Dustin Moskovitz

Dustin Aaron Moskovitz[3] (/ˈmɒskəvɪts/; born May 22, 1984) is an American Internet entrepreneur who co-founded Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum and Chris Hughes.[4] In 2008, he left Facebook to co-found Asana[5] with Justin Rosenstein. In March 2011, Forbes reported Moskovitz to be the youngest self-made billionaire in history, on the basis of his 2.34% share in Facebook.[6]

Dustin Moskovitz
Born (1984-05-22) May 22, 1984[1]
Gainesville, Florida, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
CitizenshipUnited States
Alma materHarvard University
Known forCo-founder of Facebook (2004); Co-founder of Asana (2008); Co-founder of Good Ventures (2011); World's youngest self-made billionaire (2012)
Net worth US$12 billion (March 2020)[2]
Spouse(s)Cari Tuna Moskovitz

Background and education

Moskovitz was born in Gainesville, Florida and grew up in Ocala, Florida. He is eight days younger than Zuckerberg.[7] Moskovitz is Jewish.[8] He attended Vanguard High School, graduating from the IB Diploma Program. Moskovitz attended Harvard University as an economics major for two years before he moved with Mark Zuckerberg to Palo Alto. He went to work full-time on Facebook.[9]

Career

Four people, three of whom were roommates—Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Chris Hughes, and Dustin Moskovitz—founded Facebook in their Harvard University dorm room in February 2004. Originally called thefacebook.com,[10] it was intended as an online directory of all Harvard's students to help residential students identify members of other residences.[4][11] In June 2004, Zuckerberg, Hughes and Moskovitz took a year off from Harvard and moved Facebook's base of operations to Palo Alto, California, and hired eight employees.[12] They were later joined by Sean Parker. At Facebook, Moskovitz was the company's first chief technology officer and then vice president of engineering;[2] he led the technical staff and oversaw the major architecture of the site, as well as being responsible for the company’s mobile strategy and development.[9]

On October 3, 2008, Moskovitz announced that he was leaving Facebook to form a new company called Asana with Justin Rosenstein, an engineering manager at Facebook. Moskovitz was also the biggest angel investor in the mobile photo-sharing site Path, run by another former member of Facebook, David Morin. It was reported[13] that Moskovitz's advice was important in persuading Morin to reject a $100 million offer for the company from Google, made in February 2011.[14]

Philanthropy
Moskovitz speaking at Web Summit 2017

Moskovitz co-founded the philanthropic organization Good Ventures with his girlfriend (and now wife) Cari Tuna in 2011.[15] In June 2012, Good Ventures announced a close partnership with charity evaluator GiveWell. Both organizations "are aiming to do as much good as possible" and thereby align with the goals of effective altruism.[16][17] Good Ventures has donated approximately $100 million from 2011 onward to GiveWell top charities Against Malaria Foundation, GiveDirectly, Schistosomiasis Control Initiative, and Deworm the World Initiative, as well as standout charities (see Good Ventures for more) and other effective altruist organizations.[18]

The joint collaboration with GiveWell led to a spinoff called the Open Philanthropy Project, whose goal is to figure out the best possible way to use large sums of money (starting with Moskovitz's multi-billion-dollar fortune) to do the most good.[19][20][21] The Open Philanthropy Project has since become a separate organization, and continuously increases its annual giving, having made over $170 million in grants in 2018 alone (see Open Philanthropy Project#Grants made for more).[22]

Moskovitz and Tuna are also the youngest couple to sign Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge, which commits billionaires to giving away most of their wealth in the form of philanthropy.[23]

Politics

Moskovitz has voted for the Democratic Party candidates in each election in which he has voted, but he wrote: "Though we've voted for the Democratic nominee each of the times we've cast a ballot, we've considered ourselves independent thinkers who respect candidates and positions from both sides of the aisle."[24] Prior to their donation for the 2016 election cycle, Moskovitz and Tuna had donated roughly $10,000 over their lifetime to federal candidates, most of it to Sean Eldridge, the husband of Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes.[25]

For the 2016 United States Presidential election, Moskovitz announced that he and his wife would donate $20 million to support Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party nominee, arguing that the dangers of a Donald Trump presidency are significant, and that they were making their donation despite being skeptical of allowing large donors to influence election cycles through money.[26] The New York Times quoted Moskovitz's blog post on the subject: "The Republican Party, and Donald Trump in particular, is running on a zero-sum vision, stressing a false contest between their constituency and the rest of the world."[24][25] This made him the third-largest donor in the 2016 campaigns.[26]

Personal life

Moskovitz is married to Cari Tuna. Tuna currently works full time on Good Ventures, the couple's private foundation, as well as the Open Philanthropy Project, a spinoff of a collaboration between Good Ventures and GiveWell.[27][28][29] Tuna is a former Yale Daily News writer[30] and journalist for The Wall Street Journal.[31]

Moskovitz and Tuna attend Burning Man regularly, and Moskovitz has written about his reasons for doing so.[32] Moskovitz's attendance at Burning Man has been the subject of some press coverage.[33][34]

Media depictions

Moskovitz is played in the film The Social Network by actor Joseph Mazzello. Responding to a question on Quora, Moskovitz said that the film "emphasizes things that didn't matter (like the Winklevoss brothers, whom I've still never even met and had no part in the work we did to create the site over the past 6 years) and leaves out things that we really did (like the many other people in our lives at the time, who supported us in innumerable ways)."[35]

gollark: I suppose that's a problem if you have people around using 32 bit stuff.
gollark: Rust's compile times would make it intractable on older hardware.
gollark: Could never happen.
gollark: *Some* of which Rust would fix.
gollark: I'm looking at recompiling osmarks.tk's nginx install with LibreSSL, at least, because I have heard HORRIBLE things about OpenSSL.

References
  1. Pilkington, Ed (March 10, 2011). "Forbes rich list: Facebook six stake their claims". The Guardian. UK. Retrieved March 30, 2011.
  2. "Dustin Moskovitz - Forbes Profile". Forbes. 2 March 2020.
  3. Alba, Alejandro (August 25, 2015). "Facebook CEO tops list of the 20 wealthiest people under 35". NY Daily News. Retrieved 10 December 2016.
  4. "Company Timeline". Facebook. Retrieved 2008-10-03.
  5. Rosenstein, Justin."Reply on Quora to: Who is the CEO of Asana?", Quora, February 8, 2011. Retrieved 2011-02-15.
  6. Zoe Fox (March 10, 2011). "Forbes's Youngest Billionaire: Facebook Co-Founder Dustin Moskovitz Edges Out Mark Zuckerberg". TIME.
  7. "America's Youngest Billionaires", Forbes, 6 October 2010. Retrieved 2011-02-15.
  8. Jacob Berkman (December 10, 2010). "Zuckerberg among nine new Jewish individuals and families to take the Giving Pledge". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Retrieved 19 September 2013.
  9. "Dustin Moskovitz: Crunchbase Profile", Techcrunch. Retrieved 2011-02-15.
  10. Phillips, Sarah (2007-07-25). "A brief history of Facebook". the Guardian. Retrieved 2018-03-20.
  11. Rosen, Ellen (2005-05-27). "Student's Start-Up Draws Attention and $13 Million". The New York Times. Retrieved 2018-03-01.
  12. "Finding Friends with Facebook", Wired, July 3, 2005. Retrieved 2011-02-15.
  13. Lacy, Sarah."Inside the DNA of the Facebook Mafia", Techcrunch, February 13, 2011. Retrieved 2011-02-15.
  14. Arrington, Mike. "Google Tried To Buy Path For $100+ Million. Path Said No.", Techcrunch, February 2, 2011. Retrieved 2011-02-15.
  15. Tuna, Cari; Moskovitz, Dustin (2012). "Vision & Values | Good Ventures". Good Ventures. Retrieved 2017-08-24.
  16. Holden (2012-06-28). "GiveWell and Good Ventures".
  17. "They made a fortune in Silicon Valley. Now they're giving most of it away". Washington Post. 2014-12-26. Retrieved 2017-06-01.
  18. Ventures, Good. "Grants Database | Good Ventures". Good Ventures. Retrieved 2017-04-04.
  19. Matthews, Dylan (April 24, 2015). "You have $8 billion. You want to do as much good as possible. What do you do?". Vox. Retrieved March 19, 2016.
  20. David Callahan (December 14, 2015). "How Does an Emerging "Army" of Tech Donors Think? Ask This Guy". Inside Philanthropy. Retrieved March 20, 2016.
  21. Nicole Bennett; Ashley Carter; Romney Resney & Wendy Woods (February 10, 2016). "bcg.perspectives - How Tech Entrepreneurs Are Disrupting Philanthropy". The Boston Consulting Group. Retrieved March 20, 2016.
  22. Karnofsky, Holden (2019-04-15). "Our Progress in 2018 and Plans for 2019". Open Philanthropy Project. Retrieved 2019-06-17.
  23. "Silicon Valley Billionaire Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna on the Reasoned Art of Giving". Jewish Business News. 2015-01-02.
  24. "Compelled to Act. We're committing $20M to help Democrats in the 2016 election". Medium. September 8, 2016. Retrieved September 22, 2016.
  25. Confessore, Nicholas (September 9, 2016). "Dustin Moskovitz, Facebook Co-Founder, Pledges $20 Million to Aid Democrats". The New York Times. Retrieved September 22, 2016.
  26. "Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz commits $20M to help beat Trump". CNN. September 9, 2016. Retrieved September 22, 2016.
  27. Ariana Eunjung Cha (December 26, 2014). "Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz: Young Silicon Valley billionaires pioneer new approach to philanthropy". The Washington Post. Retrieved December 29, 2014.
  28. Lee, Vincent (September 12, 2013). "Meet Cari Tuna, the Woman Giving Away Dustin Moskovitz's Facebook Fortune". Inside Philanthropy. Retrieved September 22, 2016.
  29. Rice, Issa (June 29, 2016). "Cari Tuna". Retrieved September 22, 2016.
  30. "Cari Tuna". Yale Daily News. Retrieved September 22, 2016.
  31. "Cari Tuna". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved September 22, 2016.
  32. Moskovitz, Dustin (September 5, 2013). "Radical Inclusion vs. Radical Self-Reliance at Burning Man". Retrieved September 22, 2016.
  33. Allen, Nick (September 6, 2013). "Facebook's Dustin Moskovitz hugs the Winklevoss twins at Burning Man. Dustin Moskovitz of Facebook tells how he met the Winklevoss twins at the Burning Man festival in Nevada. Is one of the most celebrated feud of the internet age over?". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved September 22, 2016.
  34. Shontell, Alyson (September 5, 2013). "A Strange Thing Happened the First Time Facebook's Co-Founder Met the Winklevoss Twins — They Hugged". Business Insider. Retrieved September 22, 2016.
  35. Moskovitz, Dustin."Reply on Quora to: What does Dustin Moskovitz think of the Facebook movie?", Quora, July 16, 2010. Retrieved 2011-02-15.

Further reading
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