Jan Boris Koum was born on the 24th February 1976 in Kiev, Ukraine, then USSR. Jan is an entrepreneur, best known to the world as a co-founder of the mobile application WhatsApp, together with Brian Acton. He has been active in the business industry since 2009.
Have you ever wondered how rich Jan Koum is? According to sources, it has been estimated that Jan Koum`s overall net worth is $8.9 billion, an amount he owes mostly to the success of WhatsApp, which Facebook bought in 2014 for an amount of $19 billion.
Jan Koum Net Worth $8.9 Billion
Jan Koum was brought up in a Jewish family, and spent his childhood in Fastiv, a village outside Kiev. When he was 16, Jan moved to Mountain View in California, with his mother and grandmother while his father stayed in Ukraine. His family received social support, as they didn’t have a place to live. In order to pay the bills and Koum`s education, his mother began to work as a babysitter, and Koum also wanted to contribute to the family`s net worth and started to earn money as a cleaner at a grocery shop.
Jan never liked the principle on which the school works, and always was against it, but he eventually enrolled at San Jose State University to study computer programming. In addition to his education, he also worked at Ernst & Young as a security tester, which also gave him knowledge about computers, as well as helping his net worth.
Instead of college, as he soon dropped-out of studies, Jan dedicated himself to finding a suitable job, which would enable him to at least earn a decent living; this happened in 1997, when he was hired by Yahoo as an infrastructure engineer, working there for the next nine years. While working at the Ernst & Young he had met Brian Acton, and their friendship extended, as Brian also was hired by Yahoo.
In 2007, the two quit from their jobs at Yahoo, and spent a year travelling across South America, but in 2009, his life changed; as his friend Brian and he got the idea of creating a messaging service app, and they named it WhatsApp, Brian thought it would stick with the public, as it sounded like “what`s up”. The rest is history.
Jan launched WhatsApp firstly in California on the 24th February 2009. In no time WhatsApp has become extremely popular,with the number of people that use its services growing even today, reportedly, over 800 million people use the services that WhatsApp provides.
Jan`s net worth began dramatically to increase following the launch, and the popularity of his app attracted attention from the creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, who started calling Jan for business meetings and friendly dinners. The two slowly built up a friendship, which resulted in a business deal in which Jan would sell the WhatsApp to Zuckerberg for cash and also shares in Facebook. The deal went through in 2014, and it was estimated to be worth around $19 billion in cash and stocks. This increased Jan`s net worth to a large degree, and made it the main source of his net worth.
Furthermore to his partnership with Zuckerberg, Jan has become a member of the Facebook Board of Directors.
Overall, Jan has come a long way from war-troubled Ukraine to become the 3rd richest American entrepreneur in less than 40 years, according to Forbes magazine, it is only certain that his kingdom will continue to grow.
Regarding his personal life, little is known about him in the media other than that he is still single; however, his mother died in 2000.
