Winners Who Cared for Nothing but…GOALS |

Every individual on this earth, whether rich or poor, strong or weak, has to go through various ups and downs in his/her life. Everyone has to face various challenges in their lives. Some succumb to the atrocities in life and those who take up the challenges positively are the ones who become an inspiration for others. We all have certain capabilities in us and the only need is to realize them and work upon them.

There are many inspirational tales depicting the courage and strength of many individuals who have converted their disabilities into strengths and have created motivational and inspirational vision for others in life. ‘Winners Who Cared for Nothing but…GOALS’ is a series of articles where we share with you rags to riches stories of people who never stopped trying. This is the seventh article of the series and here we will share the story of a hero, who was too poor to succeed but now has entered the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans at position 62, with an estimated worth of more than $7.5 billion. He is Jan Koum, founder of the most widely used app ‘Whatsapp’.

His story has essence of failures, love for passion and strong determination. His story is an inspiration for the current generation in the world of technology. Jan was born and raised in a village on the outskirts of Kiev, Ukraine. He was the only child to his parents; his mother was a housewife and father was an ordinary construction labourer. He belonged to a family which was miles away from technical innovations and science. Due to unstable political environment, Koum and his mother moved to Mountain View, California, when he was 16. They were poor and due to lack of cash stayed in a two-bedroom apartment. His father died in 1997. His mother worked as a babysitter to earn bread and butter for themselves, while he swept the floor of a grocery store. Later, her mother was diagnosed with cancer and died in 2000. Koum had no computer and he taught himself computer networking from a manual he bought at a used bookstore and later returned. He took admission in San Jose state University and worked part-time as a security tester for accounting firm Ernst & Young. Later Koum worked with Yahoo for 9 long years. He tried in facebook and twitter but was turned down by both. He then thought to free up for some time.

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Koum bought an iPhone but he could not use his iPhone in the gymnasium as their policies did not allow it. Later, he started using Skype while in gym but frequently forgot his password. This was the time when he decided to design an app that would work on a phone number for identification. He and his partner stated working on the app and came up with ‘Whatsapp’ and now then they never looked back. Now whatsapp have huge number of users worldwide.

Now Jan Koum is amongst the top richest people in the world. This was the rags to riches story of the founder of whatsapp. He never succumbed to rejections, instead he followed his love for technology in every possible way.

Passion is the single fastest way to spur your life to massive success.