Sean Parker is most famous for being the inventor of Napster and for helping Mark Zuckerberg out with Facebook. However, there’s a lot of information out there that not a lot of people know about the brilliant tech entrepreneur (aside from the fact that Justin Timberlake played him in The Social Network). Here are five things you didn’t know about Sean Parker.
He was making thousands of dollars even back in high school
Back when he was a junior and senior in high school, Parker convinced the administration to let him count the time he spent in the computer lab coding as his foreign language requirement. This extra time to coding allowed Parker to become so good at what he was doing that he became a part of various different tech projects while in high school that helped him earn more than $80,000 a year and skip college. Oh, also pretty cool: he was reportedly recruited by the CIA.
He’s the reason you can post, look at, and share photos on Facebook
When first working on Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg supposedly did not want to add a photo-sharing feature to the social media site. However, Sean Parker was the one to convince him otherwise. Because of Parker, Facebook is the way we know to be today, with profile pictures and cover photos. Without his convincing of Zuckerberg, Facebook would not hold the title of being the most popular photo-sharing site in the world. It would be an entirely different kind of social media experience.
He’s on the board of Spotify
While it’s common knowledge that Sean Parker created Napster, what I didn’t know and was surprised to find out is just how much he still has his hands in the music industry. After a friend showed him Spotify back in 2009, Parker reportedly emailed the founder of Spotify, Daniel Ek, and the pair continued to email each other back and forth until Parker invested $15 million in the company. Sean Parker now serves on the board of Spotify and was a key player in negotiating the digital music service’s U.S. launch.
He’s the founder of Causes
People know about Sean Parker and Napster. Or about Sean Parker and Facebook. However, do you know about Sean Parker and Causes, the philanthropy service that Parker founded which uses social media to connect different charities with their supporters and donors and then shares this “connection” (for example, “John Smith donated to the Red Cross”) with the user’s network of friends or followers. Causes was initially a Facebook app, but now has grown so much that it has its own website. More importantly, only by 2010, Parker had helped almost 100 million people donate $27 million to different charities.
He and his wife are big Lord of the Rings fans
I think this last fact here might be my favorite one. According to reports, Parker and his wife, singer/songwriter Alexandra Lenas, who had their massive wedding in Big Sur, California (which reportedly cost them $10 million) , gave out Lord of the Rings costumes to each of their guests as gifts for coming their wedding.
Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
