It is Possible
Emmanuel Agbachi
CEO @ Windave Digital Skills Academy| Digital Marketing | Business Strategy
Started as a Cleaner but worth $10 Billion now
Co-founder of WhatsApp, Jan Koum is worth over $10 billion now, but life wasn’t always so easy for Koum.
Koum was raised in a town just outside of Kiev for most of his young life until 1992 when he and his mother emigrated to the United States. The family spent the rest of his childhood in a humble 2 bedroom apartment in Mountain View, California which they obtained through a government-run support program.
As a teenager, Koum worked as a cleaner at the local grocery store to support himself and his mother while they struggled financially, living off food stamps and government support. At 18, Koum discovered his passion for technology and taught himself computer networking through the study of manuals.
Koum didn’t have the money to pay for new manuals so he bought them from a used book shop and returned them after he had read them to save money. After a few years of fine-tuning his skills, Koum joined a computer programming group to advance his skills and network with folks of similar interests.
He later went on to San Jose State University for higher education but because of the poor financial state of his family, he had to work part-time security tester at Ernst & Young, where he met Brian Acton, WhatsApp co-founder.
By the time he was in his mid 20’s both his mother died of cancer. Koum faced so much hardships at all almost every stage of his life but he persevered.
After working at Yahoo for approximately 9 years and he teamed up with Koum, and built the application that has not only dominated cloud-based messaging, but is also used all over the world. These two people who had nothing going for them and no real future to look forward to, developed WhatsApp!
And WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook in 2014 for about $19 billion USD in cash and stock, making Acton’s net worth around $3.8 billion. Apparently Koum’s worth in the deal, which is the largest acquisition by the Mark Zuckerberg-led firm, is even bigger than the amount Facebook offered Snapchat. Koum’s deal was worth around $6.8 billion.
This story is a great example of two people who created something out of nothing. What did they have that you don’t have? Was it a positive mindset, was it creativity, and was it the willingness to go the extra mile?
Dear Friend, No matter the challenges you face now, hold firmly to the conviction that if you don’t give up, your challenges will definitely give in.
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