Ted Livingston (Kik)

Ted Livingston (born 1987) is founder of Kik Messenger that provides mobile messaging service.^[1][2]

Early Life

Ted was born in Toronto, Ontario to Bob Livingston, a financial adviser on Bay Street and Laurel Hobbs, who worked in advertising prior to having children.^[3] He grew up in North York and enjoyed a privileged upbringing and spent his summers at his parents cottage in the exclusive Muskoka Lakes and skied in Collingwood in the winter.^[4] In his early life he had a passion for building and created Lego structures and automated machines in his basement, a passion he further developed as part of the school robotics team.^[5] From 1997 to 2005 he attended Crescent School, a prestigious school in Toronto.^[6] His time at Crescent helped to shape him as a person, claiming the school "provided an education which couldn't be more perfect for me as an individual. It allowed me to grow and develop my own philosophies and directions in life."^[6]

2005–Present: UWaterloo and Kik

Ted took a mechatronics bachelor degree the University of Waterloo from 2005 to 2009^[4] in order to "pursue his dream of building robots."^[7] He took part in the co-op program there, alternating between 4 months of school and 4 months of work, with placements at Honda and the City of Toronto and eventually landed a position as a system engineering project coordinator at Waterloo based Research in Motion. Eight months into the co-op, in December 2007, he was promoted to "Technical Product Management Coordinator"^[6] and one year later he turned down a full time job to return to school at the advice of his manager. Ted decided to part in the Velocity program at Waterloo, a startup-focused community where he founded Kik Messenger instead of completing his degree.^[8] Kik now competes with messaging companies such as Facebook and WeChat, boasts over 275 million registered users,^[9] and is used by approximately 40 percent of american teens. ^[10] Chinese internet giant Tencent recently invested $50 million into kik, placing its value at $1 Billion.^[11] In November of 2015, Torontolife placed Ted at #20 on their "Toronto's 50 Most Influential,"^[12] and in 2014 Forbes placed him on their "Top 30 under 30:Technology" list.^[13]

References