With Facebook acquiring Watsapp, its co-founders – Jan Koum and brian action-have become billionaires and stars of technology world. It has been an incredible journey for jan koum who lived on food stamps as a teenager. Their company exemplifies the spirit of silicon valley….”watsapp is on a path to connect 1 billion people. The services that reach that milestone are all incredibly valuable. “facebook CEO mark Zuckerberg said in a statement . the most interesting part of their journey is that both jan koum and brian action applied for a job in facebook and were rejected in 2009. Expressing disappointment over the rejection, brian acton had then tweeted, “facebook turned me down. It was a great opportunity to connect with some fantastic people. Looking forward to life’s next adventure.”jan koum, co-founder of watsapp was born in a small village near kiev in ukraine. He led a life full of hardships as his family struggled hard to meet ends meet. His house did not even have electricity.However , koum escaped from the trouble- torn place when he was just 16 years old, along with his mother. Jan koum used to do menial jobs. But life’s adversities only made jan koum stronger and resilient. By 18, he learnt computer networking all by himself with help of manuals from a used book store. Little did he realise that this was the beginning of an illustrious career. Meeting brian action was a turning point in his life. Koum later got a job at yahoo as an infrastructure engineer. Both of them bid farewell to yahoo and decided to unwind and travel around. As savings started getting over, the duo started thinking about new start-up ideas. Incidentally, in 2009, the seeds of the amazing innovation were sown. Koum bought an iphone and figured out that apps would be the next big thing. He thought creating a hassle-free and instant messaging service would work wonders across the globe if it had mobile users as base. There were several trying times when things would not fall in place. Initially, the messaging service was tried on phones of his Russian friends. The response was encouraging. Koum released was watsapp 2.0 with a messaging component and active users went up to 250,000. By 2011, watsapp found a place among the top 20 apps in the US app store. Two years later in 2013, watsapp’s user base had zoomed to 200 million active users. Today watsapp has more than 450 milion active users, and reached that number faster than any other company in history, points out vernture capitalist jim Goetz in a blog on sequoia capital website which has invested in the company. The most remarkable aspect of the company is that, it doesn’t even employ a marketer or PR person. Yet like the world’s greatest brands, it’s created a strong emotional connection with consumers.