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WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind

forbes.com

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Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind

#151

Post by anoncoward111 »

wdr1 wrote: post #133
ilovecaching wrote: post #80

You must be either the most naieve person on the planet or a complete moron to sell your company to an advertising company and not expect them to put advertising in your product. Of course he wasn’t noble enough to turn down the money in the first place and turn his product into a big buisness by himself. WhatsApp was literally just a user grab based on a ToDo list app idea released at the right time. Guy should spen…

> You must be either the most naieve person on the planet or a complete moron to sell your company to an advertising company and not expect them to put advertising in your product. I know both Acton & Koum from Yahoo!. To describe either as "naive" or "a complete moron" is ridiculous. If that is the depth of your thought, it would explain why you're writing angry comments on a message board while they are retired bil…

I mean, there are plenty of billionaires who make ridiculous statements from time to time. Donald Trump being one of them, for example.

WhatsApp's founders are awesome! But Acton shouldn't be surprised that FB behaved as they did. He is smart and knows that publicly he should act surprised.

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind

#152

Post by jamiequint »

cowpig wrote: post #19
scarface74 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What year would it be ok to be naive enough to think that any for profit company’s main motivation is not to make as much money possible?

There is such a thing as business ethics. Facebook's complete disregard for them should not be the norm, even if it, sadly, might be more often than not.

Monetizing via ads is hardly disregarding business ethics, it's just a different way of monetizing.

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind

#153

Post by JumpCrisscross »

wdr1 wrote: post #133
ilovecaching wrote: post #80

You must be either the most naieve person on the planet or a complete moron to sell your company to an advertising company and not expect them to put advertising in your product. Of course he wasn’t noble enough to turn down the money in the first place and turn his product into a big buisness by himself. WhatsApp was literally just a user grab based on a ToDo list app idea released at the right time. Guy should spen…

> You must be either the most naieve person on the planet or a complete moron to sell your company to an advertising company and not expect them to put advertising in your product. I know both Acton & Koum from Yahoo!. To describe either as "naive" or "a complete moron" is ridiculous. If that is the depth of your thought, it would explain why you're writing angry comments on a message board while they are retired bil…

I think "somewhat dishonest" is a better term. They aren't morons. They knew they were selling to a cutthroat advertising business. To feign surprise, after becoming a retired billionaire out of said advertising business's purse, seems disingenuous. "I was offered a lot of money and traded a material risk to our users' privacy for a lot of money, for myself and my employees" is closer to the truth.

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind

#154

Post by Mahn »

josefresco wrote: post #60

"“I called her out one time,” says Acton, who sensed there might be greed at play. “I was like, ‘No, you don’t mean that it won’t scale. You mean it won’t make as much money as . . . ,’ and she kind of hemmed and hawed a little. And we moved on. I think I made my point. . . . They are businesspeople, they are good businesspeople. They just represent a set of business practices, principles and ethics, and policies tha…

It really does not scale. Charging users after a certain threshold of messages is a silly idea. Can you imagine if Facebook charged after a certain number of status updates and photos shared? It's not that it doesn't make as much money, it's that people would have quickly jumped ship.

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind

#156

Post by fastball »

ronnier wrote: post #95
sdiq wrote: post #34

I have just deleted WhatsApp from my phone. I am not really sure though what to replace it with for the occasional foreign phone calls.

Snapchat is my favorite for messages and calls to others with snapchat. (I work there)

...

Yeah, maybe if I want my messages to immediately disappear when I click off the app.

(even the new 24hr period isn't good enough to actually have a conversation with people over text)

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind

#157

Post by nova22033 »

ohazi wrote: post #86

> At a meeting over the issue he said Zuckerberg also told him: “This is probably the last time you’ll ever talk to me.” I realize this was probably said in fruatration, but I think it paints a pretty clear picture of Zuckerberg's arrogance and entitlement.

>entitlement

Who does Zuck think he is, the CEO of facebook?

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind

#158

Post by _jal »

wdr1 wrote: post #133
ilovecaching wrote: post #80

You must be either the most naieve person on the planet or a complete moron to sell your company to an advertising company and not expect them to put advertising in your product. Of course he wasn’t noble enough to turn down the money in the first place and turn his product into a big buisness by himself. WhatsApp was literally just a user grab based on a ToDo list app idea released at the right time. Guy should spen…

> You must be either the most naieve person on the planet or a complete moron to sell your company to an advertising company and not expect them to put advertising in your product. I know both Acton & Koum from Yahoo!. To describe either as "naive" or "a complete moron" is ridiculous. If that is the depth of your thought, it would explain why you're writing angry comments on a message board while they are retired bil…

Insulting someone because you either miss or choose not to see their point is not a good way to get people to trust your judgement.

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind

#159

Post by qaq »

fredoliveira wrote: post #83
qaq wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it rational though 850 mil. could literally be used to save few thousands of lives if one was so inclined. While FB is evil by HN standards it's pretty meh on global scale of things.

I don't think that at this point we can consider Facebook anything but evil on a pretty global scale.

I would bet at least 60% of population works for something more evil than FB. Yes they are evil but not in a sense lets start a war and kill few 100K innocent people because we need to run pipelines evil.

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind

#160

Post by kbenson »

nickspacek wrote: post #147
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you agree to a contract with that clause if you aren't prepared for it to be invoked?

People change; perhaps they had previously discovered terms in which monetization would be agreeable. Then when that monetization happened, the other party had a change of heart and no longer consented. If done in bad faith I could see that annoying someone.

> perhaps they had previously discovered terms in which monetization would be agreeable.

If that was the case, I doubt it would have been explicitly and legally formalized in the contract as disallowed without a payout.

If two parties decide that a clause of a contract doesn't need to be enforced, you rewrite the contract. Anything else is just stupid, as it allows the person likely to gain to say "well, I didn't really mean that...".

If you've formalized something in a legally binding contract, be prepared to follow through on it. Full stop.

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