Jim Goetz and Jan Koum at Startup School SV 2014
So this is really cool. Uh, this is the first time we have had, uh, a founder and a board member up here together, and I think it'll be a really interesting talk for that. It's also the first time these two guys have ever spoken together and potentially last—hopefully not. Um, so there is a lot to talk about here. Uh, this is, you know, one of the most exciting startups of the last many years.
Um, but before we jump into what happened with WhatsApp, I want to talk a little bit about Yan's background. Um, uh, so maybe you could talk about sort of growing up in Ukraine and how that influenced your thoughts about coming to Silicon Valley and startups and WhatsApp.
Uh, sure. So, uh, thanks for having me. Thank you for coming here! It is exciting to see so many people here. Um, yeah, I grew up in Ukraine, and I came to the United States in 1992. Uh, I was 16 at the time, and I've left, you know, my dad stayed in Ukraine, and I've left a lot of friends and people I went to school with.
And so, uh, part of it, part of what I experienced was—it was really hard to kind of keep in touch with people, you know? Back then, like think back to 1992, there was no internet, there were no emails, there were no Skypes, there was nothing. You just have a phone—you don't even have a cell phone for the most part. You just have like this landline, and you know, to call somebody, you have to like sign up with MCI or AT&T, and it was just like all this kind of like weird, weird international dialing stuff you had to do.
And I think part of it is part of that influenced me. And then I think also growing up in a country where, um, education was really valuable and there was a lot of kind of focus on just, uh, learning and studying—uh, influenced me. Like, I came here and I was able to quickly start learning about computers and pick up computer science.
Um, and also growing up in a country which didn't have a whole lot of kind of advertising, it was very kind of clean, very, uh, basic life. And then you, uh, actually, we have a slide of this I think. Work all right? Uh, we got Yan's resume. Wow!
Um, okay, so you have a somewhat non-traditional path to starting a company—or at least, uh, in the current world, I think this is probably how it happened for a long time. Um, you spent, it looks like, nine years at Yahoo. Uh, and you also dropped out of college to join Yahoo, right? You have that in common, Sam.
Yeah, well, I think we get to start WhatsApp. Um, so I was wondering if you could talk about sort of your path from how you decided to drop out of college and go to Yahoo, and then how your experience at Yahoo shaped, uh, WhatsApp and how you came together with Brian there.
Sure! I actually, the funny story about me and Brian is that we met even before I joined Yahoo because he—he technically interviewed me. He was my co-founder and was actually one of the people who interviewed me back in 1998. And I think we also met earlier when I worked at, uh, this interesting young auditing company. I was doing like computer security audits.
Um, and so I was