Meet people, teenagers who immigrated to us, once swept the floor and later co-created one of the most popular apps, his net worth is…

Imagine leaving your country at the age of 16, sweeping the floor on foreign lands to make ends meet, and finding one of the most popular technology products known to mankind. This is an incredible story of Jan Koum, a Ukrainian-born Jew who co-founded a service that identifies more than 2 billion people every day. Keep reading to learn more about him.

Personal life
Jan Borysovych Koum, 49, was born in 1976 in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. A child, Koum, moved to the mountain view of California, USA with his mother in 1992. His father once lived in Ukraine, and his father died five years later in 1997. Coom’s mother died three years later and left his orphan in his 20s.
In his early days, Coom worked in a grocery store and relied on food stamps to support himself.

Technical career
Koum enrolled in San Jose State University but dropped out to seek career opportunities. His first good job was working as a safety tester in Ernst and Young. In 1997, he moved to Yahoo! As an infrastructure engineer, I worked there for nearly a decade. The turning point in Coomb’s life was when he founded WhatsApp at the age of 33, a pioneering instant messaging app that has become the most popular domain name in the world. The product was acquired by Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook in 2014 for $22 billion. As of early 2025, WhatsApp has more than 2 billion (20 billion) of users in more than 180 countries.

Take a risk later
In 2018, Koum resigned as CEO of WhatsApp and also announced his decision to withdraw from Facebook’s board of directors.
He now invests through his New Zealand-NYC. Despite building one of the most popular apps of all time, Koum is known to keep a low profile, mostly avoiding media attention.

net worth
According to Forbes magazine’s estimates, Coomb has a net worth of $16.6 billion, ranking him the richest in the world.