Jan Koum 101: Who is the Successful Founder of WhatsApp? in our article of Zatrun.com, our readers are curious, we will cover in detail everything you need to know about the successful founder of WhatsApp, Jan Koum, a Ukrainian-American entrepreneur and computer programmer.
Who is Jan Koum?
Jan Koum is a Ukrainian-American entrepreneur and computer programmer born on February 24, 1976 in Kiev. At the same time, he was working with Brian Acton as the co-founder and CEO of WhatsApp, a mobile messaging application. Facebook February 2014, the application was acquired by Facebook for $ 19.3 billion. in 2014, with a net worth of $ 7.5 billion, he was ranked 62nd on Forbes’ list of the 400 richest Americans. took place. As of July 21, 2020, his estimated net worth is thought to be $10.1 billion. It is also 47th on the Forbes list. is ranked.
Jan Koum grew up in Fastiv, outside Kiev. Later, her Jewish family moved to Mountain View, California, with her mother and grandmother in 1992. She initially got a job as a cleaner at a grocery store in Koum while Koum’s mother worked as a babysitter. After a long battle with cancer, his mother passed away in 2000. Jan Koum became interested in programming at the age of 18. He enrolled at San Jose State University and simultaneously worked as a security tester at Ernst & Young.
in 1996, Koum joined a hacker group called w00w00. Here he had the opportunity to meet Shawn Fanning and Jordan Ritter, the future founders of Napster. in 1997, Koum joined Yahoo!he was hired as an infrastructure engineer at . He left school soon after. Jan Koum and Acton worked there together for the next nine years. In September 2007, both Yahoo! and he took a year off to travel around South America and play frisbee. The two applied to work at Facebook and were both rejected.
WhatsApp and Facebook
In January 2009, Koum bought an iPhone and realized that the newly opened App Store, which was only seven months old at the time, had created a whole new app industry. Koum visited his friend Alex Fishman. Later, the two talked for hours about the idea of an app while drinking tea at Fishman’s kitchen counter. Jan Koum chose the WhatsApp name almost instantly because it sounded like “What’s up” and on his birthday, February 24, 2009, WhatsApp Inc. in California he founded the.
WhatsApp was not popular at first, but its fortunes began to change when Apple added push notifications to apps in June 2009. On WhatsApp, he changed users to “ping”. Soon Koum, Fishman and their friends started using WhatsApp instead of SMS as a messaging tool. The WhatsApp application has gained a fairly large user base. Later, Jan convinces his friend Acton, who was still unemployed at the time, to join the company. After Jan Koum managed to raise $250,000 in funding, he made his friend Acton a co-founder.
Facebook February2014 Mark Zuckerberg invited Koum to his house for dinner and made an official offer of agreement to Jan Koum to join the Facebook board of directors February2014 Mark Zuckerberg invited Koum to his house for dinner February 2014 Mark Zuckerberg invited Koum to join the Facebook board of directors. Just 10 days later, Facebook announced that it had acquired WhatsApp for $ 19 billion. In the first half of 2016, Jan Koum sold almost half of his total shares, which corresponds to more than $ 2.4 billion of Facebook shares. He is believed to still own the remaining $2.4 billion of Facebook shares.
April 30, 2018, Koum announced that he was leaving the board of directors of WhatsApp and Facebook due to the disagreements they had with Facebook.
