We can not imagine our day without exchanging messages on WhatsApp, without twitter and without looking at stories on Instagram. And we do not imagine that behind every successful application or website lies the ingenious idea and hard work of a person.
In just 10 years, our world has evolved enormously. New technologies are present in every home, and the devices and applications that come with them are part of our daily lives. We can not imagine our day without exchanging messages on WhatsApp, without twitter and without looking at stories on Instagram. And we do not imagine that behind every successful application or website lies the ingenious idea and hard work of a person.
Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy (Snapchat)
Evan Spiegel (left) and Bobby Murphy (right) are the co-founders of Snapchat, an application that allows you to exchange photos and videos that self-destruct within 24 hours. They were less than 30 years old when everyone's fortune reached $ 2.7 billion.
Bobby is married to Stanford classmate Kelsey Bateman. In 2017, Evan married one of the highest paid models in the world, Miranda Kerr (who is 7 years older than her husband). In 2018, the young woman gave birth to their child, named Hart. In March 2019, the tabloids published another good news: the couple is expecting their second child.
Jan Koum and Brian Acton (WhatsApp)
In September 2007, Jan Koum (left) and Brian Acton (right) left Yahoo !, where they worked for ten years. The two men tried to join the Facebook team, but they were not accepted. The friends decided that they deserved some holidays and embarked on a long trip to South America. It looks like the rest has paid off and in early 2009, Jan Koum launched WhatsApp Inc.
In 2014, Jan and Brian sold their creation to Facebook for $ 22 billion. Currently, the app is used by more than one billion people worldwide. Jan Koum's fortune is estimated at $ 9.9 billion and Brian Acton's fortune at $ 3.6 billion.
Nathan Blecharczyk, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia (Airbnb)
In 2007, Brian Chesky (middle) and Joe Gebbia (right) went through such a big financial crisis that they failed to raise the funds needed to pay rent for their apartment. So, they had an idea: why not rent an inflatable mattress to travelers? In 2008, entrepreneurs with their third colleague, Nathan Blecharczyk (left), founded Airbnb, a short-term rental service. Currently, the application covers 100,000 cities in 191 countries. The fortune of each founder is around $ 3.7 billion.
Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick (Uber)
In 2009, two businessmen, Garrett Camp (left) and Travis Kalanick (right), were waiting for a taxi after a professional dinner. Some time later Uber was born, one of the most popular taxi services of the moment. Before reaching success, the company had to confront competitors and authorities in different countries due to lack of licenses. Currently, the app runs in 76 countries and Uber drivers have achieved a total of more than 10 billion races.
Travis Kalanick's financial wealth is estimated at $ 4.8 billion. In 2017, he left the company and created the 10100 Fund. In 2013, Garrett Camp launched Expa, helping new companies launch projects. His total bank account is approximately $ 3.8 billion.
Talmon Marco and Igor Magazinnik (Viber)
Talmon Marco (left) and Igor Magazinnik (right) met at the IDF and immediately became friends with their love of technology. At the end of their military service, they founded their first start-up, the iMesh document exchange network. In 2010, they launched Viber and in 2014, they sold the application to the Japanese giant Rakuten for $ 900 million.
The associates managed to reiterate their success. In 2017, they created the Juno taxi service, which they sold to Gett in 2017 for $ 200 million. Currently, many people are watching the future projects of the creative tandem: there is a high probability that their ideas will be successful again.
Pavel Dourov (VK, Telegram)
In 2006, two brothers from St. Petersburg, Pavel and Nikolai, created the website vkontakte.ru, which in 2007 became the third most popular site in Russia. In 2010, the number of registered users exceeded 100 million and now the company is one of the three most popular resources in the country. In 2014, Pavel Durov sold his share of the company to the Mail.Ru Group and devotes all his strength to the creation and promotion of the messenger telegram. The number of users exceeds 200 million people and the fortune of the young man is now around 2.7 billion dollars.
Chris Barton (Shazam)
In 1999, Chris Barton and his friends Dhiraj Mukherjee, Philip Inghelbrecht and Avery Wang created an application to identify music. The project was way ahead of its time: it was still several years before the launch of iTunes, the iPhone and the App Store. Initially, Shazam users would call a 4-digit number, stay on the phone for 30 seconds next to the source of the sound, and wait for a message that indicated the artist's name and the title of the song. With the development of technology, the service has been simplified and has become an application for smartphones. When the company was founded in 2002, the founders took a long time to develop it. In 2017, Apple offered them a nice amount of money to buy it back. Experts valued the transaction at $ 400 million.
Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone (Twitter)
Originally, the short message service invented by Jack Dorsey (center) was used to maintain communication within companies. His colleagues at Odeo, Evan Williams (left) and Biz Stone (right), became interested in this promising idea and partnered with Dorsey when, in 2007, Twitter became an independent company. In 2008, the number of daily tweets reached 300 million. Currently, twitter.com ranks 11th in the ranking of the most visited websites in the world.
Jack Dorsey's fortune is estimated at $ 2.5 billion. He is also the founder of Square Payments. Evan Williams has pocketed more than $ 2.2 billion to be the founder of Twitter, as well as websites Blogger (sold to Google in 2003) and Medium (which he is developing). Biz Stone's bank account exceeds $ 250 million.
Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian (Reddit)
In June 2005, University of Virginia classmates Steve Huffman (left) and Alexis Ohanian (right) founded Reddit, a social news site where users created content. Originally, friends had to design fake accounts and publish news. According to the creators, in the story of Reddit, the point of inflection was the publication of the first post made by a real user.
A year later, the platform was purchased by the Condé Nast media group and currently, Reddit is one of the most influential sites on the Internet with a large community of followers. Alexis Ohanian specialized in the fight for a free Internet, like his family. In 2017, he married the world tennis star, Serena Williams, and became a dad of a little Alexis. In 2015, Steve Huffman was named CEO of Reddit.
Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim (YouTube)
According to legend, the idea for YouTube belongs to Chad Hurley (middle) and was born after he failed to send a video to one of his friends. In 2005, Chad hired colleagues from PayPal, Steve Chen (left) and Jawed Karim (right) to design the project. The first video, an amateur recording of Jawed Karim at a zoo, was released on April 23, 2005. Thanks to its simplicity and ease of use, YouTube has become the most popular video hosting service in the world. In 2006, Google bought the company for $ 1.65 billion.
After the sale of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen developed the MixBit service that allows you to edit videos from smartphones.
Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi (Dropbox)
One day, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) student Drew Houston (left) needed to take a bus from Boston to New York. To pass the time, he took a laptop, but when he got on the bus, he realized that he had forgotten his USB key. Upset by his forgetfulness, he began to develop a program that allows access to archives over the Internet. Dropbox is born, a service to share doucments and which is used by more than 500 million people.
In 2007, along with fellow student Arash Ferdowsi (right), they founded Dropbox Inc. Currently, Drew Houston owns 25% of the company's stock, valued at $ 2.3 billion. The fortune of Arash Ferdowsi (10% of the shares) amounts to 500 million dollars.
Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom (Instagram)
In 2010, two Stanford University graduates Mike Krieger (left) and Kevin Systrom (right) created the Burbn app, which allows you to schedule visits to multiple locations, register and publish pictures. It was not successful, the main function of check-in proved useless. However, users did not hesitate to share photos.
Kevin and Mike clearly knew what to do. On October 5, 2010, a new application appeared on the AppStore: Instagram. In December of the same year, the number of registered users exceeded the million mark. In 2012, the application was purchased by Facebook for a record amount: $ 1 billion. When selling the app, Kevin Systrom pocketed $ 1.5 billion and Mike Krieger $ 350 million.
