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Ted Livingston (Kik)
Ted Livingston (born 1987) is founder of Kik Messenger that provides mobile messaging service.[2][3] Early lifeLivingston 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] 2005–Present: UWaterloo and KikLivingston 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] References
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