Judy L. Hasday - Mark Zuckerberg: Co-Founder and CEO of Facebook

A copy of Time magazine featuring Mark Zuckerberg as "Person of the Year" on the cover. December 21, 2010.

Source: Newscom: Wu Kaixiang Xinhua News Agency

It was also a period of time within those eight short years that Mark faced a major lawsuit that questioned originator of the idea of the social media service, and saw the release of a somewhat unflattering motion picture The Social Network, which deals with the founding of Facebook and the controversy over who came up with the concept in the first place.

As Facebook exploded in user numbers so came the urgency to have the technology and equipment to handle the user traffic. Mark successfully negotiated the necessary capital needed by signing agreements with a few strategic investors. In 2008 Forbes, a well-respected business and finance magazine, named Mark as the youngest self-made billionaire (age twenty-three) on the planet. He joined others on Forbes Top Ten List that included investor guru Warren Buffet, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and Russian aluminum producer Oleg Deripaska.

Aside from Mark's successes and challenges as an entrepreneur, there is also the private, personal life story. Despite the public persona, the fame, socializing with celebrities and politicians including the President of the United States, he had quietly and privately carried on in a romantic relationship that began even before the launch of Facebook. It has been a relationship that has endured several years, especially during the time when Mark, a workaholic by nature, was occupied with building a company that has significant daily impact around the world. It took a special person to navigate Mark's world with him. She is Priscilla Chan, a native of Braintree, Massachusetts who was majoring in biology at Harvard when she met Mark.

The two met in the same way many young people do, at a college campus party. Mark, who was also attending Harvard, was a member of the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi. During one Friday night fraternity party in November, 2003, the two happened to be standing in waiting line to use the restroom and struck up a conversation. "He was this nerdy guy who was just a little bit out there," Chan told the New Yorker writer Jose Antonio Vargas. "I remember he had these beer glasses that said 'pound include beer dot H.' It's a tag for C++. It's like college humor but with a nerdy, computer-science appeal." Mark and Priscilla hit it off and began dating.

When Mark launched Facebook, Priscilla was one of the first to join (February 5, 2005). When Mark decided to drop out of Harvard before graduating to work full time on his social network site, he decided to move to Palo Alto, California, nicknamed "Silicon Valley," because that's where high-tech companies like Yahoo, ebay, Google, Intel, Twitter, Apple Systems, and San Disk and thousands of start-up companies are headquartered. Silicon Valley also accounts for more than one-third of all venture capital (private funds or financing investments to companies that have high potential for growth) in the United States. Mark believed that was the best place to be to cultivate the growth of Facebook.

Mark and Priscilla's relationship had grown deeper by the time he left for California. However, the long distance between them was a difficult hurdle and Mark began to see other women while Priscilla finished her undergraduate studies at Harvard. They did keep in touch and once Priscilla graduated, she moved out to San Jose, California to be closer to Mark. She took a job teaching science to fourth- and fifth-graders at the Harker School, a private school in San Jose. Rekindling their romance came with some rules negotiated by Priscilla, which included the possibility of marriage down the road. According to New York Times writers Laura M. Holson and Nick Bilton:

The couple agreed that they would not live together, but that Mr. Zuckerberg would spend at least 100 minutes of private time with Ms. Chan a week, as well as take her on at least one date, according to "The Facebook Effect" [author David Kirkpatrick.] Indeed, Mr. Kirkpatrick reported that Mr. Zuckerberg once left a News Corp. corporate retreat, where he was a guest, explaining to the company's chief executive, Rupert Murdoch, that he was taking Ms. Chan to a movie. The couple also agreed to vacation for two weeks yearly overseas.

Once Priscilla was accepted to the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, she moved into an apartment not far from Golden Gate Park, about a forty-five minute drive to Mark's house. The agreement worked. They spent most of their weekends together taking relaxing strolls in the park, rowing, playing Bocce Ball, or the strategic board game, the Settlers of Catan. Sundays were reserved for preparing or dining out some type of Asian cuisine. Three overseas trips included vacations to Dubai, Mumbai, and China.