Asia is the place to be _ Facebook co-founder
SINGAPORE: Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin said Thursday
the success of the social networking site would be hard to match but he
hoped to make an impact as an Asia-based technology investor.
"It's clearly a tough act to follow," the 30-year-old Brazilian
billionaire told a business conference in Singapore, where he is a
permanent resident and putting money as an "angel investor" into Asian
and other start-ups.
"Asia is, whether you look at Internet growth, mobile growth, it's
the centre in terms of where the user and consumer base will be in the
future, so it's phenomenal for me to come here and learn," he said.
Saverin -- who was listed by Forbes magazine as Singapore's
eighth-richest individual in 2012 with a fortune estimated at $2.2
billion -- said he was not trying to recreate Facebook's success.
"Every step of my life is not about creating a new Facebook or
something new necessarily that goes and gets distributed to a
billion-plus people," he said.
"It's about making sure that what I do is fulfilling both to myself
and others in the world." Saverin, who moved to Singapore nearly four
years ago but rarely speaks in public, said at the conference hosted by
the Wall Street Journal that Facebook had become a "democratising force"
across the world.
"The impact is huge," he added, citing the role of social media in
the Middle East democracy movement known as the Arab Spring as well as
in mobilising public support after natural disasters.
Founded in 2004, Facebook says it amassed more than a billion monthly
active users as of December 2012.
Its shares have been been hit by volatility since its initial public
offering price of $38 in May 2012. The stock closed at $28.46 on
Wednesday.
Saverin, an economics major at Harvard University, co-founded
Facebook in 2004 with three fellow students including current chief
executive Mark Zuckerberg.
His role was famously portrayed in the 2010 film "The Social
Network", in which he started out as a close friend of Zuckerberg and
provided initial funds for the site before they had an acrimonious
split.
Saverin said Thursday that he and Zuckerberg "don't talk very often
now but I very much admire him and everything that he's doing for the
company, and everyone else at Facebook".
As an investor in technology start-ups, Saverin said Asia held the
biggest opportunities for entrepreneurs like him.
AFP |