8 ms·

Didn't he have a job, for many years, at Yahoo, before starting WhatsApp? Didn't his co-founder also exit Yahoo with what most Americans would consider a craplo

by plg 13y ago

Didn't he have a job, for many years, at Yahoo, before starting WhatsApp? Didn't his co-founder also exit Yahoo with what most Americans would consider a crapload of cash? (an amount one would think of when one thinks of winning a lottery)? I appreciate that he started WhatsApp from scratch but this picture that is being painted of him as some sort of homeless street person is rather warped, don't you think? As if a former Yahoo technical engineer with a similarly qualified best buddy who has a crapload of cash, both of whom live in Silicon Valley, and have (I assume) plenty of other buddies in the industry, is somehow "starting from scratch from nothing". The vast, vast majority of Americans should be so lucky to have the "nothing" that they had. Not to mention the rest of the earth's population. The real truth isn't so much a story of "the poor getting rich" but really, "the rich getting super rich".

danso 13y ago
> For Koum, 38, the windfall would stand in stark contrast to his years as a teenager, when his family relied on food stamps after emigrating from Ukraine. The experience of living in a country where phone lines were often tapped, instilled the importance of privacy in him, said Jim Goetz, a partner with Sequoia Capital Ltd., WhatsApp’s lone venture capital investor. He grew up on food stamps. Even if it is only during your formative years, it is most definitely a different perspective than never having to rely on food stamps in your life.
- plg 13y ago
  True
- newman314 13y ago
  WhatsApp has had multiple security incidents. See the Wikipedia entry. Kind of hard to see how he values privacy without proper security.
- auctiontheory 13y ago
  The irony is that he is still living in a country where phone lines are often tapped - probably more so than in his youth.
United857 13y ago
Not sure how much Acton had, but Koum had $400000 when he left Yahoo. Respectable but hardly "winning the lottery". http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/02/19/exclusive-inside-story-how-jan-koum-built-whatsapp-into-facebooks-new-19-billion-baby/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/02/19/exclusive-...
- plg 13y ago
  In what universe is having a $400,000 bank account not winning the lottery? Holy hell, dude.
  - wnevets 13y ago
    San Francisco
    - plg 13y ago
      We are so insulated from our community. I guarantee you that for the vast, vast majority of San Franciscans, suddenly having $400,000 would be a truly life-changing event.
      - auctiontheory 13y ago
        In the sense that they would have the down payment on a condo in the Mission, yes. But that's not what "winning the lottery" implies.
        notahacker 13y ago
        Put another way, $400,000 - over 100x the per capita GDP of Ukraine - is a pretty massive windfall for a guy who grew up in a village outside Kiev. Sure, he chose to stay in the Bay Area and double down on his earnings, but it's not like he didn't have other realistic options that involved never working another day in his life.
        13y ago
happyscrappy 13y ago
"When I started Reynholm Industries I only had two things, a dream and six million pounds."
flanbiscuit 13y ago
yeah the title is misleading. The "food stamps" part was when his family first immigrated from the Ukraine. So it was when he was a child and I don't know how long that lasted. But looks to me that his post-school adult years were just fine in terms of finance. Sure he gained and list millions but in the end was still doing better than most.
kolbe 13y ago
> For Koum, 38, the windfall would stand in stark contrast to his years as a teenager, when his family relied on food stamps after emigrating from Ukraine. This sounds like poor->rich to me.
brown9-2 13y ago
but this picture that is being painted of him as some sort of homeless street person is rather warped, don't you think? I don't think there is a single person painting the picture you describe.
- josefresco 13y ago
  The headline (which begins that picture) implies that he went directly from food stamps to a billionaire. You might argue that the time frame doesn't matter, but then you could make up all sorts of crazy headline with logic like that, such as "Man who could barely feed himself now a billionaire" ..and begin the story when the subject was an infant. Silly and extreme I know, but clearly timeframe matters. It's still an impressive climb, even if he started with millions (as any amount to several billion is just huge). But I don't think being on food stamps as a kid, is the same as being on food stamps recently or as an adult.
  - brown9-2 13y ago
    But do you think anyone who actually reads this article or any other WhatsApp backgrounder will have the same impression?
    - josefresco 13y ago
      After reading some of the comments here at HN, yes I do. In fact, in the spirit of debate (which is mostly what we all do here at HN) this is a valid point to discuss. Probably not important in the grand scheme of things, but really it's commentary about catchy/misleading headlines and news stories than it is about the specifics of this story. "Founder Goes from Rags to Riches" is a better headline than "Upper Middle Class Yahoo! Engineer Makes Billions". Both are correct but in order to gain readers the former is chosen almost every time (for better or worse). I'm going to do us both a favor and stop checking this thread and get back to making my own success story ;)
leothekim 13y ago
Going from foodstamps to a $19B exit is not an example of "the rich getting super rich". There are phenomenal obstacles to overcome when going from foodstamps to something resembling an upper-middle class life. Even more so when you're an immigrant. That's the real truth. You're close to rock-bottom with foodstamps. Unless you've experienced poverty - not the "why can't I have $400,000 what makes this prick so special" meme that's pervading the comments on this post, but the kind of poverty that is inescapable, makes you feel hopeless about your circumstance, and constantly forces you to make stark choices about which of the basic necessities you'll have to do without for the month - then there really is no basis to calling Koum's story "warped". An example of poverty here: http://qr.ae/tgPlq http://qr.ae/tgPlq. Tl;dr - this guy went through bucketloads of shit, and still isn't out of the woods yet. Food stamps were of no use. Quote FTA: "... poverty can happen even to people you couldn't imagine it happening to, and when it does, it traps you like an ant lion." It's not the same story as Koum's, but what most people don't realize is how difficult it is to pull yourself out of poverty, especially when faced with mounting debts and health problems. The fact that he went from virtually nothing to $400,000 in savings to the $19B exit is something that should be applauded, not derided.
- plg 13y ago
  I agree with what you're saying. I didn't mean to deride him at all. I was deriding the meme that is being promoted in the press that makes it sounds like someone with nothing suddenly created and released an app that suddenly sold for 19B. His story is absolutely to be applauded. If he was on food stamps as a kid then indeed he "had nothing". For me the great success of his story is that initial bit nobody is talking about, going from a kid on food stamps, to an engineer at Yahoo. That is the amazing story I wish we would be talking about more. That's the story that real, everyday kids could actually have a hope of duplicating. Not the 19B sale to Zuck. He didn't go from nothing -> 19B. He went from nothing -> Yahoo -> 19B... The better story to tell is that he went from nothing -> Yahoo
  - leothekim 13y ago
    Thanks for clarifying, plg.
benched 13y ago
He didn't begin life as a Yahoo employee. What are you even trying to say?
- adamdavis 13y ago
  He's suggesting that this headline ignores the period after the time when his family was on food stamps. The period where he had the financial means to live a fairly 'comfortable' life. The movement wasn't food stamps to filthy rich, but food stamps, to upper middle class existence, and then from upper middle class existence to filthy rich.
  - benched 13y ago
    The latter move is still the former move.
    - adamdavis 13y ago
      I would disagree. There's a distinct difference between food stamps->gigantic acquisition and food stamps->comfortable life as software developer at giant corporation->gigantic acquisition. The former glosses over the entire period in-between.
rdl 13y ago
It was the poor fleeing a shithole of a country where they were being oppressed, to America, where they were poor but had a chance, and then going from poor to less poor to well off to supermegarich. i.e., the American Dream, post-1998 edition. I suspect the jump from "Nazis might kill me" to "poor in America" was roughly the same jump as "poor in America to working in technology" and from "Yahoo! to founding my own company". The founding-my-own-company to sold-to-Facebook was probably the smallest actual jump in subjective quality of life.
- GenerocUsername 13y ago
  Going from "I could buy a boat" to "I should buy a boat". What a hero
- strlen 13y ago
  > I suspect the jump from "Nazis might kill me" to "poor in America was roughly the same jump as "poor in America to working in technology" From personal experience, the first was _far greater_. To quote my brother (who became quite successful as well), I'd rather clean streets in US than live in former USSR again. Being poor in America is by no means pleasant, but the change from being middle-class but 1) from a wrong ethnic group 2) (in my personal case) with a heavily individualistic orientation in former USSR was _far_ worse (one word: "conscription").
paul 13y ago
It's unfortunate that many people here seem to think that success is something achieved in single step, as if one day he wakes up and cancels his food stamps because he's suddenly a billionaire. This is a very debilitating attitude, and it prevents people from doing what is necessary to get to the next step. It will take years, and possibly generations, but it will never happen if you are expecting it to be an overnight thing.
- thecage411 13y ago
  Yes! Your quote reminded me of Jaime Escalante, the calculus teacher portrayed in Stand and Deliver. In the movie, he teaches some completely unprepared kids calculus and they pass the AP exam. In real life, he taught for years and set up feeder programs so the students would be ready. More here: http://reason.com/archives/2002/07/01/stand-and-deliver-revisited http://reason.com/archives/2002/07/01/stand-and-deliver-revi...
  - paul 13y ago
    That's a great story, with a rather tragic ending. Everyone should read it.
  - strlen 13y ago
    >> Escalante's open admission policy, a major reason for his success, also paved the way for his departure. Calculus grew so popular at Garfield that classes grew beyond the 35-student limit set by the union contract. Some had more than 50 students. Escalante would have preferred to keep the classes below the limit had he been able to do so without either denying calculus to willing students or using teachers who were not up to his high standards. Neither was possible, and the teachers union complained about Garfield's class sizes. Rather than compromise, Escalante moved on. When I say (to non-Californians) that teacher's unions have too much power in California and am accused of being a right-wing wacko, I generally call this example out. Unions have been responsible for much good (better working conditions, higher pay, etc...) but that doesn't give them a pass to screw students over.
    - 13y ago
beenpoor 13y ago
I totally agree with you. The reality is most people have their own notion of being poor. It is all relative and in many cases, their notion of being poor is highly exaggerated. I grew up in third world and I know what being poor is.
ojbyrne 13y ago
The story says his family relied on food stamps when he was a teenager. Presumably he didn't work at Yahoo previous to that.
beedogs 13y ago
> I appreciate that he started WhatsApp from scratch but this picture that is being painted of him as some sort of homeless street person is rather warped, don't you think? I get annoyed by this "rags-to-riches" narrative the press in America seems to like to push. It's never as simple as the articles make it seem and there's always something left out.
- 10feet 13y ago
  Nothing is ever as easy as any article points out, articles summarize and tantalize.
10feet 13y ago
>Didn't he have a job, for many years, at Yahoo, before starting WhatsApp? The article missed a trick, should have said: "Whatsapp founder goes from being penniless and naked (just being born) to a billionaire."

by plg 13y ago

danso 13y ago

> For Koum, 38, the windfall would stand in stark contrast to his years as a teenager, when his family relied on food stamps after emigrating from Ukraine. The experience of living in a country where phone lines were often tapped, instilled the importance of privacy in him, said Jim Goetz, a partner with Sequoia Capital Ltd., WhatsApp’s lone venture capital investor. He grew up on food stamps. Even if it is only during your formative years, it is most definitely a different perspective than never having to rely on food stamps in your life.

plg 13y ago
True
newman314 13y ago
WhatsApp has had multiple security incidents. See the Wikipedia entry. Kind of hard to see how he values privacy without proper security.
auctiontheory 13y ago
The irony is that he is still living in a country where phone lines are often tapped - probably more so than in his youth.

United857 13y ago

Not sure how much Acton had, but Koum had $400000 when he left Yahoo. Respectable but hardly "winning the lottery". http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/02/19/exclusive-inside-story-how-jan-koum-built-whatsapp-into-facebooks-new-19-billion-baby/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/02/19/exclusive-...

plg 13y ago
In what universe is having a $400,000 bank account not winning the lottery? Holy hell, dude.
- wnevets 13y ago
  San Francisco
  - plg 13y ago
    We are so insulated from our community. I guarantee you that for the vast, vast majority of San Franciscans, suddenly having $400,000 would be a truly life-changing event.
    - auctiontheory 13y ago
      In the sense that they would have the down payment on a condo in the Mission, yes. But that's not what "winning the lottery" implies.
      - notahacker 13y ago
        Put another way, $400,000 - over 100x the per capita GDP of Ukraine - is a pretty massive windfall for a guy who grew up in a village outside Kiev. Sure, he chose to stay in the Bay Area and double down on his earnings, but it's not like he didn't have other realistic options that involved never working another day in his life.
        13y ago

happyscrappy 13y ago

"When I started Reynholm Industries I only had two things, a dream and six million pounds."

flanbiscuit 13y ago

yeah the title is misleading. The "food stamps" part was when his family first immigrated from the Ukraine. So it was when he was a child and I don't know how long that lasted. But looks to me that his post-school adult years were just fine in terms of finance. Sure he gained and list millions but in the end was still doing better than most.

kolbe 13y ago

> For Koum, 38, the windfall would stand in stark contrast to his years as a teenager, when his family relied on food stamps after emigrating from Ukraine. This sounds like poor->rich to me.

brown9-2 13y ago

but this picture that is being painted of him as some sort of homeless street person is rather warped, don't you think? I don't think there is a single person painting the picture you describe.

josefresco 13y ago
The headline (which begins that picture) implies that he went directly from food stamps to a billionaire. You might argue that the time frame doesn't matter, but then you could make up all sorts of crazy headline with logic like that, such as "Man who could barely feed himself now a billionaire" ..and begin the story when the subject was an infant. Silly and extreme I know, but clearly timeframe matters. It's still an impressive climb, even if he started with millions (as any amount to several billion is just huge). But I don't think being on food stamps as a kid, is the same as being on food stamps recently or as an adult.
- brown9-2 13y ago
  But do you think anyone who actually reads this article or any other WhatsApp backgrounder will have the same impression?
  - josefresco 13y ago
    After reading some of the comments here at HN, yes I do. In fact, in the spirit of debate (which is mostly what we all do here at HN) this is a valid point to discuss. Probably not important in the grand scheme of things, but really it's commentary about catchy/misleading headlines and news stories than it is about the specifics of this story. "Founder Goes from Rags to Riches" is a better headline than "Upper Middle Class Yahoo! Engineer Makes Billions". Both are correct but in order to gain readers the former is chosen almost every time (for better or worse). I'm going to do us both a favor and stop checking this thread and get back to making my own success story ;)

leothekim 13y ago

Going from foodstamps to a $19B exit is not an example of "the rich getting super rich". There are phenomenal obstacles to overcome when going from foodstamps to something resembling an upper-middle class life. Even more so when you're an immigrant. That's the real truth. You're close to rock-bottom with foodstamps. Unless you've experienced poverty - not the "why can't I have $400,000 what makes this prick so special" meme that's pervading the comments on this post, but the kind of poverty that is inescapable, makes you feel hopeless about your circumstance, and constantly forces you to make stark choices about which of the basic necessities you'll have to do without for the month - then there really is no basis to calling Koum's story "warped". An example of poverty here: http://qr.ae/tgPlq http://qr.ae/tgPlq. Tl;dr - this guy went through bucketloads of shit, and still isn't out of the woods yet. Food stamps were of no use. Quote FTA: "... poverty can happen even to people you couldn't imagine it happening to, and when it does, it traps you like an ant lion." It's not the same story as Koum's, but what most people don't realize is how difficult it is to pull yourself out of poverty, especially when faced with mounting debts and health problems. The fact that he went from virtually nothing to $400,000 in savings to the $19B exit is something that should be applauded, not derided.

plg 13y ago
I agree with what you're saying. I didn't mean to deride him at all. I was deriding the meme that is being promoted in the press that makes it sounds like someone with nothing suddenly created and released an app that suddenly sold for 19B. His story is absolutely to be applauded. If he was on food stamps as a kid then indeed he "had nothing". For me the great success of his story is that initial bit nobody is talking about, going from a kid on food stamps, to an engineer at Yahoo. That is the amazing story I wish we would be talking about more. That's the story that real, everyday kids could actually have a hope of duplicating. Not the 19B sale to Zuck. He didn't go from nothing -> 19B. He went from nothing -> Yahoo -> 19B... The better story to tell is that he went from nothing -> Yahoo
- leothekim 13y ago
  Thanks for clarifying, plg.

benched 13y ago

He didn't begin life as a Yahoo employee. What are you even trying to say?

adamdavis 13y ago
He's suggesting that this headline ignores the period after the time when his family was on food stamps. The period where he had the financial means to live a fairly 'comfortable' life. The movement wasn't food stamps to filthy rich, but food stamps, to upper middle class existence, and then from upper middle class existence to filthy rich.
- benched 13y ago
  The latter move is still the former move.
  - adamdavis 13y ago
    I would disagree. There's a distinct difference between food stamps->gigantic acquisition and food stamps->comfortable life as software developer at giant corporation->gigantic acquisition. The former glosses over the entire period in-between.

rdl 13y ago

It was the poor fleeing a shithole of a country where they were being oppressed, to America, where they were poor but had a chance, and then going from poor to less poor to well off to supermegarich. i.e., the American Dream, post-1998 edition. I suspect the jump from "Nazis might kill me" to "poor in America" was roughly the same jump as "poor in America to working in technology" and from "Yahoo! to founding my own company". The founding-my-own-company to sold-to-Facebook was probably the smallest actual jump in subjective quality of life.

GenerocUsername 13y ago
Going from "I could buy a boat" to "I should buy a boat". What a hero
strlen 13y ago
> I suspect the jump from "Nazis might kill me" to "poor in America was roughly the same jump as "poor in America to working in technology" From personal experience, the first was _far greater_. To quote my brother (who became quite successful as well), I'd rather clean streets in US than live in former USSR again. Being poor in America is by no means pleasant, but the change from being middle-class but 1) from a wrong ethnic group 2) (in my personal case) with a heavily individualistic orientation in former USSR was _far_ worse (one word: "conscription").

paul 13y ago

It's unfortunate that many people here seem to think that success is something achieved in single step, as if one day he wakes up and cancels his food stamps because he's suddenly a billionaire. This is a very debilitating attitude, and it prevents people from doing what is necessary to get to the next step. It will take years, and possibly generations, but it will never happen if you are expecting it to be an overnight thing.

thecage411 13y ago
Yes! Your quote reminded me of Jaime Escalante, the calculus teacher portrayed in Stand and Deliver. In the movie, he teaches some completely unprepared kids calculus and they pass the AP exam. In real life, he taught for years and set up feeder programs so the students would be ready. More here: http://reason.com/archives/2002/07/01/stand-and-deliver-revisited http://reason.com/archives/2002/07/01/stand-and-deliver-revi...
- paul 13y ago
  That's a great story, with a rather tragic ending. Everyone should read it.
- strlen 13y ago
  >> Escalante's open admission policy, a major reason for his success, also paved the way for his departure. Calculus grew so popular at Garfield that classes grew beyond the 35-student limit set by the union contract. Some had more than 50 students. Escalante would have preferred to keep the classes below the limit had he been able to do so without either denying calculus to willing students or using teachers who were not up to his high standards. Neither was possible, and the teachers union complained about Garfield's class sizes. Rather than compromise, Escalante moved on. When I say (to non-Californians) that teacher's unions have too much power in California and am accused of being a right-wing wacko, I generally call this example out. Unions have been responsible for much good (better working conditions, higher pay, etc...) but that doesn't give them a pass to screw students over.
  - 13y ago

beenpoor 13y ago

I totally agree with you. The reality is most people have their own notion of being poor. It is all relative and in many cases, their notion of being poor is highly exaggerated. I grew up in third world and I know what being poor is.

ojbyrne 13y ago

The story says his family relied on food stamps when he was a teenager. Presumably he didn't work at Yahoo previous to that.

beedogs 13y ago

> I appreciate that he started WhatsApp from scratch but this picture that is being painted of him as some sort of homeless street person is rather warped, don't you think? I get annoyed by this "rags-to-riches" narrative the press in America seems to like to push. It's never as simple as the articles make it seem and there's always something left out.

10feet 13y ago
Nothing is ever as easy as any article points out, articles summarize and tantalize.

10feet 13y ago

>Didn't he have a job, for many years, at Yahoo, before starting WhatsApp? The article missed a trick, should have said: "Whatsapp founder goes from being penniless and naked (just being born) to a billionaire."