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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

#201

Post by toomuchtodo »

aylmao wrote: post #193
ozgune wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pre-Facebook, WhatsApp's monetization strategy has been to charge users a nominal fee for usage ($1/year). And $1/yr with 1B users doesn't justify the price tag for Facebook. So Facebook wanted to introduce advertising. PS: I'd be happy to pay them $1/month because a significant part of my communication happens over WhatsApp. The challenge is $1/month is probably too pricey for most of their user base.

FWIW this is from the perspective of and American consumer (I assume, from your comment below where you mention AT&T). Most WhatsApp users aren't American, and in a lot of places $1 is a more significant price tag. That aside though, some places don't have the infrastructure or trust to even allow any sort of online payment to happen: a lot of people in India don't have credit cards, and being from Mexico myself, I k…

Charge me two dollars as a first world American, and give someone else the service for free. Infrastructure can be expensive, but not that expensive. Let's Encrypt, OpenStreetMap [1], and Wikipedia run on donations, and these are core internet properties.

If you think you need tens of millions of dollars annually to run a chat client at scale, no.

[1] https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/9867/what-is-annual... (OpenStreetMap infrastructure costs less than $100k/year)

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

#202

Post by scarface74 »

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.

Ascribing ethics or lack of ethics to a business is like ascribing the same traits to a non sentient being.

Even if your manager is ethical and “cares” about the well being of his employees, his manager may not. Even if his manager does the board, the investors/shareholders, etc. probably don’t. The whole purpose of a corporation is that a corporation survives without regards of any one person getting hit by a bus.

I worked for a struggling company a few years ago and management was very honest about the dire straights we were in, I was part of the team who sat in on interviews and did presentations for potential acquirers so I knew what was going on.

I trusted management not to purposefully screw me over. But at the end of the day, if they “guaranteed me” that my check would clear for every hour I worked I wouldn’t have believed them. The only reason I stayed until the bitter end was because our VC backers promised us in writing that we would be payed until we got an official layoff notice.

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

#203

Post by seppin »

elvirs wrote: post #196
hef19898 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes and no. Back the day, Facebook and Zuckerberg were the shining examples of successful Silicon Valley companies and founders with a good mission. That Zuckerberg, at the young age, managed to retain control of facebook all the way up to, and beyond, the ICO should have given them pause so. That hints a certain personality (no judgement intended in that assessment). But that is 20/20 hindsight which is always…

Zuckerberg was never known to be a founder with a good mission.

A stolen idea with open contempt for his users. No it was never ideal.

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

#204

Post by earenndil »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #201
aylmao wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW this is from the perspective of and American consumer (I assume, from your comment below where you mention AT&T). Most WhatsApp users aren't American, and in a lot of places $1 is a more significant price tag. That aside though, some places don't have the infrastructure or trust to even allow any sort of online payment to happen: a lot of people in India don't have credit cards, and being from Mexico myself, I k…

Charge me two dollars as a first world American, and give someone else the service for free. Infrastructure can be expensive, but not that expensive. Let's Encrypt, OpenStreetMap [1], and Wikipedia run on donations , and these are core internet properties. If you think you need tens of millions of dollars annually to run a chat client at scale, no. [1] https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/9867/what-is-annual... (…

Let's encrypt and wikipedia are not-for-profit. If they charge americans $2/month and eastasians $0, then people will be outraged, and they'll find a way to get it for free anyway.

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

#206

Post by rchaud »

ozgune wrote: post #99
abalone wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come. On. You don’t get to that kind of valuation with a basically free product without ad targeting. An accelerated vesting clause is not an assurance. If they wanted assurances they could have made it a condition of the deal, ok? They didn’t. Accelerated vesting just means they were telegraphing that they wanted to leave before the shit hit the fan.

Pre-Facebook, WhatsApp's monetization strategy has been to charge users a nominal fee for usage ($1/year). And $1/yr with 1B users doesn't justify the price tag for Facebook. So Facebook wanted to introduce advertising. PS: I'd be happy to pay them $1/month because a significant part of my communication happens over WhatsApp. The challenge is $1/month is probably too pricey for most of their user base.

The $1/yr thing was BS. The app never actually took you to a payment screen; I think it was "free for 1 year, $1/yr afterwards". The only time I have ever paid for Whatsapp was in the Blackberry App Store back in 2009, when it cost $3.

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

#207

Post by toomuchtodo »

earenndil wrote: post #204
toomuchtodo wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charge me two dollars as a first world American, and give someone else the service for free. Infrastructure can be expensive, but not that expensive. Let's Encrypt, OpenStreetMap [1], and Wikipedia run on donations , and these are core internet properties. If you think you need tens of millions of dollars annually to run a chat client at scale, no. [1] https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/9867/what-is-annual... (…

Let's encrypt and wikipedia are not-for-profit. If they charge americans $2/month and eastasians $0, then people will be outraged, and they'll find a way to get it for free anyway.

I would ask for proof people would be outraged. Google and Facebook have used their overwhelming first world profits to fund internet ventures in the third world, and no one is outraged over the actions except for the blatant colonialism those actions represent.

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

#208

Post by sangnoir »

buboard wrote: post #58

> At the end of the day, I sold my company. I am a sellout. I acknowledge that I think he's acknowledging that his company was un-monetizable and selling was obviously the best thing they could do. And 10 years later, it remains unmonetizable, that's sad.

> I think he's acknowledging that his company was un-monetizable and selling was obviously the best thing they could do

That's wrong - WhatsApp was monetized - IIRC, they had 200 million users (and growing) and a staff complement of 50[1]. They could have been easily profitable even if a fraction of their users then paid $1/year, or charged Businesses or bots.

1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/02/19/exclusive...

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

#209

Post by jschwartzi »

nemo44x wrote: post #136
scarface74 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we as individuals “require” companies to be ethical? At the end of the day, we don’t have the power to enforce ethics. We have to work within the framework of reality and get everything in writing.

Boycott them and don't purchase or use their products. If you feel strongly about it go further and organize more people to do the same. Try to convince people who don't feel the company is unethical that it is. But in the end you can't expect because you don't like a company that your feelings on what should happen to come to be. It's like so many people complaining on Twitter about Twitter not banning voices they d…

This is exactly what I do with Uber. I don't use it. I use Lyft. This is because I don't consider Uber an ethical company, nor do I particularly like their HR and other management practices.

I don't know very much about Lyft but I have yet to hear anything bad about them which is pretty encouraging.

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

#210

Post by LitFan »

cgtyoder wrote: post #9
nasredin wrote: post #2

SavedYouAClick: because he is a billionaire. I am amazed at just the plain stupidity of some of the writers of well nown papers.

Even if you're a billionaire - $850M is not chump change. I would have a non-trivial time walking away from that much money no matter how much I was worth.

I would hope that someone worth 3.6 billion would have a much easier time walking away from 850 million than someone worth 1 million would walking away from 200 thousand.

To violate one's moral code should surely be worth more than 200k, if they're already taken care of financially.

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