Sean Parker

Sean Parker, born 1979 is an American Internet technology businessman and entrepreneur. He co-founded Napster, Plaxo and Causes, and was a part of Facebook.

His father began teaching him programming when he was 7 years old. At 16, he was sentenced to community service for hacking.

Facebook and others

In 2004 Parker began informally advising the creators of Facebook and became its first president, receiving 7% of Facebook's stock when the company incorporated later that year. He was forced to leave Facebook in 2005 after being arrested on suspicion of cocaine possession. While on a kite boarding trip to North Carolina, Parker had signed the rental agreement on a beach-front vacation house where drugs were subsequently discovered by police who had come to the house with a search warrant following three nights of parties at the house. Prosecutors did not charge him due to lack of evidence. Facebook's biggest investor, Jim Breyer of Accel Partners, pushed for the ouster.

In 2006 Parker joined the Founders Fund, a venture capital fund founded by Facebook investor Peter Thiel and based in San Francisco, as a managing partner.

Education, Napster, and others

Parker attended Oakton High School in Fairfax County, Virginia for two years, before transferring to Chantilly High School in 1996 for his junior and senior years. He graduated in 1998. In 1999, he co-founded Napster, a free file-sharing service for music that drew the ire of recording labels, the Recording Industry Association of America, and Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich. Lawsuits by various industry associations eventually shut down the service.

In November 2002, Parker subsequently launched Plaxo, an online address book and social networking service that integrated with Microsoft Outlook. He left Plaxo following unspecified disputes with two shareholders, Sequoia Capital and Ram Shriram.

In popular culture

Parker's time with Facebook is depicted in the 2010 film The Social Network, directed by David Fincher. He is portrayed by Justin Timberlake. Parker described the movie as "a complete work of fiction" and said that he wished his life "was that cool".

In 2010 Parker pledged $100,000 to the campaign to legalize marijuana in California, an effort spearheaded by Richard Lee, who was the guiding force behind California's Proposition 19. He was profiled in Vanity Fair in October 2010.