Who is Jan Koum? 10 little known facts about WhatsApp’s founder

Unlike Zuckerberg, who thanks to the movie ‘The Social Network’ and his larger than life persona, is a household name, WhatsApp founder Jan Koum is a relatively unknown entity. Koum has worked hard to keep it this way. We tried his Linkedin account and Wikipedia. All we could find was a two-line bio on Wikipedia and a Linkedin profile that is shorter than many people’s visiting card. Not satisfied, we scoured the net and came up with 10 little known facts about Jan Koum.

Meet Jan Koum, the Whatsapp co-founder who recently turned billionaire after Facebook bought Whatsapp for $19 billion.

#1 His full name name is Jan Boris Koum

#2 Koum was born into a Jewish home in Kiev, Ukraine on February 24, 1976

#3 In 1992 when he was 16 he moved to the United States with his mother and grandmother. His father who stayed behind ran a government construction company

#4 Standing at 6’2” with a dark, unshaven look, Koum was living in government-assisted housing and collected Food stamps. In fact, Koum’s family picked up their food stamps only a couple of blocks away from WhatsApp’s offices in Mountain View, Calif., reports Wired’s David Rowan.

#5 He bought his first computer when he was 19

#6 He studied math and computer science at San Jose State University, until he dropped out

#7 His first job was bagging groceries, he also worked at Fry’s Electronics, ISP and at Ernst & Young where he conducted computer security audits

#8 In 1997 Koum got a job interview at Yahoo! after meeting David Filo at an Apache security conference, Koum became security and operations engineering at Yahoo! Inc. Meanwhile, Koum had met Brian Acton while working at Ernst & Young as a security tester. Over the next nine years, they both worked at Yahoo

#9 In September 2007 Koum and Acton left Yahoo and took a year off, traveling around South America and playing ultimate frisbee

#10 Jan Koum and Acton created WhatsApp in February, 2009. Koum almost immediately chose the name WhatsApp because it sounded like “what’s up?”

You can find Jan Koum on Twitter here