Sean Parker
Sean Parker
Sean Parkeris an American entrepreneur and philanthropist who cofounded the file-sharing computer service Napster and served as the first president of the social networking website Facebook. He also cofounded Plaxo, Causes, Airtime, and Brigade, an online platform for civic engagement. He is the founder and chairman of the Parker Foundation, which focuses on life sciences, global public health, and civic engagement. As of November 2015, Parker's net worth was estimated to be US$2.5 billion...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth3 December 1979
CityHerndon, VA
CountryUnited States of America
Gray hats are the ones who think they're doing good, but they're not. You learn that when the FBI shows up on your doorstep.
Facebook is such a basic utility. It's something that is such a part of peoples' lives, I think it's hard to imagine it going away.
I've been doing a hybrid of investing and entrepreneurship, which I think initially I wasn't set out to do. But I realized it fit my personality.
I think Facebook's biggest problem is the glut of information that Facebook's power users are overwhelmed with.
It’s not cool. I think being a wealthy member of the establishment is the antithesis of cool. Being a countercultural revolutionary is cool. So to the extent that you’ve made a billion dollars, you’ve probably become uncool.
There is no simple answer to what I think.
You actually don't want people thinking your product is cool, because then you're a fad.
I think the perception of wealth and power is that things just become easier and easier when in reality as you raise the stakes things become more stressful.
You just keep pushing yourself harder and harder to achieve more and more - I don't think it's ever quite as glamorous as it appears on the outside.
If there's some triumphant end of the story, I guess in a roundabout way I've gotten what I wanted, which is the ability to do interesting things and the wealth to be free.
It's never the end game. Facebook is now a platform upon which all kinds of applications are being built it's definitely not it.
Start-up teams are always in flux, so, like all start-ups, we're always talking to candidates for various key roles.
There came a time when these two incompatible notions of who I was, well, something had to give. Either that 'something' is where you acquiesce to the world around you and you conform, or you sort of defiantly break whatever remaining bonds connect you to that world and create for yourself a different set of values.
I had a desire to prove to myself that I was actually in control - that I wasn't a puppet.