Sean Parker Research Paper

“It hasn’t been some kind of fairy tale for me. All of my success has been born of failure. Your childhood dreams are always tales of glory; reality is a lot messier and more dramatic.”(Parker, 2010) This quote I think epitomises the man Sean Parker. He has had a life of highs and many lows in his career of a technological entrepreneur, and these failures have made him the success he is today.

The man born in Herndon, Virginia in December 1979 is by no means finished as an entrepreneur. The 34 year old is still always looking to spot the next big thing before anyone else sees it’s potential. Even from a young age he could spot this. His early life was complicated with school problems and ill health with asthma sometimes forcing him to go to

He met another young hacker by the name of Shawn Fanning and the two really had much in common. They had an early idea to help companies stop hackers like themselves but it proved unsuccessful. But this formed a really strong friendship. Parker on completing school opted not to go to college and instead follow his friend to San Francisco to invest all his time in the idea that was Napster. Napster was a music file sharing network which allowed people to download music from other people’s computers who were sharing them. “The service, which launched on June 1, 1999, soon spread like a virus, infecting every music nut with a computer and a dial-up connection. By March of 2000, Napster had 20 million users. Several months later, it was more than three times that.” (Suskind,

He was without money and having to sleep on friends couches for two week spells. “I lived on couches for something like six months,” Parker says. “I had no home. I was totally broke. I would stay at a friend’s house for two weeks, then move because I didn’t want to become this permanent mooch.”(Parker, 2010). Parker got a break when he got funding for him under the company name Plaxo. It was a way to keep your address book up to date, but again his rogue nature was his downfall with arguments with the board and its investors forcing him out. But it was around this time he discovered Facebook. As soon as he saw it he knew it had potential and immediately sent out for a meeting with its creator Mark Zuckerberg. The two bonded fairly quickly and Parker quickly joined the board acting as an advisor to Zuckerberg as he was the oldest member on his team and had experience of Silicon Valley where all the top technology firms are based in San Francisco. A couple of years down the line though Facebook had