> At a meeting over the issue he said Zuckerberg also told him: “This is probably the last time you’ll ever talk to me.”
WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind
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Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind
#112One does not "use" the CEO (or whatever his title was) of a billion dollar company. Either it was part of his duty and responsibility to the company or he willingly cooperated with deceiving a regulator.
To portray it otherwise is just a spin.
At least he admits to “At the end of the day, I sold my company. I am a sellout. I acknowledge that,”. I'm sure it's much easy to be remorseful with a few billion dollars in the bank.
Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you remember how skype worked in 2011? You could send messages anytime, but they would only be delivered if you and your conversation partner were both online at the same time. If you used two computers, the conversation history would sync up if both computers were online simultaneously -- or you would sometimes get it from your conversation partners if they were online. That's fine in the world of desktops with a…
so offline messaging was such a difficult thing to solve without selling? I doubt it. Skype hasn't improved much, not only because MS is not doing its best, but also ISPs typically throttle that.
Centralization was more or less required to do offline messaging. Not so much the selling bit (but note that Skype had already been sold twice before Microsoft bought it in 2011). I agree Microsoft hasn't done a good job with it, though.
Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind
#114> 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.
And of course he is well known for that.
What is less well-known is the elite institutions which groomed him tend to not do much of anything about the fact that they are sometimes, not always, sending these types of Stanford-Prison-Superiority-Complex personalities out into the world.
Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind
#115> The company is also set to charge businesses for messages they receive from potential customers via the WhatsApp platform — of between a half a penny and 9 cents, depending on the country. Didn't knew this and takes back to the outrageous SMS pricing of 10 cents per SMS. I as a consumer can change easily but it's sad to see that business will have to deal with this crap.
The 10 cents isn't for the SMS. The 10 cents is for providing a lead channel, and either now or later, business level features around that lead channel.
Intercom's pricing probably works out to something comparable for the average SMB. If the price is too high relative to the value then businesses won't use it and they'll have to drop the price.
But there's nothing outrageous here.
Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind
#116> 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.
I think that's a reasonable position in response from an employee trying to "activate a clause written into their contract to allow them to immediately get all their stock if the company began “implementing monetization initiatives” without their consent" .
Now whether or not he was in the right to demand it, when actually doing so I doubt anyone expected to have a working relationship after that.
Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind
#117Mark Zuckerberg seems to be the master of putting things in contracts that play out in his favor.
The article says they wanted a clause that granted them approval over monetization strategies. So Zuckerberg gave them some version that he knew had no teeth in order to close the acquisition. But he got exactly what he wanted in the end, without any real compromise.
This falling out with Acton and Joum seem like just another case in the long line of bad relationships: Saverin, and perhaps the Winklessvoss twins, although that "business" relationship was for the sole purpose of ripping them off.
Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind
#118You 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…
Consider that turning down the very very large offer would also have meant turning down the money for his hard working employees. Not such a simple choice. But, as he openly acknowledges, he did sell out to a terrible company.
Facebook is no worse than any other advertising company. Social media is just an unremitting cesspool, and any company based on it has a high likelihood of encountering the wall of toxicity. But if you think Facebook is bad, Google, owner of literally every facet of your technological life, has all of the data on you that Facebook has and more. The only difference is that Google made less PR mistakes, and when people think about Google they aren't reminded of all the inane things their relatives post on their wall.
Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind
#119I want to tell a story about Whatsapp that is unrelated to that, but incidental, and the reason why this seems too much to me. I don't like the company even if I use Whatsapp every days since the start, because when it started to spread in Europe, at the start of the iPhone and Apple store era, Whatsapp was the worst thing ever in the app store in terms of how strongly they advertised their platform, almost in a spammy way, everywhere. Moreover the application was pure garbage. It was not just unencrypted, but the IMEI of the phone hashed with the phone number, or something like that, was used to authenticate to the service. There was zero attempt at privacy. Later when they made big money they fixed it, but still... Fast forward the acquisition, there was another element I did not like: they really did a big noise about how scalable was Whatsapp 'cause it was FreeBSD + Erlang based, one thing that I believe was not honest. Whatsapp was very scalable fundamentally because they just acted as a bridge without storing anything. The backends were probably also decently designed, but not because FreeBSD + Erlang, you could do it differently with the same results. Moreover many times here in Europe where it is massively used, during like xmas or at the new year party time, it goes down, so... like everybody else on earth. And now that story. I never liked the company vibe, and I think he should stop with this Facebook story, because you are the actions you make: don't trust the big social network model? Well, develop your company and find a business model you like. Now it's late to cray. Besides I don't think Facebook is doing anything terrible with Whatsapp.
Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind
#120I have just deleted WhatsApp from my phone. I am not really sure though what to replace it with for the occasional foreign phone calls.
Signal might be an alternative, assuming you can get your contacts to use it.