Making a Dent in the Universe
When I think of changing the world (Including influencing millions of people), three types of people come to mind:
Founders of companies
Country leaders
Religious leaders
Out of all of them, starting a company is the most feasible way for people born into average families to make significant change in the world. Specifically software startups allowed people to build multibillion dollar companies, starting with nothing.
One of my personal heroes who started from nothing is WhatsApp Founder, Jan Koum.
Jan Koum's story is pretty wild. Born in a small village outside Kyiv, Ukraine, he grew up in a tough situation - no running water, dealing with economic hardship. His mom was a housewife and his dad worked construction. When he was 16, he and his mom left everything behind and moved to Mountain View, California to escape the growing anti-Semitism in Ukraine.
In America, things weren't exactly easy street. They lived in a tiny government-subsidized apartment. His mom worked as a babysitter while Jan swept floors at a grocery store to help make ends meet. They relied on food stamps. When his mom got diagnosed with cancer, it hit the family hard.
But Jan was scrappy. He taught himself computer programming through books he bought at a used bookstore (and returned after reading them - clever hack). He joined a hacker group online and started building his skills.
He eventually landed at Yahoo after dropping out of San Jose State University. Worked there for nine years, learning the industry. But the big turning point came when he got an iPhone in 2009 and realized the potential of the app store.
The WhatsApp idea clicked for him while at the gym - he wanted to create a simple way to show status updates next to names in an address book. He and his co-founder Brian Acton (who was actually rejected for jobs at Facebook and Twitter!) launched WhatsApp from Jan's apartment.
What's crazy is that Jan signed the Facebook acquisition papers - $19 billion deal - at the same social services office where he once collected food stamps. Talk about a full-circle moment. After selling to Facebook, he ended up leaving the company a few years later over disagreements about privacy and monetization. He walked away from about $1 billion in unvested stock options because he believed so strongly in his principles.
Looking at people who really shake things up in the world, you've got your political leaders, religious figures, and then company founders. But let's be real—starting a company is probably the most doable path for regular folks to make a massive impact. Tech startups especially have let people without connections build empires from scratch.
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