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Ted Livingston | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1987 |
| Alma mater | University of Waterloo, |
| Occupation(s) | Founder and CEO of Kik Messenger |
| Spouse | Christine Thayer [1] |
Ted Livingston (born 1987) is founder of Kik Messenger that provides mobile messaging service. [2] [3]
Livingston was born in Toronto. As a child, Livingston had a passion for building Lego structures and automated machines in his basement. He continues following this interest on the school robotics team. [4]
From 1997 to 2005, Livingston attended the Crescent School, in Toronto. [5]
Livingston took a mechatronics bachelor's degree at the University of Waterloo from 2005 to 2009 [6] in order to "pursue his dream of building robots." [7] He participated in the Waterloo co-op program there, with placements at Honda and the City of Toronto government. Livingston eventually landed a co-op position as a system engineering project coordinator at Research in Motion.
In December 2007, eight months into his co-op, Livingston was promoted by Research in Motion to "Technical Product Management Coordinator". [5] In 2008, he turned down a full-time job to return to school at the advice of his manager.
Back at Waterloo, Livingston decided to take part in the Velocity program, a startup-focused community where he founded Kik Messenger instead of completing his degree. [6]
Kik now competes with Facebook and WeChat. At its peak in 2015 it boasted over 275 million registered users, [8] and it was used by approximately 40 percent of American teens. [9] In 2015 Chinese Internet giant Tencent invested $50 million into Kik. [10]
In 2014, Forbes placed him on their "Top 30 under 30" in their technology list. [11] In November 2015, Torontolife ranked Livingston at #20 on their "Toronto's 50 Most Influential,". [12]
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