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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

#161

Post by ouid »

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 the argument is not that they are not morons, but that they clearly "did expect" this.

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

#162

Post by j45 »

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…

Whatsapp was among the first inter-platform chat app. Kik was another. It didn't matter if you were on a Nokia (Symbian), iPhone, Blackberry (BBM was big at the time) or Android. They also solved for many individual phones globally that no one would go near to build their network.

For these reasons I don't see Whatsapp as a Todo app. Chat apps did exist, but there wasn't really many alternatives for inter-platform chat like there is today.

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

#163

Post by madrox »

I'm sure Acton and Koum told themselves they were also keeping the power to be in control. I'm sure they went into it thinking they could avoid this end. The brain is a powerful rationalizer when it sees generational wealth within reach.

The indignant tone of the comments here make me laugh. There are very few things I can imagine readers of HN not doing for a billion dollars. People may say otherwise, but until they've been tested I choose not to believe them.

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

#164

Post by omegbule »

annadane wrote: post #155

It's quite interesting how so many comments here are pro Facebook, anti Whatsapp founders. How big is Facebook's astroturfing department? (Just a theory. But it seems a bit glaring to not point it out.)

My thought is most of the commenters don't see the big picture of what happened but just what they want to see.

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

#165

Post by sctb »

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…

Even if you're replying to a shallow and dismissive comment, personal attacks have no place here. We have to resist this temptation if we're to have any hope of an insightful discussion.

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

#166

Post by MarkMc »

If I understand correctly, Zuckerberg forced Acton to hold onto his Facebook shares - and the value of those shares then doubled in a three-year period. Surely that must mollify Acton's animosity somewhat.

It reminds me of the scene in The Big Short where at one point the investors a clamoring to withdraw their money from Michael Burry's fund. They hate him and call him names, but he refuses to let them withdraw. Later when he pays out a huge profit he emails them saying, "You're welcome".

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

#167

Post by xibalba »

Acton is being incredibly disingenuous and it is disappointing. When you sell your company to another for $19B, you should surely know that the expectations for monetization will be very heavy indeed. Well beyond Acton's suggested metered-user model.

I'm certainly no great fan of Facebook, but anyone who thinks that they deserve to use a service free of charge and also avoid advertising is extremely entitled and disconnected from reality. There is no free lunch.

None of this is to excuse FB's bad behavior. The fact that they claimed they wouldn't attempt to link accounts but had teams elsewhere in FB working on that very task is yet another example of the true nature of that company and its highest ranking people.

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

#168

Post by cptskippy »

anoncoward111 wrote: post #151
wdr1 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

I think it was established during the election that he isn't a billionaire. He also makes ridiculous statements on a weekly if not hourly basis, so "from time to time" is misleading.

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

#169

Post by waterhouse »

madrox wrote: post #163

I'm sure Acton and Koum told themselves they were also keeping the power to be in control. I'm sure they went into it thinking they could avoid this end. The brain is a powerful rationalizer when it sees generational wealth within reach. The indignant tone of the comments here make me laugh. There are very few things I can imagine readers of HN not doing for a billion dollars. People may say otherwise, but until they…

Not saying you're not mostly right, but there is the case of Jean-Baptiste Kempf, maintainer of VLC, who apparently turned down tens of millions to put ads into VLC. (I suppose that is two orders of magnitude smaller than a billion.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15372048

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

#170

Post by scrollaway »

Mahn wrote: post #154
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.

> Can you imagine if Facebook charged after a certain number of status updates and photos shared?

I can't, and neither can you, because it doesn't and it hasn't really been tried in a popular app.

Whether it's as obvious as you think that it doesn't scale and/or it wouldn't work, people would jump ship etc remains to be determined.

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