Food Stamps

If you think that the only people on food stamps are lazy no-goodniks who have no desire to work a day in their lives, think again. Jan Koum is one of the biggest examples of how food stamps can help propel recipients to success.

Who is Jan Koum?

When he was only 16, Jan Koum and his family left Ukraine to come to the United States. As is often the case with immigrants, life was far from easy. His family had no choice but to turn to food stamps, and Jan began to think of ideas of cheaply staying in touch with his family back in Russia and Ukraine. He caught a break by becoming employed at Yahoo, but quickly grew disillusioned at how he felt internet companies focused on advertising, and not a good product delivery.

When Jan left Yahoo in 2007, he took with him engineer Brian Acton and the two started a company with the goal of avoiding advertising altogether—this goal was reached in 2009.

That company? Just something called WhatsApp, that’s all.

Worth of WhatsApp

The service costs only $1 per year and is estimated to save its users up to $150 per year in data plans (although how Sequoia Capital came up with that number is unclear), but it does avoid SMS charges. And while it’s also not clear how much WhatsApp is worth—they were a privately-held company until bought out—they do have a value assigned to them by Facebook: $19 billion in cash and stock. And even if that doesn’t go through because regulators put the kibosh on it, Facebook has still agreed to pay WhatsApp $2 billion in cash and stocks.

From Food Stamps to Billions

As mentioned before, Koum was on food stamps with his mother—ironically picking them up only a few blocks away from WhatsApp’s offices—was used to having his telephone bugged or taped in Ukraine, as well as living each day not knowing who was part of the secret police and who wasn’t.

Today, Koum—who owns 45% of WhatsApp—stands to get $6.8 billion, while Acton—who holds a bit over 20%–will get about $3 billion. The deal still has to go through, of course, and is subject to Facebook’s closing share price when it does, but Koum and Acton are looking at a very different way of living now.

And while this is definitely an exceptional case, it still goes to show that not everyone on food stamps is content to stay there.