America is not a place without its problems, but there are some things we do better than any other country on Earth. Opportunity has to be at the top of that list. America is one of those rare places where you can truly start with nothing (or with even less than nothing) and become enormously wealthy. Generations of immigrants have borne this out since the founding of our country, and the same remains true today.
If you're like most people, you're probably at least mildly shocked over the news that Facebook is acquiring WhatsApp for almost $20 billion. Say what you will about the valuation; only time will tell if it was a great call or a bust. But here's something you might not know: the founder of WhatsApp grew up in a house with no hot water just outside of Kiev, immigrated to Mountain View when he was 16, and lived on welfare while he taught himself computer networking by reading manuals. In an inspirational twist to the story, he signed the deal to sell WhatsApp to Facebook on the door of the welfare office that paid his rent as a kid.
At 16, Koum and his mother immigrated to Mountain View, a result of the troubling political and anti-Semitic environment, and got a small two-bedroom apartment though government assistance. His dad never made it over. Koum’s mother had stuffed their suitcases with pens and a stack of 20 Soviet-issued notebooks to avoid paying for school supplies in the U.S. She took up babysitting and Koum swept the floor of a grocery store to help make ends meet. When his mother was diagnosed with cancer, they lived off her disability allowance.
There's just nothing negative you can say about this story. It's a story of near-successes and almost-failures on the road to the big payday. And it's a uniquely American story; one we don't hear often enough these days. Rags to riches is the American meme.
Just thought you guys might like a little color behind an otherwise unremarkable (these days, anyway) tech acquisition story. This wasn't some privileged D-bag cranking out a sexting app (ahem, Snapchat), this was a genuinely impoverished kid figuring out what he was good at and winning the tech lottery through sheer determination.
Fair play to him.
Mod note: "Blast from the Past - Best of Eddie" - This one is originally from 3/2/14
Read about his story on another website, truly remarkable. He's a
citizen(Is he a citizen?) that used the opportunity for welfare to survive while trying to better himself, sadly this cannot always be said.Hats off to him!
Thanks for another great sharing.
Very inspiring. Let's just hope now that the guy is richer than we will ever be that he remembers his humble background and gives back.
awesome
I'm happy the guy made a lot of money, it's almost justice for everything he had to go through. Seems a lot of tech folks are literally sick to their stomachs with envy. GOOD. Now you have a reason to do this shit. I'm beginning to wonder if I made a mistake thinking I can get rich on Wall Street and should have stayed in computer programming. Think about it: these whiny male cunts rate everyone on pedigree, who your BFFs are, GPA from a decade ago, really really really inconsequential shit...and it's not like Wall Street is handing out money all over the place lately.
In tech.....people with no formal education are making it rain. And they're young. Let's just compare the top end of the spectrum for a second: how many 20 year old billionaires has finance produced? I don't know of any. Now how many in tech? Plenty, including the youngest in history. Not everyone plays in that league, but I think you see my point. Tech is like the US Open.....literally anyone can try out. I'm a fan.
Wow, I didn't know this about Koum. Great story.
This is awesome.
Wait for my story to be there!!!
OP, let's not forget about survivorship bias here...America isn't just made up of the WhatsApp guy and the Chobani guy. It's made up of a lot of people who are going nowhere.
Yea but keep feeding them the American dream with the odd outlier as an example and you keep the sheeple happy! America fuck yea! Land of great opportunity and crushing student debt. So many great opportunities, just like in a lot of other countries! I work in EM, and there are a LOT of opportunities and a lot more interesting than in the US...
Lol, but only in America do you sign hot deals on welfare office doors
Well said
As someone who has lived and worked in both EM and the US, it's undeniable that for the average person life is a lot better and there are greater prospects for social mobility in the US. Poor kids in the EM don't even get to finish primary school or even get considered for "good jobs" because outdated caste systems, ethnic biases etc (it's not like the US doesn't have them, but they're more extreme in EM). EM opportunities are more interesting than the US for those that actually have access to them...which aren't many.
Sheeple? Are the millions of people who have immigrated to the United Sates to even have a shot at LITERALLY a 100,000th or in many cases a LITERAL MILLIONTH of that money? And let's not be so narrow-minded that we measure success in statistics and dollar signs.
The reason why the USA is so much greater than every other country is not due to some unrealistic, lottery-like understanding of the ladder of capitalism. It is because it provides the freedom and opportunity to pursue life in the way that best fits you, with the best risk/reward profile in the world. (Well, that and our Bacon Guns).
And you know what, student debt is not that bad here for the quality of education and breadth of opportunities., but that is a conversation for another time.
You don't have to make a BILLION dollars to live the American dream. Some of my grandparents came our straight out of Auschwitz with not a penny to their name, and ended up owning houses and cars. In their minds, they had made it. When I was the first in my family to go to college, my father, in his mind, had made it. Me getting an internship in some tiny backwater shop on Wall Street...before even getting my first paycheck I had MADE IT by the standards of my background. Just because someone else had a head start doesn't make these gains any less sweet...it only shows what is possible down the line. I think a lot of the silver spoon crowd, or seriously socially impaired lose sight of that, especially in NYC and especially in finance.
I tend to think that too much overemphasis is put on the top end of the spectrum, thus encouraging unreasonable risk taking, because younger people don't realize what it takes to get that far. Seriosly, our society would do better to more openly acknowledge that starting on first and ending on third is a huge deal for a huge amount of people. Just because someone doesn't break some record for most money made in a period of time doesn't invalidate this.
American Dream is just a slogan that politicians use to get some easy claps from their speeches. I mean, my parents came to the US with nothing but a suitcase and like twenty bucks, and I grew up reasonably well off with never seeing any real financial difficulty. That's not really the American Dream though...mostly just luck. Tons of people do that and end up on the side of the road.
Hats off to you (plus a SB).
Getting rich off the tech bubble is about as much of a "feel good" story as winning the lotto. Not hating on the guy, but I just don't view absurdly serendipitous events as the "american dream". Hard work and perseverance over a life time to move your family from the lower to middle class =/= joining the .000001% by selling flappy birds into the height of a bubble.
The fact that he joined the .00001% by selling his app doesn't mean he hasn't worked hard over his lifetime to support his family. If the end result was no cashing in on 20B but something more modest it would still be success in the eyes of Koum and his family as he came to the country as an immigrant, lived off welfare, worked odd jobs along w his mother to get by, taught himself much of the foundations of computer programming and went on to attend San Jose Univ before landing a job at yahoo and eventually taking the initiative to create his own app/company. I'd say he was on the road to comfortable living with or without the Facebook deal. This is the more common scenario of the American Dream but as others pointed out there is nothing wrong with that, it's all about perspective.
You guys are sort of making the point, it's about the opportunity; outcome is not guaranteed.
And yeah, I do applaud a guy selling Zuckerberg something for way too much so he can try to stay relevant a little while longer.
Agree with the "lottery" version of the American dream. And it's not an outlier to come here poor and end up middle class, that was the social contract for most of last century. When people started acting like assholes jumping on the Reaganomics trickle down economics bandwagon is where the country created the income disparity mess it sees the full impact of now. "Give rich people all the power and you can enjoy their scraps....literally they're pissing on you" is the most boneheaded thing I've ever heard of. Putin and the rest of the world's plutocrats can only envy how hard Americans worked to make their masters wealthier. This is why our generation hates the Baby Boomers.......they've done their damndest to pull up the ladder and undo all the progress their parents and grandparents had made. This TeaBagger crap, the political period of 2000-2008, people lost basically whatever respect they had left for the boomers. Now everyone's got their panties in a bunch because a black democrat is cleaning up their mess, and he's closer culturally to Gen X/Y than to the Boomers. Even the next president, dem or GOP is going to be undoin decades of bad governance.
I say pay people a reasonable amount up front with the possibility of getting paid unreasonably large sums of money later....there's no better incentive system. Unfortunately, America has opted for a version of capitalism where people are paid barely anything and the option to work at becomming rich is so diluted that it's functionally mythical outside of a handful of industries. And everyone wonders why corporate earnings are shaky....well shit, people have to have money to spend it.
Marx couldn't have said it better himself.
//www.youtube.com/embed/0MRmxfLuNto
Haha, I agree with you.
If by "the income disparity mess it sees the full impact of now" you mean everyone's standard of living has increased....
Serious question, if income disparity is increasing, but standard of living is rising across the board, is that a problem? Why?
If by 'increased standard of living' people went from working 40 hour weeks to an average over 55, and second jobs to boot, yeah, great success. Divorce rates are up, stress related disease rates are up, but hey....we can own a phone that downloads porn while you're on the train to your third job. You don't have to be a fucking Marxist to see that the social contract has broken down. Me, I'll be just fine. I'm a white male on Wall Street. You think I'm going hungry? My concen isn't about me. It's about when the larger population decides that the system is rigged and starts to either tear it down or just give up out of hopelessness. Some people that would go on welfare will make a billion dollar company. More likely though, the system dynamic causes people to cash in their chips and peace out. If you cut the welfare off, you don't get a capitalist paradise, you get Kosovo. No jobs + pissed off hungry people = disaster. And the GOP wants to arm them too. Brilliant. That broken dynamic is dictated by people at the top, not the average guy. It takes a special kind of stupid to advocate for broken institutions, and then bitch when things don't work out. Just all climb back up the trees and live how the Bible says to, because that's fucking worked out well throughout history.
Hell, even Peter Thiel said what I'm saying, yesterday. IMAGINE THAT. A businessman acknowledging you can't run a fucking nation like a business, wow, bunch of geniuses.
Honestly, talking to some people here is about as frustrating as having to share the same space with a college liberal...you keep having to cover the basics because there's this mental rut that just doesn't seem to ever lift. AND YOU GUYS ARE SUPPOSED TO KNOW BETTER. I'm not angry anymore, I'm just dissapointed that the so called best and brightest really aren't....they're just a bunch of cynical, cowardly Aspbergers geeks whose concept of running a country doesn't extend much beyond their tax brakes, gov't subsidies, and hypocritical public grandstanding
Although I agree with your first two posts, I disagree with this.
As you later came to point out in a separate post, in the Era of Information that there is no excuse for being ill-informed or ignorant. With easily accessible information and even the ability to coordinate in mind, are American's choosing to accept these apparent terms (working more for less) and if so, who's to blame? The corporate big wigs or the average worker (or in H.E. Pennypacker's case, the 20-something shoe shining analyst)? You dog the the system but the whole basis of American capitalism is competition and social Darwinism. People who choose not to evolve to compete at a higher level seemingly accept these terms and are thus losing out on greater profits. These people are content with where they are as they don't want to work harder, or if you really think about it, contribute for more. Furthermore, their unwillingness to revolt against said system proves this. Those who decide to gamble and choose their own destiny (I.E. WhatsApp) end up contributing outside the system and through their success.
Also, you act is if Reaganomics didn't benefit everyone. With a 26% increase in RGDP, +20 million jobs created, and 2% decrease in unemployment during the 8 years of Reagan you are factually defeated. Your generalization "everyone hates" the Baby Boomers is somewhat correct. I agree that most of this generation dislikes encountering old people apart from their sweet old grandma and Nazi cursing grandfather. Whether they are driving slow or smell like they shat themselves these sort of things tend to piss people off. However, at the end of the day we all respect them and appreciate how hard they worked to leave this country better than they found it.
Your rant on divorce rates was depressing. As another person already posted, they've been decreasing for some time now. Why? There are a number of reasons from teen pregnancies to simple biology but the "increased standard of living" you criticize isn't even close to shouldering a sizable amount of blame. Don't try to group a bunch of shit (LOL stress related diseases?) in a vain attempt to prove your point because all anyone sees is a pile of shit.
Is this a tech bubble or what...
immigrating to america and living on welfare....nothing easier than that considering that today american Visa rules are only the strictest in the world
Funny I can relate to him -
Grew up with no hot water; we had to boil our water to shower in the winter Grew up with no microwave; we had to heat our food using the gas stove Grew up with no A/C; fans, open windows, and wet cloths did the job Grew up with no home telephones; had to go the store across the street to make calls
Haven't made a billion yet, but my job offer on WallStreet will suffice my American Dream.
Great story
He had an equity stake in something he created. He got wealthy of something he and others helped execute on. I would kill to see an equity cap table of some of these start ups.
Eddie, comrade, I don't think Carnegie is the ideal posterchild of the proper route to wealth creation in the USA, but I'm sure he's a saint over there in Europe. This is the guy invented the 5 hour work week (sometimes it was 10), and settled labor disputes by ordering a private army to fire on his protesting workers - from his home across the Atlantic, en route to becoming the richest man in history. But hey, is this a great country or what?
Wow. Can't we hear a nice success story and just give the guy credit and talk about all our dreams and shit rather than having to politicize everything, start attacking people personally, and saying a bunch of ignorant shit?
having said that, i do appreciate the intensity of all involved :)
Substantially less haterade than I was expecting about this kid. Is WSO maturing before my eyes?
I'm guessing you skipped over UFO's threads because they were too long.
I think a lot of people are missing the fact that it is now easier than it ever has been to be entrepreneurial and/or make a business that is profitable.
Back in the day you had to have inventory, a steel mill, create something. Now all you need is your mind. You can take free coding classes and sell your services online with zero overhead costs. You can walk dogs on the side, do single jobs, use an app to turn your car into a taxi, sell things you buy online, etc etc etc.
The playing field has been flattened and opportunity has increased. There are so many ways to make money or get educated, it is almost a crime that some people do neither. I say bravo to this guy and every other person, big or small, that makes money or betters themselves using the multitude of free or low cost tools available nowadays.
This is true but not necessarily specific to America or any sort of "Dream"...more just the Information Age.
Agree in general, but it is still largely relevant to the US. I mean Europe has the same qualities, but I still give the edge to the US. I don't know how easy it is to start an online business in other countries or how open/free their internet is.
The US also has a pretty lax immigration policy. But whatever, your general point is correct though. We live in a rare time where information is freely available to everyone. It is a sin to not take advantage of this.
Sure the US has its flaws, but on balance I have to agree with Eddie on this. As a fairly privileged Indian who does not live in the US, I have to say that I sometimes envy America's strong meritocratic culture. I've had a number of extremely sharp and very hard working bosses who are naturalized American citizens and they all moved to the US because they rightly believed that if they were hard working, they would benefit more from an open society
Say what you may about the US, there aren't many places in the world where the democratically elected head of the nation had an immigrant father who was from a minority ethnicity and religion. It would be unthinkable for India to have an IIT educated Prime Minister who's father was Kenyan. Heck, it would be unthinkable for India to have a PM under the age of 60 with half a brain and some modicum of charisma.
Speaking of immigrants, Elon Musk has gone on record saying that he was "nauseatingly pro-American". All things considered, I think if you do believe in living in a true meritocracy, it would be hard to disagree with this statement.
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+1 TNA for the win
Simply amazing. The American dream at its finest. Not sure if its worth $20 billion but I guess only time will tell. It seems like a lot of countries have been using WhatsApp religiously and its only a matter of time before it catches on here in the states.
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