Eduardo Saverin

Eduardo Saverin

The internet entrepreneur Eduardo Saverin is one of the co-founders of Facebook and with a net worth of $2 billion he ranks among the world’s 25 richest tech tycoons.

Eduardo Saverin was born on 13th March 1982 in São Paulo, Brazil to a rich family. They moved to the U.S. in 1993 and settled in Miami, Florida. Here Saverin went to Gulliver Preparatory School and later on attended Harvard University where he was part of the many prestigious clubs such as Phoenix S. K Club, the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity and Harvard Investment Association that he also presided. In 2006 he graduated magna cum laude with a degree in economics. While at Harvard he also invested $300,000 in the oil industry. His investing intelligence was there right from the beginning.

At Harvard he met Mark Zuckerburg who was a sophomore at that time. Together they discussed the need for a social networking site and launched Facebook in 2004. Saverin assumed the role of business manager and chief financial officer of Facebook. As the website expanded, conflicts rose between the two founders resulting in Saverin’s reduced involvement in the website’s affairs and shares that were diluted from 34.4% to 0.03%. He filed a lawsuit against Facebook that was resolved out of court and he was granted the title of Facebook co-founder. After the settlement he also signed a non-disclosure contract. Saverin finally opened up to Forbes magazine saying that there are no hard feelings between him and Zuckerburg and he has nothing but good things to say about him. Since 2010 Saverin has liquidated $250 million of Facebook shares to investors like Digital Sky Technologies and Sharespost.

His achievements as an investor have contributed towards his current wealth level. He gave up his U.S citizenship in 2011. This was definitely a smart move by Saverin to avoid paying the capital gains taxes. Saverin rejects this idea by saying ‘My decision to expatriate was based solely on my interest in working and living in Singapore, where I have been since 2009’. However this move did not hurdle him in investing in American companies. He has also invested in technology startups like Crowdmob, an app promoter website, ShopSavvy, Qwiki and Jumio. It was his investment in Facebook that has turned him into a billionaire and because his other investments are quite recent, it is still too early to confirm whether they will prove to be as useful. He also told Forbes that lately he has been investing a lot and that apart from the U.S he also wants to invest in Brazil because that’s where he is from but it has to be technology related.

He has been characterized in the 2010 movie ‘The Social Network’ that tells the story of the two Facebook Founders. However Saverin denies that there is any truth to the tale and rejects the picture as being merely a ‘Hollywood fantasy’. He resides in Singapore since 2009 where he is living a lavish lifestyle with billions of dollars to back him up.