It didn’t come out so clearly in the movie The Social Network, but it does come through strong and clear in David Kirkpatrick’s book The Facebook Effect, that Mark Zuckerberg is a man on a mission. And that mission is not to make a zillion dollars. He’s already done that and has repeatedly refused to cash in his chips and walk away with enough money to make him the richest kid on the block.
In 2004, Zuckerberg was 20, Facebook was four months old, and a financier offered to buy the company for $10 million.
In 2006, Zuckerberg pretty much walked away from a deal for Facebook worth close to $800 million. His sister remembers him saying at that time, “This is a lot of money. This could be really life-changing for a lot of people who work for me. But we have so much more opportunity to change the world than this. I don’t think I’d be doing right by anyone to take this money.”