Brian acton e jan koum biography

WhatsApp, the most popular communication app of 2022 (for the second year in a row) is synonymous with mobile messaging. So popular it even has its own verb with people regularly asking their friends to “Just WhatsApp it to me”, WhatsApp has a long history from relatively humble beginnings. So, where did it all start and how did WhatsApp become the messaging giant that it is today?

Who Founded WhatsApp

Back in 2009, Brian Acton and Jan Koum left their work at Yahoo! and began to travel around the world together. As with almost all long-term travelers, eventually, the money began to run out. They both decided to apply for a job on Facebook but without success. Disappointed, but with a newfound drive they came up with the idea for a new communication app, WhatsApp.

When Was WhatsApp Launched 

Alongside hundreds of thousands of other users, Jan Koum bought himself a shiny, new iPhone in January 2009. Within months, Koum realized the vast potential that the newly launched App Store held. Initially, the plan was to launch an app that allowed users to display statuses next to their names. Koum and Acton discussed the idea but realized they needed assistance.

WhatsApp 1.0

In steps Alex Fishman. Alex was able to share a variety of insights with the duo, including that the idea was definitely worthwhile investigating but without the assistance of a professional iOS developer it wasn’t going to get off the ground. Alex introduced the pair to such a developer Igor Solomennikov who had posted a profile on RentACoder.com.

Just a few weeks later, Koum had managed to get WhatsApp 1.0 developed, and WhatsApp inc was incorporated in California on 24th February 2009. 

Why name it WhatsApp? Simply because it sounds like “What’s Up?”, is an app, and effectively asked for the status of the person. 

Initial feedback wasn’t great. Friends, Fishman, and others said that the app didn’t offer much, drained their batter

The Genesis of WhatsApp

The WhatsApp saga begins with Brian Acton and Jan Koum, two software engineers who first crossed paths at Yahoo! They both spent nearly a decade working at Yahoo! and became good friends during their tenure. When they eventually resigned from their positions in 2007, they decided to take a year off to travel around South America, using their savings to fund their escapades.

After their hiatus, the duo sought new opportunities. 

They both applied to Facebook, believing they could lend their extensive technical expertise to the social media giant. To their surprise, they were rejected, a setback that came at a time when their savings were running low. However, as often happens, this rejection turned out to be a disguised opportunity.

In January 2009, Jan Koum purchased an iPhone. Browsing through the App Store, which was only a few months old, he saw vast potential. Koum had the idea of creating an app that displayed statuses next to individual users' names, a sort of "away message" that was popular in the early days of instant messaging. This eureka moment would eventually lead to the creation of WhatsApp.

WhatsApp 1.0 and early challenges

The first version of WhatsApp launched in May 2009. Koum's original concept was to create an application that allowed users to display their Status to their contacts - statuses such as "At Work," "Battery about to die," or "Can't talk in a meeting."

He chose the name 'WhatsApp' because it resembled the casual greeting "What's up," fitting the concept of statuses. 

However, developing WhatsApp was challenging too. Koum struggled to get the code right, and the app kept crashing multiple times. On top of that, they faced user adoption issues as some of Koum's friends whom he had asked to test the app weren't initially enthusiastic about it. Facing problems like battery drainage and app crashes, Koum

Ukrainian-born American entrepreneur, co-founder of WhatsApp

In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Borisovich and the family name is Kum.

Jan Borysovych Koum (born 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. According to Forbes, he has an estimated net worth of US$15.2 billion as of October 2023, making him one of the richest people in the world. Koum was ranked 44th on the Forbes' list of richest Americans in 2023 with a net worth of $15.1 billion.

Early life

Yan Borysovych Koum was born in Kyiv, then in the Ukrainian SSR, on February 24, 1976 into a Jewish family. He grew up in Fastiv. In 1992, at the age of 16, he moved with his mother and grandmother to Mountain View, California. A social support program helped the family get a small two-bedroom apartment there. His father had intended to join the family later, but he never left Ukraine and died in 1997. Koum and his mother remained in touch with his father until his death. At first, his mother worked as a babysitter while he worked as a cleaner at a grocery store. His mother died in 2000 after a long battle with cancer.

Career

By the age of 18, Koum had become interested in computer programming. He enrolled at San Jose State University and simultaneously worked at Ernst & Young as a security tester. He also joined w00w00, a computer security think tank started in 1996, where he met future Napster creators Shawn Fanning and Jordan Ritter.

In 1997, Koum met Brian Acton while working at Ernst & Young. Later that year, he was hired by Yahoo! as an infrastructure e