What does WhatsApp creator look like? He has Russian roots!

The WhatsApp application has been around for more than 10 years: it was launched in 2009, and then no one could have imagined that in a short time the whole world would not imagine its life without this messenger. Who had the brilliant idea to create it?

And she came to Jan Kum, originally from the USSR, who was born in a small village near Kyiv, Ukraine. Jan was the only child in the family of a housewife and builder. He grew up in spartan conditions: without electricity or hot water in the house.

When Kumu was 16, he emigrated to the United States with his mother – after the collapse of the USSR, the situation in the country was turbulent. Alas, my father could not move to the United States, and in 1997 he passed away. The misfortunes did not end there: Yang’s mother was diagnosed with cancer and in 2000, despite her best efforts, she died.

Koum was fascinated by computer technology and after high school he entered the University of San Jose, and also got a job in the information security department of Ernst & Young. Then there were seven years of work at Yahoo, and in 2009 Yang failed an interview for a job at a major social network.

It turned out that everything was for a reason. Very quickly, Kum buys his first iPhone: he feels that this device has potential, then the idea of ​​the application comes to his mind. Afterwards, Kum often visited his Russian friend Alex Fishman, to whom he explained his achievements. He wanted to create an application in which he could put a status like “Busy”, “At work”, “Call back” to all the contacts who are cluttered in the phonebook.

Koum quickly came up with the name WhatsApp – a reference to the question “How are you?” (What’s new?). On February 24, 2009, a week after his birthday, Yang founded WhatsApp Inc. At first, only a few dozen people used the app – mostly local Russians who knew Kum.

A month later, Ian was already ready to give up, seeing that the WhatsApp idea wasn’t working. However, Kum then added an update, and now when the user changed the status (e.g. to “I can’t speak, I’m in the hallway”), the app notified all of its contacts. Fishman and Kuma’s Russian friends started jokingly informing the contacts of their every step – “I ate”, “I’m already on my way”, “I’m in the gym”.

“At some point, WhatsApp became a means of communication. We started using it to ask, “Hey, how are you?” And someone replied immediately, “recalls Fishman. In the meantime, Jan realized that he had created a practical messenger. Version 2.0 quickly resonated with users, and soon there were 250,000 already. Well, then you know. On February 19, 2014, the company run by Mark Zuckerberg bought WhatsApp for a record $19 billion.

Read also: Orgies, drugs and slavery: Playboy bunnies tell the horrors of Hugh Hefner’s mansion

Photo: Getty Images, YouTube