When you take the company Whatsapp into consideration the first thing to probably come about is the 19 billion dollar price tag, but the most remarkable aspect of the business comes from the hidden story of Jan Koum's journey to his wealth.
Koum was born and raised in the Ukraine until his teenager years of the 1990's to the United States. Although he was forced to live with government assistance to survive, such as welfare and food stamps, the extremely expensive phone calls back home posed a problem to keep in contact with his family.
Eventually Microsoft's Skype drastically reduced prices of international calls, but Koum's mission was to do the same for text messages on mobile phones.
In his own perspective he feels he "barely passed" high school in mission Viejo, California. He later studied at San Jose state, but eventually dropped out. He then worked as security at Ernst & young and would later become security and operations engineer at Yahoo.
In 2009 he created the Whatsapp which gained 450 million users, and is now gaining around 1 million users a day.
Although his story is extremely remarkable, Koum has been really shy towards the spotlight. He takes few interviews and refuses appearances on shows. His CEO title isn't even listed on his social media accounts. He resorts to calling himself a tester and tweet manager instead of the prestigious title he deserves.
Koum owns 45% of the stock and is valued at 7 billion dollars. His story serves to show that although the government served to help him through everyday life, the possibilities to improve are endless.
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