What if Mark Zuckerberg opened a McDonalds instead of launching Facebook?

Zuckerberg’s sister did an interview and said their father offered them two paths in life when graduating high school.

The first was going to college.
The second was that he’d buy them a McDonalds franchise.

Zuckerberg obviously picked Harvard, which he’d drop out of to do Facebook, but I’m curious how much he’d have ended up making if he went the route of owning a McDonalds at age 18. I’m also curious if being a McDonalds owner could be worth more than having a degree from Harvard.

Figuring this out, some basic economics on McDonalds from the point of franchise owners.

The cost to open a store will be about 2 million dollars.
McDonalds owners have a pretty huge range of income, but the general consensus is they profit $153,000 a year.

Zuckerberg is from White Plains, where the average household income is $90,000 a year.
The average American is $63,000.
A 42% increase over the national average.

Let’s make the generous assumption that increase holds with McDonalds owners and that’d put Zuckerberg to $217,000 a year in income.

Amusing thing on this is the comparison with Harvard.

The average Harvard grad in computer science has a starting salary of $129,000 a year.

Zuckerberg would owning a McDonalds actually outperform the starting salary at Harvard by almost $100,000 a year.

Another thing to look at is Mark Zuckerberg is 37.

The top 10% of Harvard grads make over $250,000 a year at age 35.

Zuckerberg would be underperforming the top 10%, but he has the following benefits.

1. Higher income for a longer period of time, where he’d have had his store for 17 years at this point.
2. The average is still under $200,000 a year, so he outperforms the average.

Final thing is expansion.

Zuckerberg would be on nearly his 20th year of owning a McDonalds at this point, which means he’d likely own more than one.

Most franchise owners can get to 3-4 locations over their career.

If Zuckerberg did that and held in the NY area, it’d be $500-800,000 a year in profit.

So was it a bad move to go to Harvard and not own a McDonalds?

Absolutely not, his current is 120 billion and worth almost as much as the 185 billion McDonalds as a company is worth. I’d also guess Zuckerberg’s personal wealth surpasses McDonalds value in 5-8 years.

But…

Owning a McDonalds can be valuable and in many cases, worth more than a degree even from Harvard.