Last Updated on March 1, 2016

In Hollywood’s version of the Story Behind Facebook, Mark is described as having invented a tool to date girls. The reality was quite different though. Mark had just met Priscilla Chan who was his girlfriend then and they were obsessed with the internet. They wanted to a “tool where you could go and learn about other people. I didn’t know how to build that so instead  started building little tools, ” Mark said.

He added, “I built a tool called Coursematch for students to list which classes they were taking.” He built the Facematch tool as well, as seen in the movie but that was just a prank. Mark actually got the idea for Facebook by a study tool he created which connected his classmates to share notes with each other. Mark said that he had no idea that it would soon turn into a $300bn company.

That was only the beginning of Facebook. Now the 12-year-old social network has grown into a company investing in the future, from artificial intelligence to virtual reality.