The life of Jam Kuom: marked by war and precariousness
The life of the two men has not gone without avatars. Koum grew up in a house of precarious benefits, without electric power or hot water. He is the only child of a housewife and a construction manager, as described in the profile prepared by Parmy Olson in the magazine 'Forbes'.
The now multi-millionaire grew up in the middle of the Cold War, in 1976. In the historical context of his childhood, the political climate of Ukraine was marked by restrictions, by poverty and by distress. The State trampled individuality and violated the privacy of citizens. Telephone interceptions were part of the daily dynamics, to such an extent that in Koum's home the telephone was rarely used for fear that the conversations would be monitored and recorded.
Koum and his family were Jews. They lived in fear of the imminent insult of an invisible enemy: the secret police. When Jan was 16, she emigrated to the United States in the company of her mother and grandmother. The anti-Semitic climate had intensified in the Ukraine and they fled.
They were welcomed by the leafy lands of Mountain View, California, the same city where now the WhatsApp offices and the monumental Google campus are erected. They landed on the east coast of the United States stalked and with a few pennies in their pockets. "They rented an apartment with two rooms thanks to the assistance of the government. His mother filled the pencil cases and a stack of 20 notebooks with Soviet motives to evade the payment of school supplies in his new country of residence, "says the magazine 'Forbes'. His father stayed in Ukraine managing a government construction company.