Parker Conrad Net Worth, Relationships, Age/Birthdate & Birthday

Parker Conrad — From Early Curiosity to Silicon Valley Comeback King

A Spark in Neurobiology, a Turn Toward Tech Entrepreneurship

Parker Conrad was born in New York City in 1980, growing up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.  In high school, he devoted nearly two years to studying the neurobiology of sea snails — an effort that earned him third place in the prestigious national contest formerly known as the Westinghouse Science Talent Search and a $20,000 award.

Despite this early academic promise, Conrad’s high-school grades were “generally mediocre,” he has admitted.  Undeterred, he entered Harvard University in 1998 and became managing editor of its student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson — an experience so demanding that he ultimately failed out, calling it “humiliating and shocking.”  After a year working at the Arkansas-Democrat Gazette, he returned to Harvard and graduated in 2003 with a degree in Chemistry.

This early period — marked by scientific curiosity, a brush with failure, and eventual redemption — would prove to shape his trajectory as an entrepreneur determined to build something transformative.

The Road to Rippling: Experimentation, Setbacks, and Rebirth

Upon graduation, Conrad began his career not in labs but at biopharma giant Amgen as a product manager.  But his entrepreneurial ambition soon resurfaced: in 2007, he co-founded a financial-technology startup called Wikinvest (later rebranded as SigFig), aimed at helping retail investors manage their portfolios.

After leaving SigFig in 2012, he pivoted — founding Zenefits in late 2012 (incorporated 2013), using roughly $20,000 of his savings. Zenefits aimed to revolutionize human resources by offering free software to small businesses for payroll, benefits, and HR, charging instead via commissions from health-insurance plans. The growth was meteoric: by 2014, the company became one of Silicon Valley’s fastest-growing startups, reaching a valuation of about $4.5 billion.

However, that rapid success soon unraveled. In 2015–2016 Zenefits came under regulatory scrutiny when it was revealed that the company had used unlicensed brokers to sell insurance in multiple states. On February 8, 2016, Conrad resigned as CEO and left the board.  A few years later, he settled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over charges of misleading investors — a humbling end to what had seemed a rocket ride.

Yet resignation didn’t mark the end of his story.

Rippling: Reinvention, Reinforcement, and the Billion-Dollar Comeback

Just six weeks after leaving Zenefits, Conrad quietly began building what would become his comeback: in 2016, he co-founded Rippling with Prasanna Sankar.  While Zenefits had offered HR and benefits management, Rippling set out to create a more comprehensive “system of record” for employee data — a unified platform to handle payroll, benefits, devices, apps, and more. 

Growth was deliberate and steady. By 2018, the company had grown from a handful of employees to dozens more, and successive funding rounds pushed its valuation higher. Most recently, in 2025, Rippling raised $450 million in fresh funding at a valuation of $16.8 billion.

According to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, that funding round translated into a personal stake for Conrad — estimated at around 14% — boosting the value of his shares to roughly $2.3 billion.

Even more recently, as covered by Forbes, his net worth is estimated at $3.4 billion, thanks to what the outlet says is a “roughly 20% stake” in Rippling.

Such a dramatic rebound — from resignation under pressure to billionaire status — stands as one of Silicon Valley’s most remarkable comeback tales.

The Personal Underpinnings: Family, Trial, and Quiet Stability

Conrad’s personal life paints a picture of resilience and privacy. His parents held successful, demanding careers — his mother led a nonprofit organization, while his father was a senior partner at a well-known law firm.

He met his wife, Alexandra MacRae, when they were middle-schoolers at summer camp; the two reconnected later and married in June 2011. They live with their family in the Mission District of San Francisco. 

Perhaps most defining was his early brush with mortality: at age 24, Conrad was diagnosed with testicular cancer. He underwent treatment and was eventually cleared — a life-altering challenge that deepened his appreciation for the importance of health, and would later shape his commitment to HR and employee wellness through his business ventures.

His birthday has been recorded in public records as April 13, 1980 — a date sometimes referenced in depiction of his background.

Why Parker Conrad’s Story Resonates: Lessons in Resilience and Reinvention

What sets Parker Conrad apart is not simply the magnitude of his success, but the narrative arc: early scientific ambition, academic setbacks, soaring startup success, dramatic collapse — and then, a comeback.

• Vision and adaptability: Conrad’s shift from neurobiology to finance tech (with SigFig) and then HR software (Zenefits, Rippling) shows a capacity to sense opportunity and pivot accordingly.

• Learning from failure: The regulatory collapse at Zenefits could have ended his career. Instead, it seems to have re-focused him on compliance, rigor, and building a more durable company at Rippling.

• Resilience under pressure: Surviving cancer, professional humiliation, and public scrutiny — yet starting again from scratch — adds a deeply human dimension to his achievements.

• Creating long-term value: Rather than chasing short-term hype, Rippling appears grounded in solving real, persistent business needs. Its steep valuation and Conrad’s current net worth reflect that.

In an era where many startup founders rise fast and fade faster, Parker Conrad’s journey underscores one enduring truth: sometimes the comeback — not the first success — defines real legacy.