Jan Koum
Jan Koum (born February 24, 1976 in Kiev ) is a Ukrainian - American entrepreneur and one of the founders of WhatsApp , a well-known messaging service for mobile phones . After the company was bought by Facebook in February 2014 , he moved to the Facebook board of directors. On April 30, 2018, he said goodbye to Facebook. Koum is a multiple billionaire.
Life
As the child of Jewish parents, Jan Koum grew up in poor conditions in the Ukrainian city of Fastiw near Kiev. In 1992, when he was 16 years old, his mother emigrated with him to California in the United States , where they settled in Mountain View . His father stayed in Ukraine and died in 1997. Koum worked as a cleaner; his mother as a babysitter. In 2000, Koum's mother died of cancer .
Koum went to Mountain View High School and was considered a bully and troublemaker. He graduated from San José State University . He taught himself how to use computers. In 1997 he met his future business partner Brian Acton , who gave him a job at Yahoo . Acton and Koum worked together at Yahoo until 2007, but have been frustrated there in recent years. In 2009 Koum bought an iPhone and recognized the potential of the app store, which was only seven months old at the time . He developed the idea for WhatsApp and on his 33rd birthday, February 24, 2009, founded WhatsApp Inc. in California , although the application was not even programmed. WhatsApp quickly became one of the most widely used apps.
Before selling WhatsApp to Facebook , Koum was critical of offensive advertising on the Internet several times. Smartphones are so personal and private that advertising on them is not a good idea.
Koum enjoys playing soccer and ultimate frisbee .
capital
According to the Forbes 2016 list, Koum's net worth in April 2016 was approximately $ 8.6 billion. That put him at number 129 on Forbes' list of the richest people in the world .
His fortune stems from the sale of WhatsApp to Facebook in 2014; Facebook paid the record sum of around 19 billion dollars (partly in cash and partly in Facebook shares).
Web links
- Forbes: Exclusive: The Rags-To-Riches Tale Of How Jan Koum Built WhatsApp Into Facebook's New $ 19 Billion Baby (English, with photo, accessed February 20, 2014)
- Portrait of the founder Jan Koum: who is behind WhatsApp? ( Memento from February 24, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) From: Tagesschau.de, accessed on February 20, 2014, archived at archive.org .
Footnotes
- ↑ Billion takeover: Facebook buys competitor WhatsApp In: Spiegel Online, accessed on February 20, 2014.
- ↑ www.facebook.com
- ↑ washingtonpost.com: WhatsApp founder plans to leave after broad clashes with parent Facebook
- ^ WhatsApp founder Jan Koum's Jewish Rags-to-Riches Tale
- ↑ a b Christoph Fröhlich: The unbelievable success story of the Whatsapp founder In: Stern Online, from February 20, 2014.
- ↑ Liz Gannes: WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum Hates Advertising and the Tech Rumor Mill allthingsd.com, May 10, 2013, accessed February 25, 2014
- ↑ Jürgen Schmieder: The humorless Whatsapp founder. sueddeutsche.de, February 20, 2014, accessed on February 20, 2014
- ↑ According to online list , accessed May 1, 2018, $ 9.1 billion and 170th place.
- ↑ www.forbes.com , accessed April 22, 2016
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Koum, Jan |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Ukrainian-American entrepreneur |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 24, 1976 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kiev , Ukrainian SSR |