Jan Koum Net Worth

What is Jan Koum's Net Worth and Salary?

Jan Koum is a Ukrainian-born internet entrepreneur who has a net worth of $17 billion. Jan Koum earned his fortune as the co-founder and former CEO of the popular messaging service WhatsApp. Koum and his co-founder, Brian Acton, sold WhatsApp to Facebook in February 2014 for $19 billion in cash and stock. Koum's personal stake in the company was valued at approximately $8.55 billion at the time of the acquisition.

In April 2018, Jan announced his intention to leave Facebook and step down from the company's board of directors. Up to that point, he had already converted a little more than $7 billion worth of Facebook shares into cash. At the time of his announcement, it was reported that he would be forfeiting around $1 billion worth of shares by departing. In fact, Jan stayed at the company for another five months, vesting a little more than half of that reported $1 billion. When he did finally leave the company, he did indeed leave $450 million worth of shares on the table.

Early Life

Jan Koum was born on February 24th, 1976, in Kyiv, Ukraine, which, at the time, was part of the Soviet Union. He grew up near Kyiv in the city of Fastiv. In 1992, when Jan was 16, he immigrated to Mountain View, California, with his mother and grandmother. A social support program helped the family move into a small, two-bedroom apartment.

Koum's father intended to join the family later, but he ended up never leaving Ukraine. At first, Jan worked as a cleaner at a local grocery store while his mother worked as a babysitter. Jan and his mother relied on food stamps from a local welfare office to get by.

By the time he turned 18, Koum was fascinated by programming. He entered San Jose State University and worked as a security tester at Ernst & Young, where he met Brian Acton. Jan also joined a group of hackers called w00w00, where he met the future founders of Napster.

Yahoo

In late 1997, Koum was hired as an infrastructure engineer for Yahoo! Shortly after, he quit school to work full-time. Jan became good friends with Brian Acton, who also worked for Yahoo! After nine years of working for the company, the two spent a year traveling around South America together. They applied to work at Facebook together, and they were both rejected.

WhatsApp

In 2009, Koum purchased an iPhone and realized the App Store was on the verge of releasing a whole new app industry. Jan had an idea for an app, so he visited his friend Alex Fishman, and they spoke for hours about Koum's idea. He named the app WhatsApp because of its similar sound to "what's up." One month later, Jan incorporated WhatsApp Inc. in California.

At first, WhatsApp was unpopular. But it began to be used more frequently after Apple gave apps the ability to use push notifications in 2006. Koum made WhatsApp "ping" users when they received a message, and soon after, his friends in the area began using the app in place of SMS. Jan's app began to gain a large user base, and he convinced his friend Brian Acton to join the company. Koum offered Acton co-founder status after Acton brought in $250,000 in seed funding.

In February 2014, Jan allowed Facebook to acquire WhatsApp for $19 billion. Jan famously took the unsigned paperwork to the same welfare office that he and his mom had relied on when he was a kid. In the ultimate act of perseverance, Jan signed the acquisition paperwork on the door of the welfare office.

In the first half of 2016, Koum sold more than $2.4 billion worth of Facebook stock. He ultimately sold $7 billion worth of stock before his resigned in 2018.

Lost Facebook Earnings

When Koum announced his resignation in April 2018, early reports suggested he was forfeiting nearly $1 billion in unvested restricted stock units (RSUs). In reality, Koum remained technically employed by Facebook for several months following his announcement, allowing him to vest a significant portion of the remaining shares.

According to regulatory filings and later reporting, Koum ended up collecting approximately $450 million worth of stock during this period through what's known in Silicon Valley as "rest and vest." He ultimately left the company later that year, walking away from around 2 million RSUs, worth approximately $400–450 million at the time.

Those shares, had they been held through Facebook's rise, would be worth well over $1 billion today.

He Never Should Have Sold

If Jan Koum and Brian Acton had never sold a single share of Facebook stock and fully vested all of their restricted stock units (RSUs), their fortunes would be dramatically larger.

At a Meta share price of $635 and with full RSU vesting:

• Brian Acton would own approximately 46 million shares, valued at $29.2 billion.
• Jan Koum would control around 98.3 million shares, valued at $62.4 billion.
• Combined total: Over $91 billion in Meta stock.

Both founders sold significant portions of their stakes before resigning from Facebook — Koum reportedly cashed out more than $7 billion worth of stock before stepping down in 2018, while Acton likely sold the majority of his holdings prior to his 2017 exit. Even so, the shares they walked away from — roughly $800 million for Acton and $450 million for Koum at the time — would each be worth billions today.

TOBIAS HASE/AFP/Getty Images

Real Estate

Jan has come a long way from the modest home he grew up in back in Ukraine. That home did not have hot water or heat. When he moved to California with his mother, they shared a small two-bedroom apartment. She cleaned houses, and he swept floors at the local grocery.

Today, Jan owns around $450 million worth of real estate in California alone.

In Northern California, Jan owns a $100 million compound in the town of Atherton. To create the compound, he spent $57 million over a four-year period to acquire 5.6 acres of the most prime and most expensive real estate in the US. He proceeded to raze all the existing structures to make way for his massive custom compound. He reportedly spent $20 million on the site's new structures.

He also still owns his first Atherton home, a 3,700-square-foot abode purchased in 2015 for $8.8 million.

Down in Malibu, Jan owns around $200 million worth of real estate.

In August 2019, Jan paid $100 million for a 14,400-square-foot home on a clifftop bluff above Malibu's Escondido beach. The seller of this home was entertainment executive Ron Meyer.

In February 2021, Jan paid $87 million for the home next door. The second home spans three acres and features a single-story main house with five bedrooms, vaulted ceilings, herringbone hardwood flooring, and floor-to-ceiling windows that open onto a vast garden. In addition to the main house, there is a guesthouse, a garden house, and an oceanfront cabana with retractable ceilings, a wet bar, and a built-in barbecue and fire pit. In the 1980s, musician Kenny Rogers owned the home. Kenny installed a "funicular" to the beach (basically a sideways elevator) without a permit. When the town found out, Kenny was forced to pay $2 million in fines. The seller in Jan's case was reality star Sanela Diana Jenkins.

In September 2020, Jan paid $125 million for Jeffrey Katzenberg's Beverly Hills mansion.

Car Collection

Jan's primary home in Atherton has a 10,000-square-foot garage. Jan is an avid car collector, especially Ferraris and air-cooled Porsches. In that garage, he keeps a collection of cars that includes a Ferrari F12berlinetta, a Ferrari F12tdf, and several other Ferraris, new and old. He also owns a nearby warehouse where he stores additional models in his car collection.

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