WhatsApp: The Success Story of a Successful Business That Started From Nothing
What is WhatsApp?
WhatsApp is a mobile messaging app that allows users to exchange text, audio, and video messages without incurring any fees.
The app was created by Jan Koum, a former employee of Yahoo!, and launched in 2009. WhatsApp quickly gained popularity, and as of February 2014, it has over 450 million monthly active users.
The story of WhatsApp’s founding
Jan Koum is the co-founder and CEO of WhatsApp, one of the world’s most popular messaging apps. Born in Ukraine and raised in California, Koum came from a family of limited means.
He started out working as a security tester at Yahoo! before eventually becoming one of the company’s key engineers. In 2009,
Koum teamed up with Brian Acton to create WhatsApp. The app quickly gained popularity, especially in Europe and Latin America, and was acquired by Facebook in 2014 for $19 billion.
Koum is now worth an estimated $9.2 billion, making him one of the richest people in the world. He remains actively involved in WhatsApp and its continued development.
Thanks to Jan Koum, WhatsApp has become an essential part of our daily lives, connecting us with our friends and family no matter where we are in the world.
How WhatsApp changed the game
Jan Koum is the co-founder and CEO of WhatsApp, one of the most popular messaging apps in the world. He started out as a software engineer at Yahoo!, where he met Brian Acton, another Yahoo! employee who would later become his business partner. In 2009, they left Yahoo! to start WhatsApp.
WhatsApp was originally designed as a way for people to communicate with each other without incurring the high costs of SMS fees. It quickly gained popularity, and by 2014 it had over 600 million users.
In 2014, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion, making it one of the largest tech acquisitions ever.
Koum is now a billionaire, and he credits much of his success to his hard work and dedication. He also attributes his success to luck, saying that he was “in the right place at the right time” when he started WhatsApp.
What’s more, Koum is passionate about his work and believes in its mission to connect people around the world.
WhatsApp has changed the game when it comes to messaging apps. It’s simple design and focus on user privacy has made it one of the most popular apps in the world.
Thanks to Jan Koum’s vision and hard work, WhatsApp has made communication simpler and more affordable for people around the globe.
About Jan Koum
Born in Ukraine, Jan emigrated to the United States with his family when he was 16 years old. He attended San Jose State University and later worked at Yahoo! as an infrastructure engineer. In 2009, he co-founded WhatsApp with Brian Acton.
Jan Koum is the founder and CEO of WhatsApp, one of the most popular messaging apps in the world with over 1.5 billion monthly users.
He was born in Kiev, Ukraine and moved to Mountain View, California at age 16. He started out working at Yahoo! and later joined Facebook, where he worked on building the infrastructure for ads before eventually leaving to start WhatsApp. How did Koum make such a successful app?
WhatsApp is a cross-platform messaging app that allows users to exchange text, audio, and video messages for free. It has over 1.5 billion monthly active users as of 2018.
In 2014, Facebook Acquired WhatsApp for $19 Billion dollars and making Jan Koum a billionaire. He currently serves on Facebook’s board of directors.
Jan Koum’s current net worth
Jan Koum, the CEO of WhatsApp, is currently worth an estimated $10.2 billion. He owns a majority stake in the popular messaging app, which was acquired by Facebook in 2014 for $19 billion.
Koum was born in Kiev, Ukraine, and emigrated to the United States with his family when he was 16. He later dropped out of San Jose State University. Koum started working at Yahoo! in 1997, where he met Brian Acton. The two eventually left Yahoo! and started working on WhatsApp in 2009.
WhatsApp quickly became one of the most popular messaging apps, with over 1 billion users as of February 2016.
Koum and Acton each own about 45% of the company. Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp was the largest ever for a venture-backed startup at the time.
Mark Zuckerberg Success Story from College Dropout to one of Richest Person in the World
Since becoming a billionaire, Koum has been active in philanthropy. He has pledged to give away $1 billion to charity through the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
Jan Koum’s success story is truly inspirational. He came from humble beginnings and was able to create one of the most popular messaging apps in the world.
What’s even more impressive is that he did it all without any prior experience in the tech industry. If you’re ever feeling down or like you can’t achieve your dreams, remember Jan Koum and how he was able to turn his life around.
What if there was no social media ? What if there was no “whatsapp” with us , ever imagined how would we talk to our loved ones, who are far away from us ?
We’ll all thanks to Jan Koum most popularly used messaging app around the world is so much popular and loved among people around, we people know so much about the social media apps these days, but do we really know who actually invented, brought that particular application to us ? Do we even know what is the success and failure story they go through ?
Success Story of Kevin Systrom who founded Instagram
Whatsapp the most friendlier and easy to use messaging app was founded by “Jan Koum”, born in a poor family from Ukraine in year 1976, his father worked as a daily wage worker at various construction sites and mother was home maker.
Despite so many difficulties he faced in his family he never stopped, his passion for his work brought him immense success to his life. He completed his early education in his home country and migrated to America with his family to start a new chapter, but that wasn’t the case with his family, sometime after they shifted to America his mother got detected to cancer, and in such family situation Koum in his teenage in order to support his family stated working at grocery stores.
Despite his family situation he never gave up on learning that he loved ,within 2 years of shifting to California he learned “computer programming”, he did make sure that he attend his graduation classes but didn’t make up to the final exams ,just because of the opportunity he received to work for Yahoo .
Yahoo was the place where he met his “future business partner” Brain Acton, while working together at a project, both shared a very good bond initially and the duo left their job at Yahoo and took a year off spending their holidays in South America.
After coming back from their holiday both of them applied for a job at Facebook, but both were rejected which inspired them to start their own startup.
It was now a “do or die” situation for them, either to work for a company or to work on their own idea, this is when Koum started giving thoughts to his ideas and got inspiration from his own experiences, he always wanted to come up with a proper solution for the actual probem of “expensive” communication, that he too faced during his teenage , and this when he came up with the most easy to use , messaging application which we call today “whatsapp“. On the birthday of Koum i.e 24th of February this app was legally established as “whatsapp INC.”
Whatsapp was launched on May 3rd 2009,Initially the app was flop, but later on when Koum reworded on it and relaunced it in September it was a super hit.
Jan Koum, is actually one of the inspiring Entrepreneur worldwide, who has already proven that anyone can achieve their desired if their have that level of passion, patience and hard work.
He would have never imagined that Facebook who once rejected him to offer a job, now knowed his door in order to buy his company , this would be his real achievement in real sense.
Are you an
Entrepreneur or Startup? Do you have a Success Story to Share? SugerMint would like to share your success story. We cover entrepreneur Stories, Startup News, Women entrepreneur stories, and Startup stories
|
Read more Success story of Indian entrepreneurs & startups at SugerMint. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn