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]
