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WhatsApp Founder lived on foodstamps, was rejected by Facebook
Today
Jan Koum, the founder of WhatsApp, may be worth $6.8 billion, but things
weren't always so good. He was once rejected for a job by Facebook. He and his
family lived on food stamps. He also dropped out of college.
ABC news reported Koum will turn 38 on Monday. He and Brian
Acton, a former co-worker at Yahoo, created the mobile instant messenger
application. Facebook just purchased the app for $19 billion. Reportedly, Koum
still owns 45% of the company. That would give him a worth of $19 billion.
He
and his mother immigrated to the United States from the Ukraine when he was 16
and had to rely on food stamps for survival. After studying computer science at
San Jose University, he dropped out.
His
father died in 1997. His mother died in 2000.
Koum
and Acton left Yahoo in 2007. They traveled around South America. Koum was
using a lot of his $400,000 in savings he obtained from Yahoo.
Koum
wasn't the only one to be rejected by Facebook. Acton also was denied a job
there when he applied.
"Facebook
turned me down. It was a great opportunity to connect with some fantastic
people. Looking forward to life's next adventure," Koum tweeted in 2009.
Koum
bought an iPhone in in January 2009. He and others created the app to show
status messages next to friends in their address books. They app went on to
become a mobile messaging system that gained 450 million monthly users. The
company will still operate separately from Facebook with its 55 employees.
"Got
denied by Twitter HQ. That's ok. Would have been a long commute," Koum
once tweeted about another job he was denied, according to USA Today.
According
to the website, businessinsider.com, Koum's family picked up their food
stamps when they were younger at an office only about two blocks away from his
current company in Mountain View, California.
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