Jan Koum
Jan Koum
Jan Koumis a Ukrainian-American internet inventor and computer programmer. He is the CEO and co-founder of WhatsApp, a mobile messaging application which was acquired by Facebook Inc. in February 2014 for US$19 Billion...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth24 February 1976
CountryUnited States of America
want wells one-thing
I want to do one thing, and do it well.
familiar grew kid movies quite watched
Ironically, I grew up watching Indian movies as a kid in Russia. I am quite familiar with Bollywood. I grew up watching 'Disco Dancer;' I watched it some 20 times as a kid.
ads advertising bad chatting device putting
Our phones are so intimately connected to us, to our lives. Putting advertising on a device like that is a bad idea. You don't want to be interrupted by ads when you're chatting with your loved ones.
calls companies expensive family kid navigate phone trying
When I was a kid trying to communicate with family in the Soviet Union, it was very difficult. You had to go through the long-distance phone companies like MCI, which were difficult to navigate and expensive to make calls through.
ad came faucet flipped switch turned watch
Utilities get out of the way. Can you imagine if you flipped a light switch and had to watch an ad before you got electricity? Can you imagine if you turned on a faucet and had to watch an ad before the water came out?
build continue
I only have one idea, that is WhatsApp, and I am going to continue to focus on that. I have no plans to build any other ideas.
anybody build great next sell
Anybody can build a company and sell the company the next day. That doesn't make you special, it doesn't make you unique, it doesn't make you all that great.
adding bringing engineers features fixing interested ironing phone reliable simply spend task time
At WhatsApp, our engineers spend all their time fixing bugs, adding new features and ironing out all the little intricacies in our task of bringing rich, affordable, reliable messaging to every phone in the world. That's our product, and that's our passion. Your data isn't even in the picture. We are simply not interested in any of it.
communication society
Communication is at the very core of our society. That's what makes us human.
coming growing immigrant itself later life reflects shape youth
A lot of what I experienced growing up in the U.S.S.R. and coming to the U.S. as an immigrant actually reflects itself in Whatsapp. Experiences from our youth shape what we do later in life.
chance education focus gave life living positives soviet
There were a lot of negatives, of course, but there were positives to living a life unfettered by possessions. It gave us the chance to focus on education, which was very important in the Soviet Union.
advertising code collect disruption insults intelligence personal portion sells spends train
Advertising isn't just the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought. At every company that sells ads, a significant portion of their engineering team spends their day tuning data mining, writing better code to collect all your personal data.