Ho Ching: Singapore is a nation of immigrants looking for a better life

SINGAPORE: In a June 3 (Wednesday) Facebook post, Ho Ching shared the remarkable journey of WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum, who emigrated from Ukraine to the United States as a teen and went on to become a multi-billionaire.

Mdm Ho also highlighted Mr Koum’s generosity and philanthropic efforts, and underlined, toward the end of her post, the important contributions immigrants make, and compared it to Singapore’s situation.

She wrote that the US “benefits enormously from the energy of hungry and driven immigrants willing to work hard and put their hearts and souls into good ideas. 

Likewise, Sg is a nation of immigrants looking for a better life, staying to build a better life, and working hard for the ideals of justice and equality, peace and prosperity, regardless of race, language, or religion.’

Jan Koum’s story

Mdm Ho wrote that Mr Koum had been born in a small town in Ukraine, and when he moved to the US with his mother and grandmother when he was 16, they endured a period of poverty and were dependent on government assistance and food stamps.

She noted that he is a self-taught coder who worked as a software infrastructure engineer for some years, and added that he had “tried to pitch the idea of simple messaging to Facebook and failed to get acceptance.” Although the verity of this last statement is perhaps debatable, Mr Koum had indeed applied for work at the social media giant but had been rejected.

He then co-founded WhatsApp in 2009, and the messaging platform showed enormous and rapid growth, reaching  440 million users with a staff of around 55.

Mdm Ho added, “Then the big honcho founder of Facebook came calling.  US$19 billion plus offer.  He took it on one condition – no ads, etc – he wanted to protect the user experience as a simple but efficient msgg svc.”

Notably, as a symbolic gesture, Koum signed the deal at the welfare office where he once got food stamps, and Mdm Ho described it as “a personal journey to close the loop at where he started in the USA, at the bottom of the ladder.”

She added that when Facebook “couldn’t resist the temptation” and later pushed for monetisation, he fought it and left the social media giant after major disagreements over privacy and data use, as well as monetisation.

Since then, Mr Koum’s net worth has been estimated to be at US$16.9 billion (S$21.67 billion), and Mdm Ho noted that he has been “a quiet and generous donor to many causes – hospitals and more.” /TISG

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