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Jan Koum (Russian: Ян Кум, Ukrainian: Ян Кум; born February 24, 1976) is a Ukrainian American entrepreneur and computer programmer. He is the co-founder and was the CEO of WhatsApp, a mobile messaging application which was acquired by Facebook Inc. in February 2014 for US$19.3 billion.

In 2014, he entered the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans at position 62, with an estimated worth of more than $7.5 billion. He was the highest-ranked newcomer to the list that year
Koum was born in Kyiv, Soviet Union. He is of Jewish origin.[3] He grew up in Fastiv, outside Kyiv, and moved with his mother and grandmother to Mountain View, California in 1992,[4] where a social support program helped the family to get a small two-bedroom apartment,[5] at the age of 16. His father had intended to join the family later, but he never left Ukraine,[6] and died in 1997.[5] Koum and his mother remained in touch with his father until his death.[7] At first Koum's mother worked as a babysitter, while he himself worked as a cleaner at a grocery store. His mother died in 2000 after a long battle with cancer.

By the age of 18 Koum became interested in programming. He enrolled at San Jose State University and simultaneously worked at Ernst & Young as a security tester.[5] He also joined a group of hackers that began in 1996 called w00w00, where he met[5][8] the future founders of Napster, Shawn Fanning and Jordan Ritter.

In February 1996, a restraining order was granted against Koum in state court in San Jose, California. An ex-girlfriend detailed incidents in which she said Koum verbally and physically threatened her. In October 2014, Koum said about the restraining order, "I am ashamed of the way I acted and ashamed that my behavior forced her to take legal action".[9]

In 1997, Koum met Brian Acton while working at Ernst & Young as a security tester
In January 2009, Koum bought an iPhone and realized that the then seven-month-old App Store was about to spawn a whole new industry of apps. He visited his friend Alex Fishman and the two talked for hours about Koum's idea for an app over tea at Fishman's kitchen counter.[5] Koum almost immediately chose the name WhatsApp because it sounded like "what's up", and a week later on his birthday, February 24, 2009, he incorporated WhatsApp Inc. in California.[5]

WhatsApp was initially unpopular, but its fortunes began to turn after Apple added push notification ability to apps in June 2009. Koum changed WhatsApp to "ping" users when they received a message, and soon afterwards he and Fishman's Russian friends in the area began to use WhatsApp as a messaging tool, in place of SMS.[5] The app gained a large user base, and Koum convinced Acton, who was then still unemployed, to join the company. Koum granted Acton co-founder status after Acton managed to bring in $250,000 in seed funding.[5]

On February 9, 2014 Zuckerberg asked Koum to have dinner at his home, and formally proposed Koum a deal to join the Facebook board. 10 days later Facebook announced that it was acquiring WhatsApp for US$19 billion.[10][11][12][13][14]

Over the first half of 2016, Koum sold more than $2.4 billion worth of Facebook stock, which was about a half of his total holdings. He is estimated to still own another $2.4 billion worth of Facebook stock.[15]

On April 30, 2018, Koum announced that he was leaving WhatsApp and stepping down from Facebook's board of directors due to disputes with Facebook.[16] It was originally thought that by leaving he was forfeiting his unvested stock, worth almost $1 billion.[17] However, several months later it was discovered that he was still formally employed by Facebook, earning a reported $450 million in stocks from the company through a method called "rest and vest
In November 2014, Koum donated one million dollars to The FreeBSD Foundation, and close to $556 million to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF) the same year.[22] In December 2016, Jan Koum donated another 500 thousand dollars to The FreeBSD Foundatio

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