Remember Eduardo Saverin? He’s the Facebook co-founder who was abruptly thrown out of the company by Mark Zuckerberg and whose removal was made popular by the movie The Social Network, which was released in 2010. In 2012, Saverin renounced his U.S. citizenship to save money on taxes and moved to Singapore after settling a lawsuit with Zuckerberg.
Investing in Asian tech firms
Since then, Saverin, who became a billionaire after the Facebook IPO, has done his work without coming in the news and has also kept himself busy by investing a lot while living abroad. He has been investing mostly in Asian tech companies though, says a report from Vanity Fair.
Saverin joined a $15 million fundraising round for Indonesian start-up Orami, a female-focused e-commerce company, according to Bloomberg reports. The Facebook co-founder has committed his money to at least 20 personal investments in tech start-ups, including several rounds of funding for Singapore-based online retailer Redmart.
Investment strategy different from Facebook CEO’s
Going against the trend, Saverin put his money behind two car-service start-ups rather than helping fund major players in the ever-crowded ride-hailing space—namely, Uber or Lyft. Saverin assisted with a $13 million round of funding for a start-up called Flightcar, which allows people who park at the airport to rent their cars to other travelers and make money without effort. Saverin also invested money into Silvercar, a start-up that only rented out silver Audi A4s in 2014.
When compared to the investment strategies of Facebook’s CEO, Saverin’s investments ways look very different. Zuckerberg has made huge bets on visually appealing upstarts, while Saverin has been making mid-range bets on smart and secure start-ups. Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion, and two years later, it paid $2 billion for Oculus in 2012.
It appears Saverin is living a comfortable life if we keep aside tech investments. He is still the owner of 53 million Facebook shares worth around $5.8 billion. He is living in Singapore and seems to have no plans of returning to the U.S., the report says. In June 2015, he married Elaine Andriejanssen, whom he met while he was a student at Harvard, and she was studying at nearby Tufts University. Saverin broke the news of his marriage on Facebook, suitably.
