A lot can happen in few years. You can go from the vice president of engineering for
Yahoo,to a guy looking for a job at Facebook, to a startup founder, to a guy that just sold
that startup to Facebook for a jaw-dropping $19 billion.
Facebook and was rejected. Here's his sad-but-hopeful tweet.
Who are they?
Jan Koum is from the Ukraine and moved to Mountain View (California) when he was 16 years old.
His family was financially challenged and they had to live of food stamps. It was not before he
was 19 that he owned his first computer. Koum was part of the famous hackers network called
w00w00, where other famous tech entrepreneurs Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning were also part of.
Koum went to San Jose State University to study math and computer science, he would
eventually drop out after David File, a co-founder of Yahoo!, convinced him to work for him. Before
dropping out of college he worked for Ernst and Young as a security tester.
Brian Acton grew up in central Florida and went to two different universities before graduating from Stanford
University in 1994 with a degree in computer sciences. After getting his degree he started working for Apple
as a software engineer. It was in 1996 that he started working for Yahoo! as the 44th employee. Acton began
as a software engineer, focussing on Advertising and Data Processing.
How they met
Koum met Acton while he was working for Ernst & Young as a security tester and was assigned to inspect Yahoo!’s
advertising system. Acton recalls that he found Koum to be very different from the other Ernst and Young people,
he was more straight forward.
It turned out Koum liked Acton’s no-nonsense style: “Neither of us has an ability to bullshit,” says Koum.
Six months later Koum interviewed at Yahoo! and got a job as a software engineer. During their time at Yahoo
their friendship grew and by 2007 they both quit their jobs and traveled through South-America and played
ultimate frisbee.
Koum came up with the idea for WhatsApp in 2009 during a movie night at a friends place.
It started out as an idea to send notifications to friends, but soon evolved to an instant messaging app. Acton got
involved after a match of ultimate frisbee. Koum was telling Acton that he thought about giving up and wanted look
for steady job. Acton replied by saying
“You’d be an idiot to quit now. Give it a few more months.”
Koum and Acton wanted WhatsApp to be different, they did not seek attention and didn’t even have a sign at their
office. Both men share a passion for hating advertisement and Jan even has a note from Brian on his desk
saying “No Ads! No Games! No Gimmicks”. It makes sure that the WhatsApp keeps it focus on its core functionality,
messaging.
Im a Software Engineer from Tanzania specializin in Web developer, design , programming web applications.