He had lived in rags and stumbled from failure to failure but with no loss of enthusiasm in order for him to move out from food stamps to $19Billion deal. Even though things might not go according to plan or turn out as expected, do not lose hope and do not accept defeat; rather persevere and work even harder. Success is the eventual reward of consistency and tenacity!
Until 24 hours ago, WhatsApp founder Jan Koum and his business partner Brian Acton were relatively unknown outside Silicon Valley tech circles. Now they are being discussed worldwide as California’s latest billionaires.
The internet is alive with the news that Mr Koum, 37, and Mr Acton, 42, have sold WhatsApp to Facebook for $19bn (£11.4bn). In fact, before founding WhatsApp, both men were actually turned down for jobs at Facebook.
‘Appreciate communication’
Ukrainian Mr Koum emigrated to the US at the age of 16 with his mother, to escape “the political and anti-Semitic environment”, according to Forbes. His childhood in the Ukraine was a seminal influence on the creation of WhatsApp, according to investor Jim Goetz. The service, with its emphasis on messaging privacy, was influenced by “growing up in a communist country with a secret police”, Mr Goetz said in a blog post. “Jan’s childhood made him appreciate communication that was not bugged or taped,” Mr Goetz wrote.
When he arrived in the US, Mr Koum and his mother lived on food stamps, Mr Goetz added.
Mr Koum met Mr Acton in 1997 (his father had died in the same year. He credits Acton with reaching out and offering support, “he would invite me to his house,”) and the two became friends while they were both working at Yahoo. Koum’s mother died of cancer in 2000 the young Ukrainian was suddenly alone.
Mr Acton’s background was somewhat different from Mr Koum’s – his adoptive father had attempted a career in golf, and his mother ran an air-freight business, according to Wired UK.
By 2007, both men had become disillusioned with their employer, and had developed an intense antipathy to advertising, a central plank of Yahoo’s business model.
“No-one wakes up excited to see more advertising, no-one goes to sleep thinking about the ads they’ll see tomorrow,” Mr Koum said in a 2012 blog post.
They left Yahoo to unwind and follow other opportunities, leading to Mr Koum setting up WhatsApp in 2009.
Mr Acton joined the company in November of that year after a failed job hunt, which included rejections from both Twitter and Facebook.
But the California-based software engineer took the knockback from Twitter with good humour, tweeting: “Got denied by Twitter HQ. That’s ok. Would have been a long commute.”
And when he also failed to get a job with Facebook, he took it graciously, tweeting: “Facebook turned me down. It was a great opportunity to connect with some fantastic people. Looking forward to life’s next adventure.”
Silicon Valley maverick
Despite WhatsApp’s emphasis on social messaging, Mr Koum has been opposed to much of what makes Silicon Valley tick. Rather than embracing self-promotion, marketing, an advertising-funded business model and an eye for a fast buck, Mr Koum has gone in the opposite direction.
“Next person to call me an entrepreneur is getting punched in the face by my bodyguard. Seriously,” he tweeted in May 2012. “People starting companies for a quick sale are a disgrace to the valley,” he said in a later tweet. Some might say that just five years after starting, 450 million users and 50 employees later, the deal with Facebook would constitute a “quick sale”.
Just don’t call Mr Koum an entrepreneur.
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Sometimes things don’t work out because that is not where/how we are supposed to be. Or probably because going a certain route would limit our potential. Think about it, If Brian & Jan had been accepted at Facebook in 2009, there would be no WhatsApp today!
Whatever it is you are doing, keep working hard at it regardless of how bleak the future might seem and hopefully you will see the light at the end of tunnel soon enough
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