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WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind
- nasredin 8y agoSavedYouAClick: because he is a billionaire. I am amazed at just the plain stupidity of some of the writers of well nown papers.
- cmer 8y agoIt was actually a great article in my opinion. I don't think it's fair to diminish the quality of its content to such a short and easy answer. Of course the title is a bit click-baity, I'll give you that.
- cgtyoder 8y agoEven 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.
- LitFan 8y agoI 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.
- kennywinker 8y agoAt major news outlets, the person who writes the article is not the same as the person who writes the headline.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dang 8y agoThis comment breaks the site guidelines, which ask: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." We've asked you quite a few times to stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN. If you don't stop, we're going to have to ban you. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- tomcam 8y agoNow I find myself in the unfortunate position of defending Facebook, a site I barely use and whose founder does not to me represent the best of Silicon Valley. He took their money. He should just shut up. There was never any question about what Facebook was dealing with its data. Never. They have always been explicit about it in their user agreement. He didn’t seem to mind when he took billions from them. I have an old-fashioned sense of ethics and cannot understand how someone would like that would bad-mouth the public company he benefited so richly from, when he knew all along what they were doing. There are no heroes in this story.
- pentae 8y agoI think like most people who sell their business then see it multiply in size and value afterwards, hindsight is a bitch - he regrets it. He was tortured for years thinking about 'what if' he hadn't sold the company and been in control of its destiny. Rather than appreciating the position he's in, which is probably what he should be doing.
- tomcam 8y agoI can't read his mind so I don't know if you're right... but it sure feels that way.
- ilovecaching 8y agoYou 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 spend Facebooks money on some therapy and move on with his life.
- randomsearch 8y agoConsider 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.
- immad 8y agoIt’s not like if he turned down the acquisition offer he would shut down the company. They could still have done a secondary and stayed independent.
- ilovecaching 8y agoFacebook 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.
- 404mike_ 8y agoFewer
- soperj 8y ago> ToDo list app idea Have you actually ever used it? I do remember them turning facebook down multiple times... everyone has their price though, hard to turn down winning the lottery.
- ohazi 8y ago> 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.
- wallace_f 8y agoAnd 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.
- Illniyar 8y agoI 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.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y agoWhy would you agree to a contract with that clause if you aren't prepared for it to be invoked?
- nickspacek 8y agoPeople 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.
- kbenson 8y ago> 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.
- jolesf 8y ago> At a meeting over the issue he said Zuckerberg also told him: “This is probably the last time you’ll ever talk to me.”
- Illniyar 8y agoOne 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.
- tumetab1 8y ago> 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.
- jelling 8y agoThe 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.
- martinald 8y agoIt's actually more expensive to send a WhatsApp message via Twilio than an SMS via Twilio, which is a pretty weird way to price it.
- sschueller 8y agoThis won't last. Users and companies will jump ship to another platform. It is already a pain that I can't write bots on WhatsApp like I can on telegram.
- goshx 8y agoWhile I understand the sentiment and generally agree with you, someone has to pay for the service, right? And businesses have been paying for all those Toll Free calls customers are making. It's only toll free for the caller.
- mattnewport 8y agoThis article seems a little unfair to the WhatsApp founders when it suggests they should have known that any assurances Facebook made to them as part of the acquisition were obviously lies. Sure in 2018 it might be obvious to most of us that nothing Facebook says or promises can be trusted but I don't think that was necessarily as obvious when the acquisition happened and they can be forgiven for thinking they weren't being lied to.
- senorjazz 8y agosorry, but that is very naive of you 2018 / 2010 / 1990, no business can be trusted to tell the truth if it is not written down in a legally binding way. They will always do what is in their best interest when it is in their interest to do so
- scarface74 8y agoWhat 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?
- hoorayimhelping 8y agoAccording to this table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation#History I'd say around 2010.
- cd_et_toss 8y agoIt hasn't been always true, historically, that for-profit companies seek only to enrich their shareholders at all cost. https://www.boston.com/news/policy/2018/08/16/elizabeth-warren-capitalism-bill https://www.boston.com/news/policy/2018/08/16/elizabeth-warr... "Warren attributes those problems to a shift, which she says dates back to the 1980s, in the obligations of corporations — from balancing responsibilities to all their stakeholders — including both employees and stock owners — to prioritizing their financial return to shareholders only." (That's not exactly responsive to your point on maximizing profit, but the body of work on this topic shows that when companies care about long-term return, and about employees and other stakeholders, they aren't solely focused on maximizing short-term profit over all else.)
- Jyaif 8y agoHow an individual can leave $850M on the table to prove a point blows my mind. I'm in awe at that guy, but I can't help but think that with $850M he could have funded so many interesting projects/research.
- tehlike 8y agoNow think of the day fb stock dropped 20% just over the course of few hours...
- jiveturkey 8y agowhen you’ve already got $4bn, it’s not that hard.
- cryptozeus 8y agoWhen you have money and principles you believe in, its not that hard.
- icebraining 8y agoHow many times have you walked away from 9 digit sums?
- shawabawa3 8y agoThe same number of times i've received 10 digit sums
- 8y ago
- padthai 8y agoAre Matrix clients reliable and fast enough to use them? I am looking forwards to install them to my family but last time I tried they were a little bit unresponsive.
- dest 8y agoI works well if you install your own homeserver, at least if you do not use matrix.org server, which is overcrowded at the moment.
- ptx 8y agoI switched from WhatsApp to Riot, connecting to the public matrix.org server, and it's working well for me. The app is pretty nice. It looks like any other modern chat app. The end-to-end encryption had some issues earlier (last year?), losing my encryption keys and making all messages in the conversation unreadable, but it seems to be working well in the latest version. It still warns you that encryption is experimental when you enable it, though.
- jiveturkey 8y ago“used him” i have little sympathy for such actors. i’ve known people who got rich on stock options in the ‘00s and then fled california while decrying the rat race. this is the same thing. if you really mean it, donate all the money to charity, an ed foundation, or some such. i’ll even forgive you for keeping 10mm for yourself. otherwise, cry me a river.
- buboard 8y agoYou're absolutely correct despite the downvotes. Of course everyone is allowed to voice their opinion about privacy, but people with power or money should put their money (or power) where their mouth is: fund an alternative. Also, "used him" doesn't mean it was not consensual in this case.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- fredoliveira 8y agoFrom the article (first paragraph, too): > Brian Acton, who left Facebook a year ago — before going on to publicly bite the hand that fed him, by voicing support for the #DeleteFacebook movement (and donating $50M to alternative encrypted messaging app, Signal) And: > And for leaving a cool ~$850M in unvested stock on the table by not sticking it out a few more months inside Zuckerberg’s mothership, as co-founder Jan Koum did. Sounds like this actor may in fact be worthy of a little sympathy.
- cryptozeus 8y agoWhat does whatsapp uses right now to make money? From what i know i dont see any ads there
- snthd 8y agoIt doesn't - hence the immense pressure Facebook feels from its owners.
- beagle3 8y agoWhatsApp up until now was not pivoting to a full social network. That, on its own, was worth a lot to Facebook ; if WhatsApp did and was successful, it would have cost Facebook much more than 20B, perhaps closer to 100B in value. Now that FB got their money’s worth of “WhatsApp not competing”, they want to actually profit of it. Also, whatsapp’s Interaction and name database (“metadata”) is super useful to Facebook. Likely not $1B useful, but still a database FB would otherwise pay millions for.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sdiq 8y agoI have just deleted WhatsApp from my phone. I am not really sure though what to replace it with for the occasional foreign phone calls.
- ionised 8y agoSignal?
- penetrarthur 8y agoTelegram. It also has channels similar to facebook feeds/twitter without comments and/or retweets.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ronnier 8y agoSnapchat is my favorite for messages and calls to others with snapchat. (I work there)
- fastball 8y ago... Yeah, maybe if I want my messages to immediately disappear when I click off the app. (even the new 24hr period isn't good enough to actually have a conversation with people over text)
- randomsearch 8y agoSignal has voice calling
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- arihant 8y agoIf they are occasional, standard international calls aren't that expensive anymore. Telegram has voice calls too, fwiw.
- computerfriend 8y ago
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- buboard 8y ago> At the end of the day, I sold my company. I am a sellout. I acknowledge that I think he's acknowledging that his company was un-monetizable and selling was obviously the best thing they could do. And 10 years later, it remains unmonetizable, that's sad.
- s_dev 8y agoDidn't WhatsApp used to charge a dollar a year?
- hackandtrip 8y agoThat would have stopped working in a few years: nowadays lot of different people stopped using WhatsApp almost entirely using Facebook Messanger / Telegram / etc. 1$/year is just too low-proft and too risky
- s_dev 8y ago>1$/year is just too low-proft Thats moving goal posts -- the claim was that WhatsApp was unmonetizable not that it could generate super normal profits.
- hackandtrip 8y agoUnmonetizable and "super normal profits" for a 19B product can be really close in the scale used by business people
- jamesmcnalley 8y agoMonetization is really hard. The ‘90s was filled with the wreckage of companies that couldn’t get it right, with debris spreading out into the early ‘00s. The ad monetization model is one way to do it, and it can be rolled out to a wide variety of products, but it is unlikely to be the only model. Business is hard, and it can take a long time and many failures to be truly innovative. I’m an engineer, but I’m a little sad that so few people with strong business backgrounds are trying new things. Maybe in another decade or two.
- josefresco 8y ago"“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 that I don’t necessarily agree with.”" Would have loved to be a fly on the wall in that room!
- everdev 8y agoAs Norm Macdonald says: You wouldn't understand sh*t, you'd be too worried about spiders and being a fly
- Mahn 8y agoIt 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.
- scrollaway 8y ago> 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.
- jamesmcnalley 8y agoI get the frustration of seeing your pride and joy used in ways that you hoped to avoid. But he likely would have retained more control of WhatsApp if he stuck around and played ball. Now he has some money, zero control, and he has absolutely scorched the earth for his co-founder or anyone else who wants to minimize ads or find alternate monetization options.
- randomsearch 8y agoWhich cofounder? They’ve both left.
- jamesmcnalley 8y agoThe other co-founder left later, and it’s unlikely that the acrimonious departure helped.
- gaahrdner 8y agoThe guy is worth $6 billion according to Wikipedia, he and his cofounder will probably be ok. Maybe we'll see something good come out of this with his involvement in Signal?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- chubot 8y agoMark 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.
- stock_toaster 8y agoAlternative reading: "Mark and Co. don't think twice about breaking laws or contracts, as long as any fines end up being less than the money they stand to make."
- akudha 8y agoIt is not like he personally wrote those contracts! Like any mega corp, FB must be having super high priced lawyers who do the dirty work. Hell, I am a lowly engineer in a tiny company who got screwed by a single line in a contract. I saw first hand what lawyers can do.
- antirez 8y agoI 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.
- slig 8y agoI remember that they false advertised it on App Stores as "WhatsApp - Free SMS".
- antirez 8y agoExactly, among the many other similar things.
- notyourwork 8y agoThis reads less like a story and more like a rant. You don’t like the app or it’s root, so what? I’m not clear what your stories intention is.
- mcguire 8y agoHe left $850M on the table? After $3.8B? Wow.
- coldcode 8y agoYou sell something for billions of dollars to a giant entity who makes money by selling user data, you should realize they will want to make money to pay for those billions. Most of the time such a purchase results in the original founders departing. You may as well leave at first opportunity. You can always build something else, now with your own money.
- jaas 8y agoThis comment doesn't add anything that isn't explained in the article more than once by Acton himself.
- deleted_account 8y agoI feel like I'm coming across more of these "exit, then atone" profiles and none of them seem to have any teeth. They read like self-help articles for the ultra-rich: "Broken moral compass keeping you up at night? Try driving a Honda Odyssey." I get it; you took the money. I'd sure as hell take the money. One anecdote about sniping at Sheryl Sandberg is washed away by this milquetoast sentiment: “It was like, okay, well, you want to do these things I don’t want to do,” Acton says. “It’s better if I get out of your way. And I did.”
- sushisource 8y agoI also fail to see how driving a minivan makes you a better person. I don't understand why we fetishize the rich who live like they aren't. I get not overconsuming, but if you're gonna buy a car might as well make it a nice one - the impact is basically the same.
- chadash 8y agoThe environmental impact, sure, but there's also a "keeping up with the Joneses" factor. If people don't flaunt their status, other people won't feel as pressured to either. I once heard a very wealthy guy complain that "everyone these days wears a Rolex", so he needs to buy something fancier. Well, once every super wealthy person goes out and buys something fancier, then the less wealthy people will want that and the effect trickles down. The fact is that conspicuous consumption is a problem for our society in that it leads people to buy things that they can't afford. By driving a minivan, Brian Acton isn't contributing to that problem as much and I commend him for it.
- roywiggins 8y agoIt's a Red Queen effect, I guess.
- megaremote 8y agoExactly, anyone who buys a car as bad as any other.
- Mahn 8y ago> Acton said he tried to push Facebook towards an alternative, less privacy hostile business model for WhatsApp — suggesting a metered-user model such as by charging a tenth of a penny after a certain large number of free messages were used up. > But that “very simple business” idea was rejected outright by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who he said told him “it won’t scale”. > “I was like, ‘No, you don’t mean that it won’t scale. You mean it won’t make as much money as…,’ This doesn't scale because people would ditch WhatsApp in favour of a messaging app that didn't restrict the amount of messages you can send behind a paywall. I know that hating Facebook is in vogue, but frankly with that line of thinking he sounds like would have made poor business/product decisions.
- doingmyting 8y agoFounders took the money. Tf were they expecting to happen? You sold out. You can't have your cake and eat it too!
- annadane 8y agoIt'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.)
- omegbule 8y agoMy thought is most of the commenters don't see the big picture of what happened but just what they want to see.
- madrox 8y agoI'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.
- waterhouse 8y agoNot 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15372048
- madrox 8y agoAnd if he chose to criticize the WhatsApp founders, it would carry a lot of weight with me. I didn't say altruism doesn't exist...I just don't believe it's in this comment thread. :)
- st1ck 8y agoI don't know the details, but he could've turned down monetization of his work for purely selfish reasons as well.
- justaguyhere 8y agoHe is an exception. I guess 99% (or maybe more) of the people in his situation would've taken the money, and they'd probably be doing right for themselves and their families. Ethics is always a nuanced topic.
- puranjay 8y agoI donated money to VLC the day I learned about this. I had no idea this software I use and love every day was maintained by a single guy. Props to him. I don't think I would have been able to resist an 8 figure offer
- MarkMc 8y agoIf 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".
- xibalba 8y agoActon 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.
- b3n 8y ago> [...] 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. We are using Hacker News, free of charge, without advertising. Or for a bigger example, most Wikipedia users have never donated and yet use the service with zero advertising. Or there's Signal, as mentioned in the article, and countless other examples. Perhaps there is a free lunch after all.
- lucasjans 8y agoOr perhaps not. Perhaps there's value in the community that rewards its owners in other ways.
- xibalba 8y agoHacker News is subsidized by perhaps the most successful venture capital firm of all time. Wikipedia routinely raises lots and lots of money via donation. Signal is funded by a multi-billionaire. There is never a free lunch. Employees must be compensated, capital equipment must be bought/rented. The revenue has to come from somewhere. Neither of Hacker News nor Wikipedia nor Signal was purchased to the tune of $19B. So who set that price? Let me assure you, Facebook would have gladly paid less. And, of course, Facebook bought WhatsApp with the intention of turning a profit. The rest follows logically.
- 8y ago
- roymurdock 8y agoZuckerberg: Take the money. Acton: I'm not taking it. Z: Just take it. A: No! Z: Look, I don't give a fuck, but the boys'll feel better. A: Fuck their feelings! Z: [Brian], we're a team. A: A team? You guys are fucking insane. I'll go back to the Valley, I'll [create messaging apps]. It can't be like this. Z: It is. I'm sorry, but it is. It's ugly, but it's necessary. A: I became a [developer] to put away dealers and criminals, not to be one. Z: You sound just like me. I know what you're going through and feeling. You're scared. A: I'm not. Z: Yes, you are. Everyone goes through that the first time. I did. The sooner you match what's in your head...with what's in the real world...the better you'll feel. Z: In this business...you gotta have dirt on you to be trusted. When all this is behind you, a whole other world will open up for you. Z: I walk a higher path, son. Z: I have the keys to all the doors.
- louwrentius 8y agoPlease note that it's a lot easier to walk away from $850M if you already own billions.
- mciak 8y agoThe Four Seasons is technically in East Palo Alto -.-
- leothekim 8y agoI can't help but go back to Mark Zuckerberg's letter when Facebook was preparing to IPO: "... we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services. "And we think this is a good way to build something. These days I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits." [1] I mean, there was no way he was going to drop $22 billion dollars on something and not get a return. But I can't help but notice how the article depicts him as someone who is thinking more strategically, contractually, and businesslike (i.e. profit-driven) than someone who would write something like the quote above. Whatever he was then, he seems to have taken a step away from it and become... a CEO. [1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/mark-zuckerberg%E2%80%99s-ipo-letter--why-facebook-exists.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/mark-zuckerberg%E2%80%99s-ipo-let...
- ThrustVectoring 8y ago>I mean, there was no way he was going to drop $22 billion dollars on something and not get a return. There's plenty of valid business reasons to spend money on ventures that aren't "net present value of cash flow projections exceed costs". There can be indirect effects like maintaining a moat - buying WhatsApp can be worthwhile simply to ensure that other companies can't use it to compete with Facebook's core business. Or there can be real option considerations. Or it can drive down the price of the complements of your core product.
- leothekim 8y agoDefinitely, great point. For Facebook + WhatsApp, I'd bet that this is a case of Mark having a giant ad revenue hammer, and everything else that's corralling eyeballs is inevitably going to be a nail.
- sidcool 8y agoA genuine question. How are ads possible in WhatsApp if it's end to end encrypted?
- Marsymars 8y agoThe ads won't be targeted based on your messages. They'll just be targeted based on all the other info FB has on you.
- Markoff 8y agowhat if you don't use Facebook and only use WhatsApp? not much information besides contacts and rough location
- Marsymars 8y agoThey can do quite a lot with your phone number and contacts: https://gizmodo.com/facebook-is-giving-advertisers-access-to-your-shadow-co-1828476051 https://gizmodo.com/facebook-is-giving-advertisers-access-to...
- jerguismi 8y agoSo... Basically he cashed out billions. That is ridiculous amount of money. Now he said "no" to $850 millions for moral reasons, and the moral action here is mostly that he won't work for facebook any more. For me this sounds quite ridiculous. He already cashed out as they sold the unprofitable service for ridiculous amount of money. Facebook has to generate profit for shareholders so they have to monetize it somehow. It is quite easy for him to say "yeah I'm morally superior, thanks for the money but I don't want the product to be profitable that way you know, now when you have paid me..."
- iMuzz 8y ago> “At the end of the day, I sold my company,” Acton says. “I sold my users’ privacy to a larger benefit. I made a choice and a compromise. And I live with that every day.” Seems like he's aware but Forbes is desperately trying to spin it differently.
- mrnobody_67 8y agoShould've taken the $850m and invested in 50 potential FB competitors... or start a foundation. Not taking the money just enriches the FB management and shareholders, thus rewarding them to continue what they are already doing.
- simplecomplex 8y agoWhy do any of you care about this?
- qubax 8y agoI'm so sick of the self-righteous moralizing and bullshit by the tech elites and the news companies that help push that narrative. Brian Acton didn't create whatsapp to "do good". Facebook wasn't created to "do good". Google wasn't formed to "do good". People create companies to make money. Why is this so hard for people to understand? The guy spent 3 years creating a silly messaging app and growing a userbase and sold it for $20 billion. It's like winning the lottery. Maybe he feels guilty. But stop with the patting of one's back and pretending to fallen saints. He knew well enough what selling whatsapp ( a company that didn't make a single penny ) to facebook for $20 billion meant. Monetization. I would have also sold a shitty messaging app I worked on for 3 years to FB for $20 billion. But I wouldn't go around pretending I was a saint who got hoodwinked afterwards. Besides, even if the guy didn't sell to FB, he would have had to monetize and sellout eventually because he had venture capitalists to satisfy. These slimeballs are trying to eat the cake and have it too.
- unethical_ban 8y agoI'm so sick of these rants that claim there is no motivation in creating a business other than to make money. There can be no passion for something, there can be no vision for a better future or a way to improve communities. No, every business can only be focused on maximizing profit, and damn the consequences. That is a load of horseshit, and that view only serves to perpetuate that stereotype. To be sustaining is what a businesses needs to survive, but many businesses have missions an ethos of doing good as well.
- makecheck 8y agoWe live in a society that requires money just to survive. How can any venture not have money as a goal? Therefore, it’s always at least about money but probably more than that. And when you consider the time investment and risk associated with a startup, it might be a loss if you’re only considering the money.
- abledon 8y agoanyone notice the picture they used. The founder are standing behind an artistic rendition of a fiery bird... somewhat akin to phoenix. Which is written in elixir. Which is what whatsapp was written in.
- Johnny555 8y agoWhy are people acting like this is a big deal? His net worth is $3.6B (not sure if that includes the $850M he walked away from). Giving up $850M when you already have $2B doesn't seem like much of a sacrifice, and is unlikely to change his life at all. Giving up $850K when you have $2M would be a bigger sacrifice than giving up $850M when you already have $2B.
- throwaway5250 8y agoI'd say it's a big deal because $850M donated to a worthy cause (e.g., GiveWell) could have made a big difference in the world. I've suffered far more for far less.
- Johnny555 8y agoIf you're going to call him out for not staying at FB long enough to get the $850M to donate it somewhere, why not also call him out for not donating most of his $3B fortune? Surely he could scrape by on even a paltry $1B. What's the difference from telling someone to stick it out long enough to vest more stock versus telling him to just donate some portion of his already vast fortune?
- retsibsi 8y agoIt would be good if he did either or both of those things. The original question was why giving up $850,000,000 is a big deal when you're already super-rich. The answer is that, even if it won't affect your living standards, it's still worth $850,000,000 to the people you could use it to help.
- sho 8y agoRight. I have been in a disturbing number of these fucking companies. The value attached to "I am going to absolutely lose my shit if I have to put up with this for another second" is underrated IMO. He had FU money already. They tried to put more on him. He balked. QED. Mental health is a thing.
- forgingahead 8y agoIf you think about it, there was no other way this could have played out. Acton (and maybe Koum) are privacy idealists, but could never have gone to the next level of philanthropy via massive wealth just by organic Whatsapp growth and revenue. They needed the FB acquisition to supercharge their wallets, needed the pound of flesh to be demanded for the price that was paid in order to revisit their original mission, and now we're seeing Acton at least refocus on easy-to-use encrypted communications via Signal and potentially other platforms. The FB money has allowed for potentially more investments in the privacy tools sphere, if Acton continues his work in that area. Whatsapp is a massively dominant messaging service, but the drive for privacy amongst consumers will continue to increase. It'll be interesting to see how we all communicate with the next evolution of all these apps in 10 years.
- sixstringtheory 8y agoOn one hand I wonder if money should really be apportioned to people who’d sell their user base to FB, like, will they make the best decisions down the road? Another part of me thinks well, better the money in a good person’s hands than FB’s. But you have to assume Acton et al are truly better people than FB, and still the user base is offered up as a sacrifice to that. Doesn’t feel great to me.
- lpolovets 8y agoHere's an interesting post about the departure from the perspective of a Facebook exec: https://www.facebook.com/notes/david-marcus/the-other-side-of-the-story/10157815319244148/ https://www.facebook.com/notes/david-marcus/the-other-side-o...
- sigmar 8y ago>"Don’t be passive-aggressive about it. And by the way the paid messaging that WhatsApp is rolling out now sounds pretty similar to metered messaging from my point of view..." Takes a certain type of person to add a passive aggressive dig after telling someone not to be passive aggressive.
- blandinw 8y agoPassive-aggressiveness implies avoiding direct conflict. The author of this post refers to Acton not speaking up or making a good argument one way or the other, letting things evolve while resisting passively. Also, the author is being very direct about what he thinks of Acton's behavior, he's not being passive-aggressive.
- sigmar 8y agoThe second sentence adds nothing to his argument besides adding in a snide criticism with a trailing ellipse. That's passive aggressive to me.
- samat 8y ago“About connecting people”. Well, and getting as many eyeballs on the newsfeed ads as (in)humanely possible. Does that count as connecting people?
- touristtam 8y agoProbably in the same way a company is a legal person in from of the law.
- 8y ago
- nailer 8y agoAnyone get the feeling that Acton is, for want of a better term, one of us? I feel like you'd see him here on HN advocating for the moral tech choices he's actually made, at great personal expense?
- kapauldo 8y agoHis illusion of integrity is baffling. It's an app. Take the money.
- ac4tw 8y agoI find the article interesting from a cryptographic perspective--specifically have they implemented searchable encryption or such a "encrypted environment" where they able to capture more than meta-data. These quotes specifically: The challenge was WhatsApp’s watertight end-to-end encryption, which stopped both WhatsApp and Facebook from reading messages. While Facebook didn’t plan to break the encryption, Acton says, its managers did question and “probe” ways to offer businesses analytical insights on WhatsApp users in an encrypted environment. ... When Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, was asked by U.S. lawmakers in early September if WhatsApp still used end-to-end encryption, she avoided a straight yes or no, saying, “We are strong believers in encryption.” A WhatsApp spokesperson confirmed that WhatsApp would begin placing ads in its Status feature next year, but added that even as more businesses start chatting to people on the platform, “messages will remain end-to-end encrypted. There are no plan
- rstuart4133 8y agoThey are not that interesting. You have no way to verify if their statements about encryption are true, so you'd be nuts to bet much on assuming they are. WhatsApp being sold to an advertising company is just one fine example of why it's nuts. In fact given the recent bill's introduced into the Australian parliament, it's irrelevant if they are true. The bill allows the government to demand they produce a version of WhatsApp with a bug that sends a copy of all data receives somewhere, and also allows them to demand they download that app via the automatic security patch mechanism. So unless there is a way to verify what software you have isn't bugged you have to assume even if it isn't now, it could well be in the future. There are ways out of this mess, but none of them are based on taking someones word for it. Yet the "it's secure because that's what it says on the box" seems to be the most common security model people adopt. It's so clearly wrong I sometimes think I'd be less perplexed if most of the world's population started insisting water wasn't wet.
- ac4tw 8y agoActually a fellow on HN the other day demonstrated that you could decompile their APK and inspect the code, so you can make a pretty solid attempt to verify product statements if you have the skill and the time. Also, I think we're cross talking about their statements--I can't divine anything specific from what they say, but their answers (esp. Sandbergs non-answer) seem supportive of other things I've seen claiming the encryption they're using is leaking business analytical information to FB on purpose (effectively undermining the lay understanding of end-end encryption). BTW That situation in Australia is saddening.
- vipulved 8y agoPost-acquisition morality is tiring.
- UpshotKnothole 8y agoThe moral pangs suffered by the filthy rich, concerning the means by which they became wealthy is as old as time. Sadly it works. How many people remember Alfred Nobel as the “merchant of death” and how many remember him for the Nobel Prizes? If they were more than trivially bothered they’re always free to divest themselves of their fortunes.
- smitrendfelt 8y agoWould be re$pectable if this fellow used his FB winning$ in a con$tructive way or return them to Zuck. Whining about thing$ after FB made you a billionaire just makes you look like you need a therapi$t.
- illteratedang 8y agoIt seems WhatsApp founders plan to start a new company and that's why they are trying to win back people's trust. With Jews controlling Facebook and anti-Semitic vibe in the air, it's very easy to paint Facebook as an evil empire which 'used' the guy who received billion dollar payout for his messaging app.
- honkycat 8y agoSmart guys. At some point in the very near future you are going to end up rotting in a grave. 850M will not do you a lick of good then. Live your life, don't obsess over the zeros.
- saadsg 8y agoDavid Marcus responded to Brian's interview (Defended Zuck heavily): https://www.facebook.com/notes/david-marcus/the-other-side-of-the-story/10157815319244148/ https://www.facebook.com/notes/david-marcus/the-other-side-o...