Sean Parker was born on December 3,1979 and is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist, most notable for co-founding the file-sharing computer service Napster, and serving as the first president of the social networking website Facebook.
47 Facts About Sean Parker
2.
Sean Parker is the founder and chairman of the Parker Foundation, which focuses on life sciences, global public health, and civic engagement.
3.
When Sean Parker was seven, his father taught him how to program on an Atari 800.
4.
One night, while hacking into the network of a Fortune 500 company, Sean Parker was unable to log out after his father confiscated his computer keyboard.
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Since Sean Parker was under 18, he was sentenced to community service.
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Sean Parker attended Oakton High School in Fairfax County, Virginia for two years before transferring to Chantilly High School in 1996 for his junior and senior years.
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Sean Parker won the Virginia state computer science fair for developing a web crawler, and was recruited by the CIA.
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Sean Parker considers his time at Napster to be his college education, calling it "Napster University", since he became well-versed in intellectual property law, corporate finance, and entrepreneurship.
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When Sean Parker was 15, he met 14-year-old Shawn Fanning over the Internet, where the pair bonded over topics such as programming, theoretical physics and hacking.
10.
Sean Parker raised the initial $50,000, and they launched Napster in June 1999.
11.
In November 2002, Sean Parker launched Plaxo, an online address book and social networking service that integrated with Microsoft Outlook.
12.
Two years after founding Plaxo, Sean Parker was ousted by the company's financiers, Sequoia Capital and Ram Shriram, in an acrimonious exit that reportedly involved the investors hiring private investigators to follow him.
13.
In 2004, Sean Parker saw a site called "The Facebook" on the computer of his roommate's girlfriend, who was a student at Stanford.
14.
Sean Parker had experience in the social networking industry as an early advisor to Friendster and its founder, Jonathan Abrams, for which he was given a small amount of stock in 2003.
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Sean Parker met with Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin, and a few months later joined the five-month-old company as its president.
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Additionally, Sean Parker is said to have championed Facebook's clean user interface and developed its photo-sharing function.
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Sean Parker was arrested on suspicion of drug possession but was not charged.
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However, after stepping down, Sean Parker continued to remain involved with Facebook's growth, and met regularly with Zuckerberg.
19.
In 2017, during an interview with Axios, Sean Parker expressed concerns about the role of Facebook in society, saying that it "exploit[s] a vulnerability in human psychology" as it creates a "social-validation feedback loop".
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Sean Parker stated that he was "something of a conscientious objector" to using social media.
21.
In 2006, Sean Parker became a managing partner at Founders Fund, a San Francisco-based venture-capital fund founded by Peter Thiel.
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Sean Parker was given carte blanche by Thiel when finding investments.
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In 2014, Sean Parker stepped down from his role at Founders Fund to focus on projects.
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Sean Parker has hosted The TechFellow Awards, a partnership between TechCrunch and Founders Fund that annually gives 20 entrepreneurs $100,000 each to invest in startups.
25.
In 2009, a friend showed him Spotify, a Swedish music-streaming service, and Sean Parker sent an email to Spotify's founder Daniel Ek.
26.
Sean Parker, who served on Spotify's board until 2017, negotiated with Warner and Universal on Spotify's behalf, and in July 2011, Spotify announced its US launch.
27.
At Facebook's f8 conference that year, Sean Parker announced a partnership between Facebook and Spotify, which allowed users to share their Spotify playlists on their Facebook profiles.
28.
Since 2005, Sean Parker has been an active donor to cancer research, global public health and civic engagement.
29.
Sean Parker is an active supporter of groups including Code for America, Stand Up To Cancer, the Cancer Research Institute, Malaria No More, the Clinton Foundation, ONE, and the "charity: water" campaign.
30.
In 2007, Sean Parker founded Causes, originally one of the earliest Facebook applications, as a philanthropic service that uses social media to connect charities with their supporters and potential donors and then communicates that connection to the user's network of friends.
31.
In June 2015, Sean Parker announced a $600 million contribution to launch the Sean Parker Foundation, which focuses on three areas - life sciences, global public health, and civic engagement.
32.
Sean Parker donated $250 million to create the Sean Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, in April 2016.
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In February 2015, Sean Parker was ranked number five on the Chronicle of Philanthropy's 2014 Philanthropy 50 list.
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Sean Parker has made substantial donations to both sides of US party politics; his allegedly "nonpartisan" approach favors contributions to "elected officials who have shown themselves willing to work across the aisle".
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Sean Parker favored Democrats and progressive causes such as campaign finance reform and gun control; he has spoken out in favor of higher taxes, particularly for the "wealthy and super wealthy", and in favor of higher capital-gains taxes.
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Sean Parker has supported middle-of-the-road Republican candidates and super PACs, favoring "economically moderate" conservatives and candidates with a demonstrated interest in compromise and deal-making.
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Sean Parker has supported cannabis law reform and in 2010, following the example of donations by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz donated $100,000 to the 2010 California Proposition 19 campaign to legalize marijuana in that state and $400,000 to the Democratic Party backed 2016 California Proposition 63 campaign to require background checks for all ammunition purchases.
38.
Sean Parker will donate $250 million to launch a new institute aimed at developing more effective cancer treatments by fostering collaboration among leading researchers in the field.
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Sean Parker was a driving force behind the Opportunity Zones provision in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which are designed to incentivize investments in struggling American communities.
40.
In 2015, the Economic Innovation Group, which Sean Parker co-founded, published a whitepaper on the idea of opportunity zones, and in 2017, a bill passing them into law was shepherded by a bi-partisan coalition involving Senator Cory Booker and Senator Tim Scott.
41.
Sean Parker was portrayed by Justin Timberlake in the 2010 film The Social Network.
42.
Former Facebook growth chief Chamath Palihapitiya noted that Sean Parker is "really the exact opposite of his portrayal in the film".
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Additionally, Sean Parker took issue with the movie's version of Eduardo Saverin's exit from Facebook as it paralleled his own exit from Plaxo.
44.
In 2011, Sean Parker was a guest on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, featured on the cover of the Forbes 400 issue, and was profiled in Vanity Fair.
45.
In 2011, Sean Parker became engaged to Alexandra Lenas, a singer-songwriter, and they were married in 2013.
46.
The wedding purportedly cost $10 million to stage, although Sean Parker describes this estimate as "WAY off base".
47.
The wedding was the subject of an article in The Atlantic alleging environmental damage to the redwood forest, to which Sean Parker responded by highlighting his cooperation with the Save the Redwoods League throughout.