Koum, Jan

Childhood and emigration

Yan Kum was born in the small Ukrainian town of Fastiv into a Jewish family. His childhood coincided with a difficult period: economic hardship and latent anti-Semitism in the USSR. In 1992, when Yan was 16, he and his mother emigrated to the US in search of a better life. His father remained in Ukraine and soon passed away.
The family settled in Mountain View, California. At first, they lived on welfare. To support himself, Yang worked part-time as a cleaner in a grocery store, while his mother worked as a caregiver.

Education and early career

Despite the difficult adjustment, Yang became interested in programming. He taught himself by reading books he borrowed from the library. He later enrolled at San Jose State University, but never finished his studies because he was working at Ernst & Young as a security tester at the same time.
In 1997, Kum joined Yahoo! as an infrastructure engineer. He worked at Yahoo! for almost nine years, where he met and became friends with Brian Acton, who would later become his partner.

Creating WhatsApp

In 2007, Jan and Brian left Yahoo! to take a break and travel. In 2009, Jan purchased an iPhone, which inspired him to create a new messaging app. His idea was to enable users to easily exchange messages around the world without ads or unnecessary noise.
On February 24, 2009, on his birthday, Jan Koum registered WhatsApp Inc. The name of the app came from the phrase “What's up?” Initially, the service was conceived as a tool for displaying user statuses, but later its functionality was expanded to full-fledged messaging.
Brian Acton joined the project and helped with finding investments. They were able to raise about $250,000 from Sequoia Capital.

The Success and Sale of Facebook

WhatsApp quickly gained popularity thanks to its simplicity, reliability, and lack of advertising. In 2014, when the service already had hundreds of millions of users, Facebook bought WhatsApp for a record $19 billion. Jan Koum personally earned billions of dollars and entered the list of the richest people on the planet.
After the deal, Jan remained with the company and became a member of Facebook's board of directors.

Leaving Facebook

In 2018, Jan Koum left Facebook due to disagreements over WhatsApp's privacy and monetization policies. He wanted to keep the service free of advertising and interference with users' personal data.
After leaving, Yang Kum virtually disappeared from public view and devoted himself to his personal life, philanthropy, and hobbies, including collecting Porsche cars.

Personal life and character

Jan Koum is known as a modest man who has long avoided publicity. His life story is one of an immigrant who managed to turn adversity into success while remaining true to his principles: simplicity, reliability, and user privacy.
He has repeatedly donated large sums to charity, including organizations that support freedom of speech and human rights.