 

Actor and singer Justin Timberlake played entrepreneur and Napster cofounder Sean Parker — a suave party boy who quickly charms Zuckerberg in the movie and joins the team.

Parker cofounded music-focused file sharing software Napster as a teenager and was Facebook's founding president at 24. 

Parker didn't appreciate his portrayal in the film. Specifically, he didn't enjoy a scene where Garfield, as Saverin, and Timberlake, as Parker, have a heated confrontation.

"I consider Eduardo a friend of mine, and I'm one of the few people at Facebook who still interacts with Eduardo,"he said at an event in 2011."This guy in the movie is a morally reprehensible human being."

As of October 2020, Parker was worth $2.7 billion, per Forbes. Most of his substantial wealth comes from his time at Facebook.

Parker has gone on to become a venture capitalist. He invested in music streaming app Spotify in 2010, his Forbes profile notes. "The Social Network" was released the same year. 

He owns an impressive real estate portfolio with multimillion-dollar properties in Los Angeles and New York, Business Insider's Avery Hartman previously wrote.

Parker is also generous with his fortune and frequently donates money to various causes. In 2015, he spent $600 million to launch The Parker Foundation. Based in San Francisco, it focuses on the life sciences, public health, civic engagement, and the arts. He also founded the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy in 2016 and the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy & Asthma Research in 2014. 

Parker and his wife, Alexandra, have two children and are based in Los Angeles.

He was a supporter of Democratic VP nominee Kamala Harris' previous bids for attorney general, senate, and president. 

Parker is openly critical of Facebook.

In 2017, he called it a "social-validation feedback loop."

"It literally changes your relationship with society, with each other. It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains," Parker said.

Actor Armie Hammer played both Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, with the help of special effects and a body double. The identical twin brothers had a combined net worth of $1.45 billion in June 2019.

The Winklevoss twins sued Zuckerberg in 2004, stating that he stole the idea of Facebook from them; they eventually settled for $65 million.

They have since gone on to build an extensive fortune through trading in cryptocurrency. In 2015, Tyler and Cameron founded Gemini, a cryptocurrency exchange company. Tyler serves as the CEO. In June 2019, Bloomberg reported that the twins had a combined net worth of $1.45 billion after the price of bitcoin surged by 22% in one day. 

According to reports in the Financial Times, the twins have had conversations with Facebook about cryptocurrency.

Hannah Murphy and Philip Stafford reported for the Financial Times in 2019 that "a secretive unit of the social media company" was working on developing a cryptocurrency that Facebook users can use beyond the social platform and had consulted with Gemini and Coinbase. A spokesperson for Facebook told CNBC that the reports were "speculative."

PayPal and Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel, played by Wallace Langham, was one of Facebook's earliest investors and makes a brief appearance in the movie.

John Shinal reported for CNBC that Thiel invested half a million dollars in Facebook in 2004 and owned 2.5% of the company when it went public in 2012. He sold large chunks of his shares at various points in 2012, 2017, and 2020. His most recent sale left him with only about $2 million worth of shares in the company, per Bloomberg.

Thiel, a libertarian, supported President Trump in 2016 and spoke at the 2016 Republican National Convention. 

The Wall Street Journal reported in December 2019 that Thiel was responsible for Facebook's controversial decision to accept political ads and not fact-check them. Thiel, The Journal reported, is said to have asked Zuckerberg "not to bow to public pressure." Twitter, on the other hand, has a far stricter policy for political ads.

Palantir, Thiel's secretive big data and surveillance company, went public on September 30, 2020, opening trading at a $17 billion valuation. 

Divya Narendra, played by Max Minghella, runs SumZero — an online community for professional investors.

Narendra joined the suit against Mark Zuckerberg by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss in 2004 before eventually settling.

Tyler and Cameron invested $1 million in SumZero in 2012. 

According to his LinkedIn profile, after graduating from Harvard with a degree in applied mathematics, Narendra attended Northwestern University, where he got degrees in law and accounting and finance. 

Dustin Moskovitz, who helped launched Facebook and is credited as one of its cofounders, left the company in 2008 and is currently worth $16.3 billion.

Forbes notes that most of Moskovitz's wealth comes from his 2% stake in Facebook. 

Moskovitz cofounded office organizational platform Asana in 2008 and has been the CEO of the company since. Asana was worth $1.5 billion in November 2018 and reported revenue of $142.6 million in the 2020 fiscal year, per Forbes.  

Asana went public on September 30, 2020, and as of October 2 has a market capitalization of $4 billion. 

"It wasn't buzzy like a social network, or conceptually ambitious like rockets or artificial intelligence. But even hotshot space companies and disease-fighting nonprofits need to coordinate staff. Asana, which the avid yoga enthusiasts named for a Sanskrit word meaning alignment, could help them all,"said Forbes' Alex Konrad about the app. Thiel, Parker, and Zuckerberg all invested seed money. 

Chris Hughes, another cofounder, was estimated to be worth $430 million in 2016. He was also previously the publisher and editor in chief of The New Republic and more recently emerged as a vocal critic of Facebook.

In 2012, Hughes took over the majority of The New Republic, per Forbes. He sold the publication in 2016. His time leading the magazine was marked by a decline in traffic and a wave of staff departures. 

Also in 2012, Hughes married Sean Eldridge, the political director of Freedom to Marry, an organization dedicated to winning marriage for same-sex couples; Eldridge unsuccessfully ran for a seat in New York's 19th congressional district in 2014.

More recently, in May 2019, Hughes wrote an op-ed for The New York Times entitled "It's time to break up Facebook."

"Mark is a good, kind person. But I'm angry that his focus on growth led him to sacrifice security and civility for clicks. I'm disappointed in myself and the early Facebook team for not thinking more about how the News Feed algorithm could change our culture, influence elections and empower nationalist leaders. And I'm worried that Mark has surrounded himself with a team that reinforces his beliefs instead of challenging them," he said.