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I really respect Jan. I saw him talk at Startup School a few years ago and what really impressed me was his non-traditional path to becoming a tech billionaire.

I really respect Jan. I saw him talk at Startup School a few years ago and what really impressed me was his non-traditional path to becoming a tech billionaire. He had a long career at Yahoo! before founding WhatsApp. He's a role model we should be looking at. Not young college kids who can dupe old investors into giving them millions for vaporware. It's also important that he's speaking out in opposition to these government tactics. Hopefully Zuckerberg will follow suit but if history tells us anything it's that Facebook is rather compliant and doesn't take security seriously.

renaudg 11y ago
if history tells us anything it's that Facebook is rather compliant and doesn't take security seriously. Citation needed...
- ryanSrich 11y ago
  http://www.boston.com/news/nation/2015/08/12/harvard-student-loses-facebook-internship-after-pointing-out-privacy-flaws/zASZFdUjn6PoliUiR9kVHJ/story.html http://www.boston.com/news/nation/2015/08/12/harvard-student... http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/facebook-security-wall-mark-zuckerberg_n_3779228.html http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/facebook-security-wall-mark-z... http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/12/17/facebook-instagram-security-research-threats/#7b320e2f2d82 http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/12/17/facebo... http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-security-flaw-leaks-private-photos-2015-3?r=UK&IR=T http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-security-flaw-leaks-... http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims... https://facebook.com/safety/groups/law/guidelines/ https://facebook.com/safety/groups/law/guidelines/
  - lazzlazzlazz 11y ago
    These individual cases happen for every tech company.
- akerro 11y ago
  Where were you for the last 4 years?
id 11y ago
I don't think he should be considered a role model. Almost no one will be able to follow his route and become a billionaire with a relatively simple app. I also don't think that him becoming insanely rich automatically means he has to be great / a role model.
adventured 11y ago
In all seriousness though, who is making a role model of young college kids duping old investors into giving them millions? I'm not aware of that actually existing outside of an extraordinarily tiny enclave. The rest of America does not make such vaporware failures into any kind of role models. Quite the opposite probably, I see far more mockery than anything. Such failed start-ups are constantly made fun of in the business press. For years now, essentially every major business publication has been waiting with bated breath for the latest bubble crash so they could mock what ultimately became the unicorn bubble. Zenefits for example has been getting lambasted, and they're not even vaporware, they actually have a real business of some caliber in a serious business category. Color was vaporware, and it was endlessly, and universally mocked. I can't think of good examples of college kids becoming role models for pushing vaporware.
mike_hearn 11y ago
As opposed to older people who can dupe young investors into giving them billions for vaporware? OK, that's mean. WhatsApp and its success is not vaporware. And they DID charge money at the time they were sold to FB, albeit pitiful amounts from virtually nobody. But the asking price was so high and so out of whack with the financial potential of the app, that I hesitate to describe Koum as a traditional businessman. "Sell my app to a company that's terrified of anything that smells social being successful without them" is still not a business model, not even now.
- krrrh 11y ago
  I agree that a good portion of the valuation must have been largely driven by fear and their potential to destroy that much value rather than create it. The factor that both challenges and supports your argument is how small their team was at acquisition (reportedly 32 engineers, 55 total). Charging $1 a year per user after the first year was bringing in revenue, and it wouldn't take much to be a "traditional business" ie. profitable. They also had zero-rated revenue-sharing deals with Reliance Telecom in India years ago as another potential source of revenue – I suspect relationships like this played a larger role in the acquisition than as they thought they would lay the groundwork for internet.org. Your comment made me curious about what their actual revenues and costs were leading up to the sale. Putting (massive) stock-based compensation expenses aside it looks like their revenues and operating costs were actually pretty close[1]. That's not delving into potential revenue growth connected to payments and B2C interaction following the path which was already being laid out by wechat[2]-Facebook has decided to attempt this with messenger instead of whatsapp. I'm not saying that they would have quickly found enough revenue to justify a $20B valuation, but that it resembled a traditional business a lot more than many other social startups, and they were kept lean and probably better positioned to capitalize on growth than others. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/28/whatsapp-revenue/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/28/whatsapp-revenue/ "For the year ending December 31, 2013, WhatsApp had $10.2 million in revenue … net cash used in operating during this period was only $9.9 million" [2] http://dangrover.com/blog/2014/12/01/chinese-mobile-app-ui-trends.html#chatasui http://dangrover.com/blog/2014/12/01/chinese-mobile-app-ui-t...

renaudg 11y ago

if history tells us anything it's that Facebook is rather compliant and doesn't take security seriously. Citation needed...

ryanSrich 11y ago
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/2015/08/12/harvard-student-loses-facebook-internship-after-pointing-out-privacy-flaws/zASZFdUjn6PoliUiR9kVHJ/story.html http://www.boston.com/news/nation/2015/08/12/harvard-student... http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/facebook-security-wall-mark-zuckerberg_n_3779228.html http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/facebook-security-wall-mark-z... http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/12/17/facebook-instagram-security-research-threats/#7b320e2f2d82 http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/12/17/facebo... http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-security-flaw-leaks-private-photos-2015-3?r=UK&IR=T http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-security-flaw-leaks-... http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims... https://facebook.com/safety/groups/law/guidelines/ https://facebook.com/safety/groups/law/guidelines/
- lazzlazzlazz 11y ago
  These individual cases happen for every tech company.
akerro 11y ago
Where were you for the last 4 years?

id 11y ago

I don't think he should be considered a role model. Almost no one will be able to follow his route and become a billionaire with a relatively simple app. I also don't think that him becoming insanely rich automatically means he has to be great / a role model.

adventured 11y ago

In all seriousness though, who is making a role model of young college kids duping old investors into giving them millions? I'm not aware of that actually existing outside of an extraordinarily tiny enclave. The rest of America does not make such vaporware failures into any kind of role models. Quite the opposite probably, I see far more mockery than anything. Such failed start-ups are constantly made fun of in the business press. For years now, essentially every major business publication has been waiting with bated breath for the latest bubble crash so they could mock what ultimately became the unicorn bubble. Zenefits for example has been getting lambasted, and they're not even vaporware, they actually have a real business of some caliber in a serious business category. Color was vaporware, and it was endlessly, and universally mocked. I can't think of good examples of college kids becoming role models for pushing vaporware.

mike_hearn 11y ago

As opposed to older people who can dupe young investors into giving them billions for vaporware? OK, that's mean. WhatsApp and its success is not vaporware. And they DID charge money at the time they were sold to FB, albeit pitiful amounts from virtually nobody. But the asking price was so high and so out of whack with the financial potential of the app, that I hesitate to describe Koum as a traditional businessman. "Sell my app to a company that's terrified of anything that smells social being successful without them" is still not a business model, not even now.

krrrh 11y ago
I agree that a good portion of the valuation must have been largely driven by fear and their potential to destroy that much value rather than create it. The factor that both challenges and supports your argument is how small their team was at acquisition (reportedly 32 engineers, 55 total). Charging $1 a year per user after the first year was bringing in revenue, and it wouldn't take much to be a "traditional business" ie. profitable. They also had zero-rated revenue-sharing deals with Reliance Telecom in India years ago as another potential source of revenue – I suspect relationships like this played a larger role in the acquisition than as they thought they would lay the groundwork for internet.org. Your comment made me curious about what their actual revenues and costs were leading up to the sale. Putting (massive) stock-based compensation expenses aside it looks like their revenues and operating costs were actually pretty close[1]. That's not delving into potential revenue growth connected to payments and B2C interaction following the path which was already being laid out by wechat[2]-Facebook has decided to attempt this with messenger instead of whatsapp. I'm not saying that they would have quickly found enough revenue to justify a $20B valuation, but that it resembled a traditional business a lot more than many other social startups, and they were kept lean and probably better positioned to capitalize on growth than others. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/28/whatsapp-revenue/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/28/whatsapp-revenue/ "For the year ending December 31, 2013, WhatsApp had $10.2 million in revenue … net cash used in operating during this period was only $9.9 million" [2] http://dangrover.com/blog/2014/12/01/chinese-mobile-app-ui-trends.html#chatasui http://dangrover.com/blog/2014/12/01/chinese-mobile-app-ui-t...