In what's soon to rank as one of the great Silicon Valley creation stories — up there with the $40 rental late fee that drove Reed Hastings to found Netflix — WhatsApp started with restrictive gym policy.
According to legend, WhatsApp co-founder and CEO Jan Koum came up with the idea for his company in early 2009 after his gym banned the use of cell phones. Koum became annoyed at missing calls during his workout and, being an engineer, decided to create a solution.
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Around the same time, Koum had decided on two things: The iPhone would be the future, not only a device, but an "extension of who you are." He also realized he hated advertising and would steer clear of it.
Over the 5-year history of WhatsApp, Koum and co-founder Brian Acton have kept steadfast to both visions, albeit in their quiet, low-key way. In a post congratulating the two on Facebook's stunning $16 billion acquisition of WhatsApp, investor Sequoia Capital displayed a note on Koum's desk that says, "No ads! No games! No gimmicks!"
Koum's antipathy towards advertising runs deep and reflects not just a philosophy about business, but perhaps self-promotion in general. "When you get that message from your loved one, from your family, or from your best friend, you want to be able to reply to it right away, you don't want to be distracted by any advertisement," he told Fast Company last May.
"Smartphones in general are so small, so personal to you, that putting an advertisement there, on that little screen, that wouldn't be right."
The pair came by their distaste for advertising while at Yahoo. Koum spent a decade at the company, serving as VP-Engineering at the company when he left. In a 2011 profile in GigaOm, Koum and Acton were described as two "very product focused are very product-focused, quiet and private individuals who don’t like advertising. They just like making a product that works." Koum said he believes WhatsApp reflects the introverted demeanor of himself and Acton.
Indeed, the resumes of both showcase a lifetime of hard-core engineering expertise. Acton started his career in 1992 as a systems administrator for Rockwell Engineering, moving on to become a hardware product tester at Apple the next year. His LinkedIn profile lists C, C++, Perl, PHP, Erlang, Java and Python among the coding language he has mastered. He also summarizes his mission, to "revolutionize the world with innovative technology products and services."
Both kept a very low profile until they founded WhatsApp in April 2009. With little fanfare, WhatsApp hit the App Store that May. For users, the key selling point was the elegance of its design: WhatsApp had the same user interface as the iPhone address book and integrated contacts and even let you make calls directly from the app.
By November 2011, the app had caught on. It was the No. 1 paid social app in the App Store and had logged 10 million downloads on Android. Adoption for the app appears to have been organic and based on its perceived quality, rather than growth-hacking, advertising or other marketing methods.
The success didn't change Koum or Acton. When a journalist visited the company's headquarters in July 2012, the Ukranian Koum was barefoot and Acton was sporting flip-flops. The two were also described as somewhat obsessive about maintaining their privacy and needed some cajoling to pose for a picture. When WhatsApp won an award at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that year, Kuom sent a marketing exec in his place. "I was at a meeting," he explained.
Now that WhatsApp has netted a much bigger prize, don't expect Koum or Acton — both of whom are around 40 — to bask in the limelight. And whatever you do, don't call Koum the e-word. As he tweeted back in May 2012, "next person to call me an entrepreneur is getting punched in the face by my bodyguard. Seriously."
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