Ted Livingston (Kik)

Ted Livingston (born 1987) is founder of Kik Messenger that provides mobile messaging service.^[2][3]

Ted Livingston
Born	1987 Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Alma mater	University of Waterloo
Occupation(s)	Founder and CEO of Kik Messenger
Spouse	Christine Thayer [1]

Early life

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]

2005–Present: UWaterloo and Kik

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]