Happy birthday, Mark Zuckerberg. How tech has changed in 28 years.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg turned 28 on Monday. He was born the same year as Apple's Macintosh computers.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg smiles in this office in Palo Alto, Calif. Zuckerberg turns 28 on Monday, May 14, 2012. He's considerably younger than the average FORTUNE 500 CEO, of course. But while some investors worry that Zuckerberg is too young to lead Facebook as a public company, experts point out that Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Michael Dell were in their 20s when their companies had IPOs.
Paul Sakuma/AP/FILE
NEW YORK
He famously wears a hoodie, jeans and sneakers, and he was born the year Apple introduced the Macintosh. But Mark Zuckerberg is no boy-CEO.
Facebook's chief executive turned 28 on Monday, setting in motion the social network's biggest week ever. The company is expected to start selling stock to the public for the first time and begin trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market on Friday. The IPO could value Facebook at nearly $100 billion, making it worth more than such iconic companies as Disney, Ford and Kraft Foods.
At 28, Zuckerberg is exactly half the age of the average S&P 500 CEO, according to executive search firm Spencer Stuart. With eight years on the job, he's logged more time as leader than the average CEO, whose tenure is a little more than seven years, according to Spencer Stuart.
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Even so, the pressures of running a public company will undoubtedly take some getting used to. Once Facebook begins selling stock, Zuckerberg will be expected to please a host of new stakeholders, including Wall Street investment firms, hedge funds and pension funds who will pressure him to keep the company growing.
Young as he may seem — especially in that hooded sweatshirt — Zuckerberg will be about the same age as Michael Dell and older than Steve Jobs when those two took their companies, Dell Inc. and Apple Inc., public. In his years as Facebook's CEO he's met world leaders, rode a bull in Vietnam while on vacation, started learning Mandarin Chinese and as a personal challenge, wore a tie for the better part of a year.
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