Facebook is unanimously recognized as having altered the Internet, communication, and generally everything about our social lives. Every single update and modification is noted nearly instantaneously by its billions of users, and we use the site to organize and engage in our digital lives. But what about the things Facebook has created? Remember if you can, that it took more than just Mark Zuckerberg to get Facebook off the ground, and the site’s co-founders have each gone on to offer their own creations to the worldwide web and beyond.
Eduardo Saverin
Current project: Qwiki
Estimated net worth*: $1.15 – 2.5 B
Facebook stake: Approximately five percent
The infamous co-founder of Facebook was forever immortalized in the Oscar-favorite film The Social Network by Andrew Garfield, but he’s much more than the college kid Mark Zuckerberg allegedly slighted. Saverin recently funded Qwiki, a new take on the search engine.
Qwiki was launched in January and heralded as an intuitive Google alternative. According to the company’s initial presentation at TechCrunch Disrupt earlier this year and mission statement, the goal is to “turn information into an experience. We believe that just because data is stored by machines doesn’t mean it should be presented as a machine-readable list.”
While Saverin is not a founder or direct employee of Qwiki, he’s definitely been responsible for part of its success. He was the largest investor in the site’s $8 million series A financing after reaching out to the team and expressing his interest. And he might not have an office at Qwiki, but he does retain a seat on its board. “I’m particularly excited to support the Qwiki team as their initial product gains momentum. It is always thrilling to be involved in the early stages of disruptive technology,” Saverin said last month.
If his first public post-Facebook move is any indication of Saverin’s future, Silicon Valley could be looking at one of its more notable future VCs. Hell, he’s going to eventually have to do something with the money from the five percent of Facebook he still owns.
Dustin Moskovitz
Current project: Asana
Estimated net work: $1.4 – 3 B
Facebook stake: Approximately six percent
Dustin Moskovitz was originally Facebook’s CTO, and later its VP of engineering. Up until 2008 when he left the company, he was generally head of all things technical as well as Facebook’s mobile strategy team. He was essentially one of the most crucial founding members of the team, and it could be argued Moskowitz’s input in those early days was second only to Zuckerberg’s. As it were, Moskovitz jumped ship with engineering manager Justin Rosenstein to begin Asana.
Asana, which its founders at one point described as “to your work life what Facebook is to your social life,” just recently launched on February 7 after two plus years in development. If that sounds a little too much LinkedIn to you, don’t worry. It’s much more focused on business effectiveness than networking.
It’s only weeks into its infancy, but Asana is looking to step in where Google Wave left off…er, failed. It’s a workplace efficiency tool that wants to fix how people work in groups and make it more effective – that, and its UI looks like Facebook. Don’t fix what isn’t broken, right? Asana is getting some deserved attention: It’s still in beta and there’s a 1,000 plus waiting list for companies wanting to sample it first, and it’s raised over $10 million from firms Benchmark Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.
Andrew McCollum
Current project: JobSpice
Estimated net worth: Unknown
Facebook stake: NA
The guy who created the emblematic filler profile picture hardly thought of himself as a designer. According to McCollum, the team decided he was the best fit for the job by process of elimination.
Apparently he also has an eye for resumes. McCollum is the co-founder of JobSpice, a formatting service that attractively designs your resume for you. Of course, they are built with Web applications in mind, and also use CSS to generate the content so anyone with a little programming know-how can tweak the final product.
It’s a simple site that does one thing and does it well. There are seven free design options and a handful of custom creations ranging from $9-$12. For serious job seekers, there are premium designs as well. The site is ad-free and also serves as a resume host.
JobSpice is nothing that other employment-centric sites don’t offer but it’s easily more user-friendly than many of its competitors.
Chris Hughes
Current project: Jumo
Estimated net work: Approximately $500 M
Facebook stake: NA
The original spokesman for Facebook has also been called “the kid who made Obama president.” Hughes was the coordinator for much of the Obama campaign’s online efforts, as well as managed its social networking site.
His political ambitions don’t stop there. Last year, Hughes founded Jumo, of which he is the executive director. Jumo is a nonprofit, social networking site specifically devoted to…well, as the site says, changing the world. It’s like Facebook meets the Peace Corps: It sets up motivated people with charitable organizations to give people the opportunity and tools they need to make whatever kind of difference they want to.
The site is still in beta, but it’s been commended as an ideal tool to gives some effectiveness to the Facebook generation. It’s the perfect antidote to slacktivism, letting users actually accomplish something while being able to share in its social element a la Facebook.
Adam D’Angelo
Current project: Quora
Estimated net worth: Unknown
Facebook stake: NA
D’Angelo wasn’t part of the original Harvard crew but he was instrumental in Facebook’s beginnings – it was rumored that part of the reason Zuckerberg relocated to Palo Alto was to bring on D’Angelo, who was attending CalTech. He served as CTO for a time, before outgrowing Facebook and departing with Cheever to begin Quora.
His love of data has flourished here, and the site now boasts a remarkably loyal user base and some of the most fervent startup buzz out there. Check out our Quora profile for more on D’Angelo’s up and coming project.
Sean Parker
Current project: Founders Fund
Estimated net worth: $920 M – 3.5 B
Facebook stake: Approximately four percent
Alright, so he’s not an original founder of the site but he did become weaved into the early Facebook fraternity. After notoriously being ousted post-drug charges, Parker retained partial ownership of Facebook but went on to become part of VC firm Founders Fund.
In addition to his Silicon Valley investment career, Parker is also a notable proponent of legalizing marijuana. Last year, he donated $100,000 to Prop 19, which ultimately failed.
[*Note: All estimated net worth projections are based on Facebook’s latest round of fundraising, which obviously only affected those who own part of the company.]
