WhatsApp founder Jan Koum (PHOTO: X)
Jan Koum’s life is one of the most remarkable rags-to-riches journeys in modern tech history. Born on February 24, 1976, in Fastiv, Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, Koum grew up during a time of economic scarcity and political tension.
His father worked in construction, while his mother stayed at home. By the late 1980s, rising antisemitism and deteriorating living conditions pushed the family to seek refuge elsewhere.
In 1992, at just 16 years old, Koum migrated with his mother and grandmother to Mountain View, California. They arrived with very little living in a small apartment provided through government support. Koum swept floors at a local grocery store to help his family, and both mother and son relied on food stamps for years.
These hardships, however, shaped Koum’s deep belief in privacy, simplicity, and minimalism values he would later build into WhatsApp.
Koum developed an early fascination with computers. At age 18, he taught himself programming by buying used books and returning them after reading.
His skills eventually earned him a place with the hacker group “w00w00”, which also included future tech luminaries like Sean Fanning of Napster. By 1997, his talents caught the attention of Yahoo, where he was hired as an infrastructure engineer. There he met Brian Acton, who became a close mentor and later co-founder.
Koum spent nearly nine years at Yahoo, working on infrastructure stability and advertising systems. Disillusioned with the ad-driven model and shortly after his mother passed away in 2000, he left the company in 2007, along with Acton.
The two travelled and brainstormed new possibilities but initially faced setbacks. Acton, for instance, was famously rejected by Facebook when he applied for a job.
In early 2009, Koum bought an iPhone and realized the App Store would create a new era of mobile communication. Inspired, he began developing an app that would allow users to display status messages such as “at work” or “battery low.”
He named it WhatsApp because it sounded like “What’s up?” The first version launched on February 24, 2009, coinciding with his birthday.
After Apple introduced push notifications, WhatsApp evolved into a messaging platform. Koum insisted on no ads, no games, no gimmicks only simple, secure communication.
Acton later joined, investing $250,000, becoming co-founder, and helping refine the business model. WhatsApp grew rapidly because it used phone numbers instead of logins, offered free international texting, and worked even on low bandwidth—features inspired by Koum’s own struggles as an immigrant.
By 2013, WhatsApp had 200 million active users and just 55 employees, an unprecedented ratio in tech. On February 19, 2014, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock, one of the largest tech acquisitions in history. Koum personally received around $6.8 billion from the deal and joined Facebook’s board of directors.
However, disagreements over encryption, privacy, and monetization led Koum to leave Facebook in 2018. He has since focused on philanthropy, including substantial donations to education and the Jewish Community.
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