Jan Koum (nama asli Ян Кум (baca: Yan Kum) datang ke Amerika dari Ukraine saat dia baru berusia 16 tahun. Keluarganya kesulitan untuk memenuhi kebutuhan hidup sehingga mereka terpaksa hidup dari food stamps atau kupon makanan (program pemerintah) yang mereka kumpulkan dari jalanan. Saat itu Jan bekerja sebagai tukang bersih-bersih di toko swalayan.
Setelah saya hitung, nama Yan Kum dengan tanggal lahirnya memberi angka Synchronicity 1.0 !!! Luar biasa beruntung. Umur 18 tahun, Jan mulai tertarik dengan bahasa pemrograman dan berhasil diterima bekerja di Ernst & Young sebagai penguji keamanan. Setelah itu dia dipekerjakan oleh Yahoo selama sembilan tahun. Di tahun 2009, Jan membeli sebuah iPhone dan menyadari bahwa aplikasi smartphone akan booming dan jadi hal besar di kemudian hari. Maka dia dan temannya mulai membuat aplikasi WhatsApp yang akhirnya dibeli Facebook seharga Rp.252 triliun.
Jan Koum
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Jan Koum | |
|---|---|
| Native name | Ян Кум |
| Born | February 24, 1976 Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Alma mater | San Jose State University(dropped out) |
| Occupation | CEO of WhatsApp & Managing Director in Facebook, Inc. |
| Years active | 2009–present |
| Organization | WhatsApp Inc. |
| Known for | Co-founded WhatsApp |
| Home town | Fastiv, Ukraine |
| Net worth |  US$8.8 billion (September 2015)[1] |
Jan Koum (Ukrainian: Ян Кум; born February 24, 1976) is an American internet entrepreneur and computer engineer. He is theCEO and co-founder with Brian Acton of WhatsApp, a mobile messaging application which was acquired by Facebook Inc. in February 2014 for US$19 Billion.[2][3][4]
In 2014, he entered the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans at position 62, with an estimated worth of more than seven and half billion dollars. He was the highest-ranked newcomer to the list that year.[5]
Life and career[edit]
Koum was born in Kyiv, Ukraine. He is Jewish.[6] He grew up in Fastiv, outside Kyiv, and moved with his mother and grandmother toMountain View, California in 1992,[7] where a social support program helped the family to get a small two-bedroom apartment,[8] at the age of 16. His father had intended to join the family later, but finally remained in Ukraine.[9] At first Koum's mother worked as a babysitter, while he himself worked as a cleaner at a grocery. By the age of 18 he became interested in programming. He enrolled at San Jose State University and simultaneously worked at Ernst & Young as a security tester.[8]
In February 1996, a restraining order was granted against Koum in state court in San Jose, California. An ex-girlfriend detailed incidents in which she said Koum verbally and physically threatened her. In October 2014, Koum said about the restraining order, "I am ashamed of the way I acted, and ashamed that my behavior forced her to take legal action."[10]
In 1997, Jan Koum was hired by Yahoo as an infrastructure engineer, shortly after he met Brian Acton while working at Ernst & Young as a security tester.[8] Over the next nine years, they worked at Yahoo. In September 2007 Koum and Acton left Yahoo and took a year off, traveling around South America and playing ultimate frisbee. Both applied, and failed, to work at Facebook. In January 2009, he bought an iPhone and realized that the then-seven-month-old App Store was about to spawn a whole new industry of apps. He visited his friend Alex Fishman and the two talked for hours about Koum’s idea for an app over tea at Fishman’s kitchen counter.[8] Koum almost immediately chose the name WhatsApp because it sounded like “what’s up,” and a week later on his birthday, Feb. 24, 2009, he incorporated WhatsApp Inc. in California.[8]
WhatsApp became popular in just a small amount of time, and this caught Facebook's attention. Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg first contacted Koum in the spring 2012. The two began meeting at a coffee shop in Los Altos, California, then began a series of dinners and walks in the hills above Silicon Valley.[11]
On February 9, Zuckerberg asked Koum to have dinner at his home, and formally proposed Koum a deal to join the Facebook board.
Trivia[edit]
Jan Koum was part of a group of hackers called w00w00, where he met[8][12] the future founders of Napster, Shawn Fanning and Jordan Ritter.
In November 2014, Koum donated $1,000,000 to The FreeBSD Foundation, and close to $556 million to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF) the same year
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