The Rags-to-Riches Tale of How Jan Koum Built WhatsApp Into Facebook’s New $19 Billion Baby
I only started using WhatsApp a couple of months ago, after a prospective CouchSurfing host in Jakarta asked me if I had it on my mobile. It’s an elegantly simple messaging app — as simple as sending a text, but without incurring your carrier’s SMS fees.
Facebook just bought WhatsApp for $19 billion. Here’s Forbes’ profile of the creator of the app, a Ukrainian emigré who once depended on food stamps.
Jan Koum picked a meaningful spot to sign the $19 billion deal to sell his company WhatsApp to Facebook earlier today. Koum, cofounder Brian Acton and venture capitalist Jim Goetz of Sequoia drove a few blocks from WhatsApp’s discreet headquarters in Mountain View to a disused white building across the railroad tracks, the former North County Social Services office where Koum, 37, once stood in line to collect food stamps. That’s where the three of them inked the agreement to sell their messaging phenom -which brought in a miniscule $20 million in revenue last year — to the world’s largest social network.