Mark Zuckerberg And Steve Jobs Have One Weird Trait In Common

Most successful founders of tech companies spread their wealth and invest in startups as angel investors.

But you rarely see stories about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg doing so.

In fact, you don't see stories, period.

That's because he simply chooses not to invest in startups, we have heard from several people close to him.

Zuckerberg is running a site that serves nearly one billion people a month—about half of whom show up every day. This requires an enormous amount of focus.

You know whose name also never comes up in stories about angel investors?

Steve Jobs. Like Zuckerberg, Jobs was known for his singular focus on Apple—especially in the period after he sold Pixar to Disney, which happens to be when Apple began its iPhone-powered rise to the top.

Here's the simple math on why it's not in Zuckerberg's interest to play angel investor on the side.

He could easily invest $1 million in a startup, which might—might—sell for $100 million.

In return, Zuckerberg would devote some of his time and energy to helping that startup.

But for Zuckerberg, who is running a company that is already worth tens of billions of dollars, $100 million is a rounding error.

Instead, Zuckerberg is constantly heads down solving Facebook's problems—as any good CEO is.

From businessinsider.com

WOW! Facebook Is Now Worth More Than These 10 Huge Companies

Facebook is finally going public.

It'll be worth about $104 billion when it debuts at $38 a share, and there's guaranteed to be a pop once it starts trading.

That means that Facebook — an eight year old company — is worth more than some of the largest, most successful companies in the world that have been around for decades.

Even some of the top tech companies that have been on top of Silicon Valley for decades have fallen behind the Web 2.0 wunderkind.

Here are some of the most interesting ones:

• Hewlett-Packard, one of the largest PC makers in the world, is smaller than Facebook. It's worth $44 billion — less than half of Facebook's titanic $105 billion valuation. HP also just laid off about 25,000 employees. 

• Facebook is four times larger than Dell, another super-giant PC and server maker. Dell has a market cap of about $26 billion. It's still trying to find its way in the post-PC era.

• It's bigger than Salesforce.com, a company that is more or less partially responsible for the cloud computing revolution. Salesforce is only worth around $20 billion — and its interns end up as high-ranking officials from time to time.

• Starbucks, the coffee chain that literally appears twice on every corner. Starbucks is worth about $40 billion — less than half of Facebook. We hear plenty of horror stories about Starbucks.

• The New York Times, one of the most prestigious content publishers in the world, is a blip compared to Facebook. Sharing is apparently worth 105 times more than some of the best content available on the Internet. The New York Times is worth slightly less than $1 billion. A bunch of New York Times staffers are actually planning to quit.

• Target, a huge big-box retailer similar to a higher-end version of Walmart, is worth less than half of Facebook. Target has a market cap of about $37 billion — well short of Facebook's expected valuation. Target actually raised its guidance this week, raising its value.

• Facebook barely edges out Amazon, the largest online retailer in the world. Amazon is worth about $100 billion, while Facebook is worth just a smidge more. Amazon's Kindle has been a bit of a bust so far.

• Disney is worth about four-fifths of what Facebook is worth. The owner of ESPN and a ton of other properties is worth about $80 billion. Disney could soon be replaced by Rovio as one of the biggest media properties in the world.

• Facebook is worth twice as much as eBay. eBay has a market cap of about $50 billion.

• Facebook is worth about 10 Nokias put together. Nokia, one of the largest phone manufacturers in the world (not smartphone), is worth about $10 billion. The Nokia Lumia 900 is actually pretty nice, though.

Not much of a surprise, though. Facebook is making a world-changing piece of technology, and it also happens to pay its engineers better than most other companies in Silicon Valley — so it attracts the best talent.

But Facebook still isn't bigger than the typical tech giants: Google, Microsoft and Apple. Microsoft is worth about $250 billion, while Google is worth $204 billion and Apple is worth about $500 billion.

From businessinsider.com