Jan Koum Quotes

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Jan Koum

Profession : Businessman

Birth : February 24, 1976

A lot of what I experienced growing up in the U.S.S.R. and coming to the U.S. as an immigrant actually reflects itself in Whatsapp. Experiences from our youth shape what we do later in life.

Jan Koum

I grew up in a country where advertising doesn't exist.

Jan Koum

There were a lot of negatives, of course, but there were positives to living a life unfettered by possessions. It gave us the chance to focus on education, which was very important in the Soviet Union.

Jan Koum

Our phones are so intimately connected to us, to our lives. Putting advertising on a device like that is a bad idea. You don't want to be interrupted by ads when you're chatting with your loved ones.

Jan Koum

Anybody can build a company and sell the company the next day. That doesn't make you special, it doesn't make you unique, it doesn't make you all that great.

Jan Koum

Utilities get out of the way. Can you imagine if you flipped a light switch and had to watch an ad before you got electricity? Can you imagine if you turned on a faucet and had to watch an ad before the water came out?

Jan Koum

People have SMS, right? It stinks. It's a dead technology, like a fax machine left over from the Seventies, sitting there as a cash cow for carriers.

Jan Koum

We've taken SMS technology for consumers and improved it.

Jan Koum

Users get unlimited 'WhatsApp'. We get happy users who don't have to worry about data. Carriers get people willing to sign up for data plans.

Jan Koum

What makes our product work is the way we're tightly focused on messaging and being an SMS replacement.

Jan Koum

The message growth rate in Brazil - it's not like a hockey stick: it's like a vertical line.

Jan Koum

I grew up watching Indian movies as a kid in Russia. I am quite familiar with Bollywood.

Jan Koum

I grew up watching 'Disco Dancer'. I watched it some 20 times as a kid.

Jan Koum

A lot of my time, effort, and focus is spent on 'WhatsApp'. And that, to me, is more valuable and rewarding than to work on anything else.

Jan Koum

If partnering with Facebook meant that we had to change our values, we wouldn't have done it.

Jan Koum

Our focus remains on delivering the promise of WhatsApp far and wide so that people around the world have the freedom to speak their mind without fear.

Jan Koum

Our team has always believed that neither cost and distance should ever prevent people from connecting with their friends and loved ones, and won't rest until everyone, everywhere is empowered with that opportunity.

Jan Koum

Everybody I meet who uses 'WhatsApp', I ask them a question: 'How did you hear about it?' And they say, 'My friends, my sister or my brother, somebody I know hounded me to install WhatsApp.' We think there is more power to the network when it grows organically.

Jan Koum

Everybody who wants to join 'WhatsApp', we'll go out of our way to build a really awesome client for them.

Jan Koum

Experiences from our youth shape what we do later in life.

Jan Koum