Startup School 8: Jan Koum of WhatsApp
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Startup School 8: Jan Koum of WhatsApp
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Re: Startup School 8: Jan Koum of WhatsApp
#2[deleted]
Re: Startup School 8: Jan Koum of WhatsApp
#3Jan is the entrepreneur that I admire the most. Here are some of the reasons:
1. He was so focused on building the product that he just ignored all emails from carriers and investors. Sequoia partners had to hunt down Whatsapp's office just to get in touch with him. Most entrepreneurs would be easily distracted by investor attention.
2. He didn't care about the press (despite a ton of inbound interest). I don't know how or why he could resist the temptation, but he did for a long time. In fact at one point he tried to consciously stay out of press because he wanted to "manage" growth and didn't want competitors to get wind.
3. Very balanced outlook towards global users - even though SV (or even US) didn't recognize their traction, he always understood that there is a big world out there where not everyone has an iPhone.
4. Focus on infrastructure and reliability.
5. Focus on being "lean". For a long time the team was quite small - but the thing I find most telling is the fact that he didn't have "business people" for a long time - anyone who didn't build the product. At acquisiton I think they had a GC and a business operations guy. It it amazing to be able to resist the temptation to build an empire.
Whichever way you look at it, he comes across as someone who is able to resist common temptations and had a great balanced head on his shoulder.
There is Lot to learn from Jan
Re: Startup School 8: Jan Koum of WhatsApp
#4Jan is the entrepreneur that I admire the most. Here are some of the reasons: 1. He was so focused on building the product that he just ignored all emails from carriers and investors. Sequoia partners had to hunt down Whatsapp's office just to get in touch with him. Most entrepreneurs would be easily distracted by investor attention. 2. He didn't care about the press (despite a ton of inbound interest). I don't know…
He's pretty lucky that he was able to just focus on product and not really worry about the actual business much. Many builders just build in obscurity and the world never knows what they made. I'm jealous.
Re: Startup School 8: Jan Koum of WhatsApp
#5Jan is the entrepreneur that I admire the most. Here are some of the reasons: 1. He was so focused on building the product that he just ignored all emails from carriers and investors. Sequoia partners had to hunt down Whatsapp's office just to get in touch with him. Most entrepreneurs would be easily distracted by investor attention. 2. He didn't care about the press (despite a ton of inbound interest). I don't know…
Not to take any credit away from Jan, it is however worth noting that his background (and that of many of the early employees) is in Infrastructure / Backend at Yahoo! The side-effect of that is that reliability/uptime is already in his DNA, as also, just "getting things done without enjoying any of the limelight", and he's done a great job carrying over lessons/behaviors learnt in that previous life over to WhatsApp.
Re: Startup School 8: Jan Koum of WhatsApp
#6Jan is the entrepreneur that I admire the most. Here are some of the reasons: 1. He was so focused on building the product that he just ignored all emails from carriers and investors. Sequoia partners had to hunt down Whatsapp's office just to get in touch with him. Most entrepreneurs would be easily distracted by investor attention. 2. He didn't care about the press (despite a ton of inbound interest). I don't know…
Not to take any credit away from Jan, it is however worth noting that his background (and that of many of the early employees) is in Infrastructure / Backend at Yahoo! The side-effect of that is that reliability/uptime is already in his DNA, as also, just "getting things done without enjoying any of the limelight", and he's done a great job carrying over lessons/behaviors learnt in that previous life over to WhatsApp…
[deleted]
Re: Startup School 8: Jan Koum of WhatsApp
#7Jan is the entrepreneur that I admire the most. Here are some of the reasons: 1. He was so focused on building the product that he just ignored all emails from carriers and investors. Sequoia partners had to hunt down Whatsapp's office just to get in touch with him. Most entrepreneurs would be easily distracted by investor attention. 2. He didn't care about the press (despite a ton of inbound interest). I don't know…
> 3. Very balanced outlook towards global users - even though SV (or even US) didn't recognize their traction, he always understood that there is a big world out there where not everyone has an iPhone.
This impressed me the most, because at the time whatsapp went mainstream globally - it was available on all platforms including the old BlackberryOS, BlackBerry 10, Symbian (S60), Windows Phone and even some candy phones!! which was unlike any other messaging platform and I have a good reason to believe it was instrumental in their success given how many of my friends switched to whatsapp just because everyone in the group could use it (we had WP, Android and iOS users and one oddball BB10 user [me]).
Re: Startup School 8: Jan Koum of WhatsApp
#8It is very nice to have first mover advantage. Many web and mobile application companies today do not have first mover advantage. This was a good talk to listen to if you have quietly stumbled on something that people want before the rest of the product builders find out.
Re: Startup School 8: Jan Koum of WhatsApp
#9Jan is the entrepreneur that I admire the most. Here are some of the reasons: 1. He was so focused on building the product that he just ignored all emails from carriers and investors. Sequoia partners had to hunt down Whatsapp's office just to get in touch with him. Most entrepreneurs would be easily distracted by investor attention. 2. He didn't care about the press (despite a ton of inbound interest). I don't know…
I hate to sound cynical, but these are only admirable if these features are the most valuable to users/customers. I see way too many entrepreneurs enamored by technology to find a year later there's no one using their software.
I know this might feel sad for software engineers to hear, but there's a lot more Benioff's than there are Jan's in the world.
Re: Startup School 8: Jan Koum of WhatsApp
#10It is very nice to have first mover advantage. Many web and mobile application companies today do not have first mover advantage. This was a good talk to listen to if you have quietly stumbled on something that people want before the rest of the product builders find out.
There were a lot messaging apps before whatsapp so they weren't first. I think the smartest thing they did was use the phone number as the user ID. It really reduced the friction for a lot of people.