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1 day ago · Koum worked at Yahoo for nearly nine years before leaving to found WhatsApp. Koum has donated $1.15 billion of Facebook stock to charitable entities, including to his Koum Family Foundation.
- CEO, Cofounder
Dec 23, 2019 · In September 2007 Koum and Acton finally left Yahoo and took a year to decompress, traveling around South America and playing ultimate frisbee. Both applied, and failed, to work at Facebook.
- Living in Poverty
- Setting The Stage
- Meeting His Business Partner
- Developing The Idea For Whatsapp
- Adapting For Success
- Scaling The Company
- Selling to Facebook
- Making A Difference Through Philanthropy
Jan Koum was born in 1976 to a Jewish family in Kyiv, Ukraine. His father worked in construction, while his mother stayed at home with her son. As a child, Koum experienced the negative effects of growing up in a Communist regime, which deeply influenced his strong commitment to privacy protection. When describing why his company is so serious abou...
Despite his circumstances, Koum was a self-starter and quick learner who wasn’t afraid of hard work. Two years after immigrating to the U.S., Koum taught himself computer programming. He also received a hands-on education in cybersecurity by joining the elite hacking group, w00w00. “I had so much fun in the early days learning about networking, sec...
Jan Koum worked on the security team at Ernst & Young in his freshman year at San Jose State. During this time, he met his future business partner, Brian Acton, while working on a project at Yahoo. The two immediately hit it off. Several months later, Koum applied for a job with Yahoo and ended up working there for nearly a decade. Feeling unfulfil...
The story of Whatsapp goes like this. After the pair returned to the U.S., they considered their next move: join another company or start their own. As new technologies emerged such as Skype, Jan Koum began forming an idea of how to improve user experience. He was influenced by his own personal experiences. When he was a teenager, communication wit...
The WhatsApp applaunched on May 3, 2009, only a few short months after its conception. At first, the app flopped. But a month later, Apple updated the software for iPhones to allow push notifications. This move changed the entire game plan. Koum reworked his strategy to build the app around people’s social networks. Additionally, before the relaunc...
With the success of the new launch, the company began seeking investors who could help their messaging service scale. That October, Acton got several former colleagues at Yahoo to invest $250,000 in the business. While Acton handled business relations, Koum kept working on improving the app and making it functional for more users. Although WhatsApp...
In 2014, Facebook made WhatsApp’s co-founders an offer they couldn’t refuse: $19 billion dollars. While both Koum and Acton stuck around in partnership with Facebook for a few years, they eventually left due to issues regarding advertising and users’ privacy protection. These were the two principles the business was founded upon. In the process, Ac...
After leaving, Whatsapp co-founder Brian Acton and his wife Tegan established Wildcard Giving, an umbrella organization for their three charities: Sunlight Giving, Acton Family Giving, and Solidarity Giving. As explained on Wildcard’s website, these nonprofits collectively support “an individual’s right to dignity, agency, justice, and self-determi...
Roughly one in seven people on earth have Jan Koum, and his company WhatsApp, to thank for their ability to call and text their friends and family free of charge.
May 18, 2017 · When a Canadian teen launched a massive denial-of-service attack on Yahoo, Koum called on the crew for advice and help.
Apr 30, 2018 · WhatsApp founder and Chief Executive Officer Jan Koum is leaving Facebook Inc., just a few years after his messaging app was acquired by the social-media giant for $22 billion.
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Jan Koum (Ukrainian: Ян Кум; born Yan Borysovych Kum, Ukrainian: Ян Борисович Кум, on February 24, 1976) is a Ukrainian-American billionaire businessman and computer programmer. He is the co-founder and former CEO of WhatsApp , a mobile messaging app which was acquired by Facebook in 2014 for US$19.3 billion.
