Jan Koum Biography

Asides being the co-founder and CEO of WhatsApp Jan is was once an infrastructure engineer hired by Yahoo. Koum is originally from Kyiv, Soviet Union. Born to Ukrainian parents of Jewish origin. He had a difficult childhood, as a child Kyiv and his mother relocated to the US leaving his father behind but kept close communication until he died in 1997, three years later his mother died too after a long battle with cancer. Koum’s journey to stardom started when at the age of 18 his passion for programming saw him into San Jose State University. From then on he worked with a lot of programmers, hackers, and the co-founders of Napster Shawn fanning and Jordan Rittler. After WhatsApp made its big break in 2009, Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg paid a whooping USS19billion! To acquire the popular App. Unfortunately, Koum stepped down from the Facebook board of directors on April 30, 2018, but he still has a whopping amount in shares in a method known as “ rest and vest.”

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