Chamath Palihapitiya, 34, a highly-successful Bay Area based entrepreneur and an original member of the Facebook management team, has been a prominent figure in the venture capital business and a multitude of successful online ventures during their formative stages. He is the Founder and current Managing Partner of The Social+Capital Partnership, a multi-hundred million dollar venture capital fund, which he pioneered earlier this year. The Social+Capital Partnership is aligned with a number of the world's most influential entrepreneurs in business, finance and technology and focuses on investing in highly disruptive ideas in healthcare, education, financial services and the internet.
Prior to beginning his latest endeavor with The Social+Capital Partnership, Palihapitiya was the longest tenured original member of Facebook's Senior Management team. He served in various roles during his four-year stint at Facebook, including Vice President of User Growth, Mobile and International at the conclusion of his tenure in June. A resident of Palo Alto, Palihapitiya joined Facebook in 2007 and was a major force in the launch and incredible growth of the social media website, overseeing monetization products, Facebook Platform, managing the team responsible for its mobile products and, ultimately, helping increase the user base to more than 750 million individuals worldwide.
Palihapitiya also held senior management positions at AOL (Vice President and GM of AIM and ICQ), Mayfield Fund (a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley), Winamp and Spinner.com (two internet music pioneers) prior to joining Facebook. He attended the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, where he graduated First Class Honors in Electrical Engineering.
Chamath’s firm has been described as a strategically magnificent one due to its primary focus on financial services, healthcare and education and providing software as a service. He has invested in a number of online ventures and small companies. Personally, he prefers quality to wealth, Chamath feels that the mentality and aim of people today is to establish star-ups with the sole purpose of earning big bucks and this attitude has ruined the industry and the quality of services.
