Please give a big applause for Jan. Jan Koum grew up in a rural village outside of
Kyiv, Ukraine when it was still part of the Soviet Union. It was a tough time to be Jewish so the 16-year-old and his mom decided to move to America. They packed suitcases with notebooks so they
wouldn't have to pay for supplies when they arrived in Silicon Valley. His father was supposed
to join them but never made it. He fell ill and died a few years later. Koum swept the floor
of a grocery store to make ends meet. His mom also got a job but then she got cancer. They lived off
food stamps and her disability payments. She passed away three years after his dad died. Such a start
in life would be difficult for anyone to overcome yet overcome he did. As a teen, he taught himself
about computer networking by reading books from a used bookstore and returned them to get his money
back. He enrolled at San Jose State University but dropped out when Yahoo! offered him a job as an
infrastructure engineer. That's also where Brian Acton worked. The two got along really well and
after almost a decade at Yahoo!, they quit took a year off to travel all over South America and
then applied for jobs at Facebook but got rejected. That didn't deter Koum. He had enough money
saved from his time at Yahoo! to launch his own venture alongside Acton - a communications
app called WhatsApp. The app exploded in popularity and ironically would go on
to be bought by Facebook for $19 billion. Time and time again, immigrants appear to
rise to the top despite the roadblocks. Why is that? There's a concept called burning
the boats before getting to shore made famous by Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés. In 1519, he led
an expedition of 600 Spaniards aboard 11 ships to Mexico to explore and secure it for colonization.
Upon arriving, Cortés decided to destroy the fleet - a way of signaling to his men that there was
no turning back. They would either succeed or perish. Within two years, Cortés conquered the
mighty Aztec Empire. It seems the burning the boats analogy can be applied to immigrants. They're
driven to succeed because there's no turning back. And what leads to their billion dollar idea
could very well be the fact that they grew up in another country. Researchers who studied
their success note cross-cultural experience increases the ability to recognize entrepreneurial
opportunities. Koum would have never come up with the idea for WhatsApp had he not grown up
in the USSR. I remember my parents not being able to have a conversation on the phone. The
walls had ears and you couldn't speak freely. Being shaped by those experiences, it's extremely
important to make sure that we provide the level of privacy and security that people would be able
to use our product freely and not being afraid. His is one of many immigrant success stories.
More than half of the top Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or the child of an
immigrant. Without immigrants, there might very well be no Google. When co-founder Sergey Brin was
six years old, his family fled anti-semitism in the former Soviet Union and escaped to America. While
studying computer science at Stanford, Brin met fellow student Larry Page. The two developed
the Google search engine which they called Backrub. They almost sold it to the web portal
Excite for a mere $750,000 but luckily for the co-founders, the deal never went through because
Google is now worth over a trillion dollars. When Page and Brin stepped back from Google in
its parent company Alphabet, they handed the reins to Sundar Pichai, an immigrant from India. He was
a bright student in his native country, getting himself into the prestigious Indian Institute of
Technology Kharagpur, where he studied metallurgical engineering. The US then welcomed Pichai with
scholarships to pursue a Master's degree at Stanford and then an MBA at Wharton. Another
reason researchers attribute to the success of Pichai and others like him is that immigration
policies in many economically advanced countries favor highly skilled individuals, including those
with a college degree. Just 11 years after joining Google, he rose to become CEO. His drive to build
and innovate convinced the founders to develop their own browser, Google Chrome. He once told an
audience that the following words by American inventor Thomas Edison sums up what it means to be
an entrepreneur: I have not failed, I've just found 10,000 ways that don't work. That never give
up attitude is also at the center of Eric Yuan's success. He's not a household name but the company
he created is being used in nearly every household. Many of us have been doing our jobs from
home during the pandemic thanks to Zoom. Yuan was inspired by a talk Microsoft co-founder Bill
Gates gave in Asia in the nineties about the potential of the internet. Yuan wanted in on the dot com boom
and knew he had to leave China and go to America to do it. The problem was the US government denied
his visa application not once not twice not even three times. He didn't get the green light - or green card in this case - until his ninth try. He barely spoke English when he arrived
but he did know the language of the internet. He could code, landing an engineering job with
Webex - a video calling software company later bought by Cisco. His salary was reportedly
in the high six figures but he wasn't happy. He knew the technology could be better so he
left to form his own company. Today, Yuan is number 43 on the Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest people
in America. There also happens to be 43 immigrants on this list. Holding the top spot is Amazon's CEO
Jeff Bezos. Bezos may have been born in the US but his father is Miguel Bezos - a refugee who's not his
biological dad but raised him as his own. He fled the Castro regime in Cuba when he was 16 years
old. He was all by himself. I have a hard time even imagining that. He was a member of Operation
Peter Pan, a rescue program for children run by the Catholic church and heavily funded by the
American government. Miguel's mother thought the US would be really cold compared to tropical Cuba so
she made him a heavy jacket from cleaning cloths, the only material she could get her hands on. It's
now framed in his house. When he landed in America, he couldn't speak any English but figured it out.
He got a scholarship to a university in New Mexico and also took a job at a bank for extra cash where
he met Jeff's mom Jackie. Jeff Bezos has spoken proudly of his father and how much he inspired
him because of his determination, optimism, and grit. That mindset helped the young Bezos guide Amazon
through the turbulent dot-com bubble when many other tech companies folded, and led them to take risks -
like offering free shipping to entice customers even though the math didn't make sense. Such
strategies helped grow Amazon into the behemoth it is today. Psychologist Angela Duckworth is well
known for research on the factors that predict success. She says the key to success - the single
most important factor - is how gritty you are, writing in her book on the topic: Enthusiasm is
common, endurance is rare. Someone who knows a thing or two about enduring is Elon Musk who emigrated
from South Africa to the US by way of Canada where he spent a couple of years as an undergrad.
When asked by CBS' 60 minutes whether he considered packing it in after SpaceX's third launch failed,
he responded: I never give up. I'd have to be dead or completely incapacitated. Thankfully he didn't
give up because the fourth flight was a success. One day, that grit may see Musk arriving on
the doorstep of Mars. Many who venture to a new country are resilient but it's certainly
not the only factor that determines success. They also have the technical knowledge to back
up their ambitions. A problem-solving website and app called Brilliant can help put you on the
path to success and it's free to sign up. I've been workig my way through the logic course which
provides a solid foundation for their math courses. Whether you like to brush up on calculus, practice
programming, or learn the fundamentals of computer science, Brilliant is great for both beginners
and those looking for a refresher. There are no tests and if you're stuck on a problem, Brilliant
explains how to get the right answer. To sign up, head to brilliant.org/newsthink. The link is in
my description And the first 200 people to use my link will get 20% off the Premium subscription
which allows you to access all courses. Thanks for watching Newsthink. I'm Cindy Pom.
