A Teenage Mark Zuckerberg Turned Down an Provide From His Dad. It is Why Fb Exists At this time

Prior to Mark Zuckerbergleft for college in 2002, his father offered him a choice: he could either have a Harvard degree or his father would buy him a McDonald’s franchise to run it, according to a report on CNBC.com. The franchise would likely have provided stable income for many years, or perhaps a lifetime. Today, according to CNBC.com, franchisees typically make $ 90,000 a year or more. [Disclosure: I’m a CNBC.com contributor.]

Each of the four Zuckerberg children received the same offer from their father, who was a dentist, Mark’s sister Randi Zuckerberg recalled in a CNBC interview. In fact, it was a decision to either get an education and go their own way in the world, or go an easier path and prepare for life.

If anyone had made me this offer before I went to college, I have to admit, I probably would have accepted. Zuckerberg, who had already demonstrated his programming skills and developed video games for his friends and an early version of chat software for his father’s practice, could have spent the rest of his life pursuing passion projects without worrying about whether there is a market for them. That sounds very appealing to me. But he chose Harvard instead.

You know the rest of the story. Zuckerberg started Facebook in his dormitory and left college for his sophomore year to work on his new company. Her parents’ reaction was, “OK, you should probably have taken the McDonald’s franchise money if you wanted a business,” recalled Randi Zuckerberg. Even so, they always supported whatever their children wanted to do. It turned out, of course, that Zuckerberg had made the right decision. His presence at Harvard made a major contribution to Facebook’s early success, partly because he was able to interact with fellow students (some of whom, of course, sued him for stealing these ideas). The fact that Facebook membership was initially limited to Harvard students and then to students in a handful of elite colleges like Stanford, Yale and Princeton made the new social network extremely desirable.

The Warren Buffett Approach.

Though he probably didn’t know, Zuckerberg followed the advice Warren Buffett often gives to young people. “Investing in yourself is the best you can do – anything that improves your own talents,” he said. So he would surely have agreed to Zuckerbeg’s decision to study on lifelong financial security, and later his decision to bank on himself, by leaving Harvard to work on Facebook. (The university gave him an honorary degree when he gave an opening speech in 2017.) Two years later, when Yahoo called and tried to buy Facebook, he again bet on himself and offered more than $ 1 billion in what has been a fine payday would be 22 years old. People familiar with the offer say he never seriously considered it.

What would you have done if someone offered you a choice between a college education and a fast food franchise that could prepare you for life? Would you have chosen financial security or would you have relied on your own talents? Which choice would you have made, would it have been the right one?

The opinions expressed by Inc.com columnists here are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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