Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook was cash positive for the first time and hit 300 million users.
Zuckerberg had been hard at work on Facebook for five years by the time he turned 25. In that year — 2009 — the company turned cash positive for the first time and hit 300 million users. He was excited at the time, but said it was just the start, writing on Facebook that “the way we think about this is that we’re just getting started on our goal of connecting everyone.”
The next year, he was named Person of the Year by Time magazine.
Oracle founder Larry Ellison was working odd jobs as a programmer.
After moving to Berkeley, California, at 22, the college dropout turned billionaire Oracle founder used what he picked up in college and taught himself about computer programming. He found odd technical jobs at places like Fireman’s Fund, Wells Fargo, and AMPEX until finally landing at Amdahl Corp., where he worked on the first IBM-compatible mainframe system.
Businesswoman and TV personality Martha Stewart was a stockbroker for the firm of Monness, Williams, and Sidel, the original Oppenheimer & Co.
Before her name was known in every American household, Stewart worked on Wall Street for five years as a stockbroker. Before that, she was a model, booking clients from Unilever to Chanel.
“There were very few women at the time on Wall Street … and people talked about this glass ceiling, which I never even thought about,” Said Stewart, “I never considered myself unequal, and I think I got a very good education being a stockbroker.”
In 1972, Stewart left Wall Street to be a stay-at-home mom. A year later, she started a catering business.