Marc Zuckerberg is described as insecure, and communicatively awkward but with a high IQ. He has a strong preference for strictly logical principles and difficulty sensing social interaction or reading the emotions of others, a typical geek (Beahm, 2013).
Zuckerberg grew up in a prosperous family with two well-educated parents. His father was an entrepreneur, with a dental clinic at home. Zuckerberg has been programming a lot since high school. He developed ZuckNet, a chat network for his father’s clinic and the rest of the family. ZuckNet enabled the dental clinic’s specialists to share patient information with each other. His parents saw the potential and hired a software developer to further develop Zuckerberg’s skills. During university, Zuckerberg launched FaceMash, which he had to take off for privacy reasons (Biography Editors, 2019). Then he started Facebook with a few fellow students in 2004. The site was launched from a student room on the campus of the American university Harvard, where Zuckerberg was studying psychology at the time. Zuckerberg got his inspiration from Steve Jobs, intrigued by how Steve Jobs built Apple (Zuckerberg, 2016).
Minniti & Bygrave (2001) stated that entrepreneurs learn the best by updating previous experience and accumulated knowledge. Zuckerberg comes from a good family, and his dad was already an entrepreneur. His passion for software combined to build something practical, starting with building a chat network for his father’s clinic, was already the first step in his entrepreneurial career. His parents investing in him by hiring an expert could be one of the predictions for success.
Steyaert (2007) discussed a few more entrepreneurial theories such as:
- Complexity and chaos,
- Interpretive and phenomenological,
- Social constructionist,
- Pragmatic and practice-based,
- Relational materialist
Nikoloski (2016) describes Drucker’s theory. Which of these theories do you think fits best with Zuckerberg?
References
Beahm, G. (2013) Billionaire Boy: Mark Zuckerberg in his own words. Hardie Grant Books.
Biography Editors. (2019) Bibliography Zuckerberg. Available at https://www.biography.com/business-figure/mark-zuckerberg#citation [Accessed 10 August 2022].
Minniti, M. and Bygrave, W. (2001) A dynamic model of entrepreneurial learning. Entrepreneurship theory and practice, 25(3), pp.5-16. Available from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/104225870102500301 [Accessed 10 August 2022].
Nikoloski, K. (2016) Society of knowledge and entrepreneurial economy: some views of Drucker. Universitatea” Constantin Brâncuşi” din Târgu-Jiu, (5). Available from: http://eprints.ugd.edu.mk/16667/1/14_KRUME%20NIKOLOSKI.pdf [Accessed 10 August 2022].
Steyaert, C. (2007) ‘Entrepreneuring’as a conceptual attractor? A review of process theories in 20 years of entrepreneurship studies. Entrepreneurship and regional development, 19(6), pp.453-477. Available from: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08985620701671759 [Accessed 10 August 2022].
Zuckerberg, M. (2016) Mark Zuckerberg. AV2 by Weigl.
