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JAN KOUM
At 16, Jan Koum left a poor home in Ukraine to seek a better future in the
United States. He specialized in computers and two decades later, after selling
the mobile application WhatsApp he created with a friend, this "geek"
entrepreneur became a billionaire.
The 38-year-old entrepreneur's fairy tale began near Kiev, where he was born
into a very poor Jewish family. To escape the anti-Semitic repression of the
Ukrainian police, he and his mother emigrated to California when he was 16,
without his father being able to accompany them.
Jan Koum learned about computers and was trained on the Internet by buying
manuals from a used book store. He began studying at a university in Silicon
Valley and was working for a computer security company when he met Brian
Acton in 1997, with whom he would later found WhatsApp. At that time, Acton
was working for Yahoo!
In the first half of 2016, Koum sold more than $2.4 billion worth of Facebook
stock, which was about half of his total funds. It is estimated to still own another
$2.4 billion in Facebook stock.
A los 16 años Jan Koum dejó un hogar pobre en Ucrania para buscar un futuro
mejor en Estados Unidos. Se especializó en informática y dos décadas
después, tras la venta de la aplicación móvil WhatsApp que creó con un amigo,
este empresario "friki" se convirtió en un multimillonario.