For $19 billion. In January of this year, the Messenger team moved to the Facebook campus and settled in a “quiet zone”, behind doors with a sign that said “Keep Noise to a Minimum.” WhatsApp CEO and co-founder Jan Koum talks about why the company's employees love silence and how being focused on purpose has helped it reach 1.3 billion users.
WhatsApp engineers work best when they are free from distractions. “We are not a typical team,” Koum commented. “We are older and grouchier than the typical college graduate, so we prefer to work in silence.”
A quiet environment helps you concentrate on tasks, and concentration is what WhatsApp values above all else. Even the painting of San Francisco Bay that hangs in the office has a theme of focus, employees say.
These icons hang in the WhatsApp office. Photo: WhatsApp
The focus on the main thing is felt in the messenger itself. “The company's culture is tied to what we do,” Koum explained. “We always wanted to make a simple, effective product that can work without a broadband connection and uses little battery power.”
Even before Facebook bought the messenger, more than 450 million people used it every month. Two years later, the number of monthly users reached one billion, and now it is 1.3 billion, with one billion using WhatsApp daily. Every day, users send 55 billion messages, 4.5 billion photos and 1 billion videos. The application is available in 60 languages. It is especially popular in India, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and Russia.
“The main thing is that this growth is organic,” Koum said. - We didn't use any growth hacks. We were just constantly thinking about what strengthens our network.” According to him, the company's goal is to ensure that every person who has a smartphone uses WhatsApp.
Small teams with big goals
Koum admits that the original idea came from Snapchat, but believes that WhatsApp didn't just copy it. Initially, WhatsApp itself was an updated text status, and only then became a messenger. “Images tell a story better than text,” Koum said. - And video in this regard is an even more powerful tool. Essentially, we added to the application updated version status, which was invented in 2009."
Surely everyone who considers himself an advanced smartphone user knows what WhatsApp is. This is a mobile application that is designed for quick communication with acquaintances and friends over long distances. More than 50 million SMS messages are sent every day through this application, but hardly anyone thinks about who is the creator of this program, convenient in all respects. If you are interested in this, then we will tell you his name - this is Jan Koum - an American talented programmer who today is the co-founder and director of the WhatsApp messenger and the second person in the Facebook empire.
Jan Koum: biography
It turns out that the American programmer is a native of the USSR. He was born in the small village of Fastov (today an urban village), which is located near the capital of Ukraine, the city of Kyiv. His family was not rich, one might even say living below the poverty line. My mother never worked and was a housewife, and my father worked as a laborer at a construction site. Yang was the only child in his family, which had Jewish roots (like the famous Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg). In 1992, after the collapse of the USSR and the fall of the Iron Curtain, their family (father, mother, grandmother and Ian himself), like many members of their nation living in the USSR, decided to emigrate to the United States of America and settle in the small town of Mountain View. Arriving in the United States, the future founder of WhatsApp, Jan Koum, continued his studies at a local high school, and in parallel with his studies, he began working as a cleaner in a store. After all, it was necessary to exist somehow. In a foreign country, the mother of the family became seriously ill and found herself incapacitated. Fortunately, she began receiving government sickness benefits. In this regard, they were also given a small apartment. Despite the fact that the state was favorable to their family, young Ian was very depressed by the coldness of the Americans, because he was accustomed to warm and friendly relations with the Ukrainians. The family, as during their life in the USSR, lived poorly on American soil, and nothing foreshadowed that Ian would become a billionaire in 20 years.
Carier start
In 1997, the father of the Kum family died, and all care of the women (mother and grandmother) fell on Jan’s shoulders. Despite its small size, Mountain View was a great place to create innovative technology projects. When Ian was 19 years old, he got his first computer, which interested him very much. Since then, he constantly learned new things, studied well, and was interested in Computer techologies, he was interested in programming. He was self-taught in many matters, rented textbooks and “greedily” acquired new knowledge. After school, he entered the University of San Jose, but continued to work part-time here and there. In his soul he cherished the dream that he would be able to get out of poverty, and would never again be in need, as in childhood and youth. This desire spurred him on to be one step ahead of his peers, to never stop there. One day he became part of a group of hackers who were engaged in serious hacking of the servers of famous companies. Having extensive computer knowledge, he easily found work, and one day, at such part-time jobs, the young man met one of the employees social network Facebook by B. Acton. He noticed the potential of young Jan Koum and got him a job at Yahoo.
New perspectives
Search engine Yahoo system at that time it was one of the most serious and largest Internet companies. Many people dreamed of working here. Of course, Jan Koum was truly lucky to be lucky enough to get into such an organization as a security and infrastructure engineer. He even dropped out of university because he spent most of his time in the company. Thanks to this, Kum gained a wealth of experience, learned a lot of useful things about the Internet industry, and made acquaintances who later became his investors.
Black line
Soon grief fell on the Kum family: his mother died. At the same time, his good friend, who had already turned into a friend, Bryon Acton, the same one who got him a job at Yahoo, lost his savings. And then friends - Jan Koum and Acton - decided to leave Yahoo. During the period of work, Ian managed to amass a small fortune of half a million dollars. With that kind of money he could go without work for some time. He wanted to get a job at Facebook, but they didn’t hire him. Of course, this left the young man confused, and he still could not understand what to do next.
The first iPhone
In 2009, he accidentally bought an iPhone for himself. And then the idea of creating applications for mobile phones was born. Among his few friends was the excellent programmer Igor Solomenchikov. He met him during a meeting of emigrants from the USSR. And so he came to Igor with his idea, and together they decided to bring it to life. Here is the answer to the question of many: how did Jan Koum come up with WhatsApp? Of course, initially he didn’t quite imagine what exactly it would be and what it would be called, but he knew for sure that thanks to this application people would be able to communicate quickly, and this communication would take place through a number that would be linked to a smartphone.
The application that Jan Koum invented was called “Whatsapp” completely by accident. From English this expression is translated as “What’s the matter?” And the word App in modern slang means “application”. A few months later, WhatsApp was included in App Store, however, it did not become popular then. The godfather was very upset and even in despair, because his expectations were practically not met. At one point he decided that he should give up everything and leave.
Success
Once again he was helped by chance. Appeared in Apple smartphones new feature push notifications in iOS. Jan Koum immediately took advantage of this and added the same function to WhatsApp. Thanks to this, users of this application could share their statuses with friends. And this meant: Jan Koum, who invented WhatsApp, made a real breakthrough in this area, namely, he created a full-fledged messenger. It was soon downloaded by about half a million users, and the project began to develop at a rapid pace. Every day, downloads began to grow, and the subscriber base began to be replenished with more and more new users.
Development
The more people started using this application, the more investments needed to be made. It was necessary to pay the operators mobile communications, so it was decided to make the application paid. Jan Koum came to this decision. WhatsApp was supposed to cost very little - just $1. Of course, there were people who didn’t like it, but the number of people willing grew and the profits grew.
Big success
According to statistics, at the very beginning of 2013, the WhatsApp application was installed by 200 million users! It became free again. After that social Facebook network, which once denied Kum a job, expressed a desire to buy the WhatsApp application from him for 16 (in some sources 19 billion) billion dollars. The Irony of Fate! By the way, this deal was one of the largest in the history of the Internet industry. Today Koum is the second most influential person at Facebook after Zuckreberg himself. At the end of 2014, Koum donated one million dollars to the Free BSD project. In the entire history of this project, there has never been a donation of this magnitude. It exceeded its annual budget. Jan Koum has been using FreeBSD for over 10 years, both at Yahoo and on the WhatsApp server infrastructure.
State
The name of Jan Koum is often included in the ratings of such famous magazines as Forbes. He is a real businessman - “self-made”. He is the founder of the WhatsApp messenger. After that, his fortune was estimated at 9.2 billion US dollars. However, after the sale of the WhatsApp application to Facebook, his fortune can be said to have doubled and today is estimated at 15.8 billion.
Jan Koum: personal life
Today, one of the richest people on the planet, Jan Borisovich Kum, is among the most desirable bachelors in the world. Of course, he has a girlfriend, and what a girlfriend! However, as long as there is no marriage stamp in his passport, all potential brides on the planet can still cherish hopes of falling in love with this sought-after groom. Who is considered the lady of his heart today? Of course, this is no ordinary girl. She is a famous top model, who, before winning the heart of the founder of WhatsApp, was “without 5 minutes” the daughter-in-law of the richest man in Ukraine, Rinat Akhmetov (Tatar), as she was engaged to his son Damir. Her name is Evelina Mambetova. She is a citizen of Ukraine, born and raised in Crimea, and is Tatar by nationality. Damir gave his future wife a penthouse in London worth £135 million. Nevertheless, she left him. Jan Koum and Evelina Mambetova met in Kyiv in 2013. This was precisely the period when he, having sold WhatsApp to the social network Facebook for $19 billion, became the richest person from Ukraine, beating that same Rinat Akhmetov. Evelina is a very smart girl. She quickly realized what prospects awaited her. In order to match her chosen one, she entered Oxford to study law. He continues to give her original, expensive gifts. For example, by his order, the creative director of the Mulberry brand, Emma Hill, created a line of Evelina handbags in honor of Evelina.
As a conclusion
Jan Koum is certainly one of the luckiest businessmen in the world, who made his fortune on his own, without any help. As a child, he saw many financial and domestic difficulties. My father passed away early, my mother fell ill with cancer, was ill for a long time and died. All these difficulties strengthened the young man, who decided that he had to get out of poverty and live his life with dignity, which he certainly succeeded. His example should serve as an incentive for many young men who find themselves in difficult life situations not to despair, but to gain knowledge and move forward. By the way, he never graduated from the university, because at the beginning of his career, Ian decided that his studies were interfering with his work, and began self-development. Of course, he did not succeed in everything with ease; he encountered obstacles on his way, but they did not break him, but made him stronger and moved him forward. If you remember so much how Facebook initially refused to hire him as an employee, and then bought the application he created from him, as a result of which he became the second person in the company after Zuckerberg. He was also very lucky to have a mentor friend, Baryon Acton, because he always supported him even in moments of disappointment, when he wanted to quit everything and do something more tangible.
The popular WhatsApp messenger originally belonged to WhatsApp Inc., which was founded by American entrepreneurs Jan Koum and Brian Actom. The head office was located in the USA in the small city of Mountain View, California.
In what year did WhatsApp appear?
The company was founded on February 24, 2009, the same date is considered the birthday of the first line of code of the application, which has not yet become a messenger. The program's ability to exchange messages between users was created in the summer of 2009. WhatsApp quickly became popular thanks to its simple and user-friendly interface. In just 3 years, the number of WhatsApp users exceeded 100 million people, and by 2015 the number of installations on Android devices increased to 1 billion. Initially, the application was paid and cost about $1, but from February 18, 2016, the fee for use was completely removed and the user pays only for Internet traffic.
When did WhatsApp appear in Russia?
The appearance of WhatsApp in Russia can be equated to the date of appearance of the messenger in the online stores AppStore and Google Play. Since the application appeared in stores almost immediately after its creation, it was presented in Russia at the same time.
Who owns WhatsApp now?
On February 19, 2014, information appeared about the purchase of WhatsApp by Facebook. It was assumed that the company would buy the license for the messenger partly in cash and partly in shares. Thus, starting in 2014, Facebook became the owner of the WhatsApp license.
How much did they sell WhatsApp to Facebook for?
The deal to buy WhatsApp by Facebook was initially worth $16 billion. Moreover, 4 billion of this amount will be paid in cash, and the rest will be purchased in the form of shares. In addition, the agreement provided for the transfer of shares worth 3 billion to employees of WhatsApp Inc. within 4 years after its acquisition by Facebook. As a result, the purchase amount became 19 billion. However, the value of the shares as of October 7, 2014 increased, due to which the purchase amount increased to $22 billion.
A motivating article that talks about the creator of WhatsApp and the path he had to go through to achieve success!
Today, everyone probably already knows what the WhatsApp mobile program is and what they eat it with! 🙂
I am sure that every second person (who, of course, has mobile phone with some bells and whistles) - have already downloaded the WhatsApp mobile application for quick communication with your friends.
Every day we send about 50 million SMS through this application and don’t even think about how this program was created and who its founders are!
So, who is Jan Koum?
Jan Kum is a native of Ukraine, who is the creator of this WhatsApp mobile application! He is the second most influential person on Facebook after M. Zuckerberg.
Let's take a closer look:
How could an ordinary programmer Jan Koum achieve such success?
And it all began...
Ian was born outside Kiev, in a small town called Fastov.
He grew up in a poor family: his mother was a housewife, his father was an ordinary construction worker.
There were moments in their family when their house was completely left without heating and electricity - there was no money to pay, they survived as best they could.
According to Jan Koum, it was this bitter life experience that helped him become stronger and achieve dizzying success in the future!
His family was forced to emigrate to the USA because they had Jewish roots...
Moving to the USA
Thanks to some social program, the Kuma family received a small apartment from the state.
WhatsApp success
The WhatsApp mobile application is an ordinary simple program that was created from scratch and shot to the skies - making its creators billionaires with a capital B!
These were the people who simply dreamed of making a high-quality product that was user-friendly!
Be sure to watch this interesting video,
where do you get it useful information O mobile application whatsapp
Simplicity and only its most necessary functions - that’s what the developers of the WhatsApp mobile messenger relied on.
In the world of high technology, you don’t always need to reinvent the wheel; sometimes it’s enough just to understand what the user really needs...
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