He got rich at a young age by starting two companies, Zip2 and what became PayPal. Like many other Silicon Valley billionaires, he's good with technical stuff, but not so good with people stuff. For example, he got married, divorced, married someone else, divorced her, married his second wife a second time, then divorced a second time, and now dates a younger pop star. He has five sons by his first wife, but do you ever hear anything about his family? Nope.
As far as Watchmen characters, he's closer to Dr. Manhattan, because he wants to retire on Mars.