Jan Koum

Jan Koum
Native name Ян Кум
Born (1976-02-24) February 24, 1976
Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union
Citizenship United States
Alma mater San Jose State University (dropped out)
Occupation CEO of WhatsApp & Managing Director in Facebook, Inc.
Years active 2009–present
Organization WhatsApp Incorporation.
Known for Co-founded WhatsApp
Home town Fastiv, Ukraine
Net worth Increase US$9.7 billion (May 2016)[1]

Jan Koum (Ukrainian: Ян Кум; born February 24, 1976) is an American internet entrepreneur and computer programmer. He is the CEO and co-founder of WhatsApp (with Brian Acton), a mobile messaging application which was acquired by Facebook Inc. in February 2014 for US$19 Billion.

In 2014, he entered the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans at position 62, with an estimated worth of more than seven and half billion dollars. He was the highest-ranked newcomer to the list that year.[2]

Life and career

Koum was born in Kyiv, Ukraine. He is Jewish.[3] He grew up in Fastiv, outside Kyiv, and moved with his mother and grandmother to Mountain View, California in 1992,[4] where a social support program helped the family to get a small two-bedroom apartment,[5] at the age of 16. His father had intended to join the family later, but finally remained in Ukraine.[6] At first Koum's mother worked as a babysitter, while he himself worked as a cleaner at a grocery. By the age of 18 he became interested in programming. He enrolled at San Jose State University and simultaneously worked at Ernst & Young as a security tester.[5]

In February 1996, a restraining order was granted against Koum in state court in San Jose, California. An ex-girlfriend detailed incidents in which she said Koum verbally and physically threatened her In October 2014, Koum said about the restraining order, "I am ashamed of the way I acted, and ashamed that my behavior forced her to take legal action".[7]

In 1997, Jan Koum was hired by Yahoo as an infrastructure engineer, shortly after he met Brian Acton while working at Ernst & Young as a security tester.[5] Over the next nine years, they worked at Yahoo. In September 2007 Koum and Acton left Yahoo and took a year off, traveling around South America and playing ultimate frisbee. Both applied, and failed, to work at Facebook. In January 2009, he bought an iPhone and realized that the then-seven-month-old App Store was about to spawn a whole new industry of apps. He visited his friend Alex Fishman and the two talked for hours about Koum's idea for an app over tea at Fishman's kitchen counter.[5] Koum almost immediately chose the name WhatsApp because it sounded like "what's up", and a week later on his birthday, February 24, 2009, he incorporated WhatsApp Inc. in California.[5]

WhatsApp became popular in just a small amount of time, and this caught Facebook's attention. Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg first contacted Koum in the spring 2012. The two began meeting at a coffee shop in Los Altos, California, then began a series of dinners and walks in the hills above Silicon Valley.

[8]

On February 9, 2014 Zuckerberg asked Koum to have dinner at his home, and formally proposed Koum a deal to join the Facebook board - 10 days later Facebook announced it was acquiring WhatsApp for US$19 Billion USD.[9][10][11][12][13]

His mother died in 2000 of cancer in the United States, while his father died in Ukraine in 1997.

Trivia

Jan Koum was part of a group of hackers called w00w00, where he met[5][14] the future founders of Napster, Shawn Fanning and Jordan Ritter.

In November 2014, Koum donated $1,000,000 to The FreeBSD Foundation, and close to $556 million to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF) the same year.[15]

References

  1. ↑ http://www.forbes.com/profile/jan-koum/
  2. ↑ Forbes Announces Its 33rd Annual Forbes 400 Ranking Of The Richest Americans; 29 September 2014, Forbes.com, accessed 12 November 2014
  3. ↑ "WhatsApp Founder Jan Koum's Jewish Rags-to-Riches Tale". The Jewish Daily Forward. Reuters. 20 February 2014. Retrieved 1 March 2014.
  4. ↑ Rowan, David. "WhatsApp: The inside story (Wired UK)". Wired.co.uk. Retrieved 2014-02-20.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Parmy Olson (February 19, 2014). "Exclusive: The Rags-To-Riches Tale Of How Jan Koum Built WhatsApp Into Facebook's New $19 Billion Baby". Forbes. Retrieved February 20, 2014..
  6. ↑ WhatsApp: Jan Koum – The Story Of A Man Who Kept It Simple, Jewish Business News, Feb 20th, 2014
  7. ↑ De Jong, David (2014-10-20). "Facebook's Jan Koum Apologizes for Past Restraining Order". Bloomberg.
  8. ↑ "The Memories from Rags-to-Riches by Jan Koum". Eyerys. Retrieved May 15, 2015.
  9. ↑ Olson, Parmy (2009-02-24). "Exclusive: The Rags-To-Riches Tale Of How Jan Koum Built WhatsApp Into Facebook's New $19 Billion Baby". Forbes. Retrieved 2014-02-20.
  10. ↑ "Facebook acquires WhatsApp in massive deal worth $19 billion - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)". Abc.net.au. Retrieved 2014-02-20.
  11. ↑ "WhatsApp Founders Are Low Key — And Now Very Rich". Mashable.com. 2013-10-26. Retrieved 2014-02-20.
  12. ↑ "WhatsApp's Founder Goes From Food Stamps to Billionaire". Bloomberg News. Retrieved February 20, 2014.
  13. ↑ Wood, Zoe (February 20, 2014). "Facebook turned down WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton for job in 2009". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 February 2014.
  14. ↑ http://network2.tv/january-kum-communist-ukraine-to-19-billion-whatsapp/
  15. ↑ "No. 4: Jan Koum - Philanthropy". Philanthropy.com. 8 February 2015.

External links


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, May 05, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.