Jan Koum who is popularly known as the founder of the instant messaging service called Whats App has a very inspiring story that is truly a rags to riches story.
Jan Koum was born in a place called Kiev which is found in Ukraine in Eastern Europe.
At the age of 16, Jan Koum and his mother immigrated to the United States of America and settled in the state of California.
When they arrived in California, Life became very hard for them as they lived in a small apartment and had to survive on footstamps from the government and also some subsidies offered to them.
In those days, Jan Koum struggled with life but he didnot give up on getting an education as he continued to attend college and began moonlighting as a security tester after school.
Aside school and working as a security tester, Jan Koum taught himself computer networking and he was also able to join a hacker group.
In the year 1997, Jan Koum met Brian Acton who was at the time working as an advertising system manager at Yahoo and during that time Jan Koum was also hired as an Infrastructure engineer at Yahoo.
If you are wondering how the idea of Whats App came to him, Jan Koum was looking for away in which he could be able not to miss any phone calls on his new iPhone and this when he got the idea of building a messaging service.
In the year 2009, Jan Koum founded WhatsApp alongside his friend Brian Acton and during that time, life was very hard for them and so they wanted to make the messaging service very simple and user friendly.
According to Jan Koum, he doesnot want any bloat but instead wants WhatsApp to focus only on it's primary purpose for it's users.
In 2014, Facebook decided to buy WhatsApp for $22 billion in both cash and stock, making Jan Koum and his friend Brian Acton a billionaire.
The story of Jan Koum is an inspiration to all the young entrepreneurs out there who are planning to make it big in the world entrepreneurship.
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