Eduardo Saverin Biography

Eduardo Luiz Saverin was born on March 19, 1982, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, into a Jewish family. He has two siblings. His father Robert Saverin was a successful industrialist who worked in clothing, shipping, and real estate. Eduardo’s mother Sandra was a psychologist.

Eduardo was exposed to entrepreneurship early in his life. While his father was a successful businessman, his Romanian-born grandfather Eugenio Saverin founded the popular kids wear chain of retail stores ‘Tip Top.’

During his early childhood, his family moved to Rio de Janeiro and then finally settled in Miami, Florida, USA in 1993.

Eduardo completed his primary education at ‘Gulliver Preparatory School,’ Miami. Later, he pursued his undergraduate degree in one of the ‘Ivy League Colleges’ in Harvard. He was a member of the ‘Phoenix S. K. Club’ and presided over ‘Harvard Investment Association.’

He is also an active member of the ‘Alpha Epsilon Pi Fraternity,’ which was established to develop leadership qualities within the Jewish community.

It is believed that he made around $300,000 when he was an undergrad due to the lax in Brazil’s insider trading regulations.

He graduated from ‘Harvard University’ with a bachelor’s degree in economics in the year 2006.

His life changed when he met Mark Zuckerberg at ‘Harvard’ and decided to help him with ‘facebook.com.’

Eduardo met Mark in his junior year at ‘Harvard.’ Mark wanted to develop a social networking site-cum-online directory for ‘Harvard’ students, but needed financial support to develop it.

Realizing that Mark’s brilliant idea would be worth investing in, Eduardo agreed to support him. Mark never saw facebook.com as a way to make money. In fact, Mark’s only intention was to create an innovative website that could connect people. However, his approach was unknown to Eduardo who wanted to make money through this website. Thus, he decided to fund Mark’s business and joined him as a co-founder, funding all his servers and other necessities.

After successfully launching Facebook at ‘Harvard,’ the founders decided to expand it beyond its limitations. Thus, they decided to move to Palo Alto, California. However, Saverin went to New York to undertake an internship at ‘Lehman Brothers’ in 2004.

Saverin was supposed to work on building funds, setting up company, and making a business model during the course of his internship. He then became Facebook’s first chief finance officer.

Saverin had run unauthorized ads on Facebook without the knowledge of Mark Zuckerberg. He even developed ‘Joboozle,’ which was a job board site.

This led to a severe conflict between Zuckerberg and Saverin. Subsequently, when Saverin failed to provide Facebook with the required funding, Mark had to find other investors.

Sean Parker took Eduardo Saverin’s place in finding funds for Facebook. Peter Thiel, another investor who came in contact with Mark, encouraged Mark to severe his ties with Eduardo.

He was also taken off the co-founders list of Facebook. However, when Eduardo approached the media, Facebook restored Eduardo’s name in the co-founders’ list alongside Mark, Dustin Moskovitz, and two others. An out of court agreement between Eduardo and Facebook prevented Eduardo from spilling the beans about Facebook to the media.

In 2010, Eduardo and Aldo Alvarez, a Mexican reporter, co-founded ‘Aporta.’ It is an online portal for charity.

In 2016, his fund closed initial deals worth more than $140 million in Asia, including $30 million in the startup ‘Ninja Van.’

He co-founded Facebook along with Mark Zuckerberg and three others. He was the financial head and chief finance officer of Facebook.

He invested a lot in the Singapore based online retailer ‘Redmart.’

He made bold investments in ‘Uber,’ ‘Lyft,’ and other car rental services like ‘Flightcar’ and ‘Silvercar.’

He was named one of the most brilliant business minds by ‘Forbes.’

Eduardo Saverin is married to a Chinese Indonesian woman named Elaine Andriejanssen. She comes from a business oriented family which owns several businesses in Massachusetts. They got engaged on 27 March 2014, and tied the knot on June 25, 2015, at the French Riviera.

Eduardo lives in his multi-million dollar condo in Singapore. He is always connected with the world, thanks to his iPhone, iPad, and three MacBooks.

He has a thing for weather forecast. One of his three Macs keeps running weather softwares. His interest in weather forecast deepened after the 1992 Hurricane Andrew which hit South Florida.

Eduardo is a shy and strong-willed man. His brilliant business mind is what makes him special.

He renounced his US citizenship in 2011. It is believed that he did so to evade capital gains taxes of around $700 million. However, he claims that he always wanted to stay in Singapore and that he can pay only as much taxes to the US government as much as he owes to them.

Even after the controversial removal of Eduardo from Facebook, he still believes in Mark and admires him. He has stated that Mark has always been a visionary and that he stayed committed to Facebook more than anybody else.

Eduardo likes to keep a low profile on social networking sites.

When asked about the movie ‘The Social Network,’ he stated that it is a Hollywood fantasy and that the movie is exaggerated.

Eduardo’s net worth as of 2020 is around $14.7 billion.

He is a venture capitalist and provides huge capitals to potential startups.

He has liquidated his Facebook shares to investors like ‘Digital Sky Technologies’ and ‘SharesPost.’

He was portrayed by Andrew Garfield in the 2010 movie ‘The Social Network.’ Andrew’s role earned him a ‘BAFTA’ and ‘Golden Globe’ nomination.

He is the co-founder of ‘B Capital Group.’

He caught media’s attention as a 13-year-old when he beat a chess grandmaster in a match in Orlando.