The two founders of WhatsApp,
Jan Koum and Brian Acton were turned down for jobs at Facebook but today
Facebook has bought their product, WhatsApp, for 19 billion dollars. But it was
not a smooth ride for the Jan and Brian, especially Jan who had to overcome
adversity to get to where he is today. Jan’s is an inspirational story that yet
again proves that as long as you refuse to give up but continue to look for a
way out, you will eventually have your big break.
Jan Koum, a Ukranian, went to
the US at the age of 16 due to the hostile treatment Jews were receiving in the
country. When they arrived in the US, Jan and his mother lived on food stamps.
He met Brian Acton in 1997 at Yahoo, where they were both working and they
became friends. By 2007, the two of them men had become disillusioned and they
left Yahoo to seek new challenges.
Koum founded WhatsApp in 2009
and was joined by Acton who had been turned down by Twitter and Facebook. They
created a project that allowed them to concentrate on creating an easy-to-use
messaging product and the approach paid off. WhatsApp amassed 450 million
monthly users. Their idea was that smartphone users should be able to easily
message each other without incurring fees from phone carriers. The service is
free for a year and then costs 99 cents per year after that. They refused to
advertise their product and only relied
on the recommendations of users of the
product. In 2014, Facebook decided to purchase WhatsApp for a whooping 19
billion dollars!
Jan Koum’s (and Brian Acton’s)
story is full of many lessons that we can all learn from. I have decided to
bring out some of these lessons:
Your background is not an
excuse for failure in life: Jan Koum did menial jobs like cleaning and mopping
at a grocery store while his mother took up a babysitting job. At a point in
his life, he and his mother depended on allowances from the government. (Jan signed the agreement with Facebook on the door of the social services office where he and his mother used to stand in line to collect food stamps.)
Adversity should make
you stronger and resilient not break you: Jan learnt computer networking all by
himself with the help of manuals from a used book store. He couldn’t afford to
pay for lessons but he has become a billionaire today.
You can profit from your
experience: Jan’s experience in communist Ukraine where phone lines were bugged
by secret police greatly influenced his decision to create WhatsApp. He wanted
a service that guaranteed messaging privacy. “I grew up in a country where I
remember my parents not being able to have a conversation on the phone,” he
explained. “The walls had ears and you couldn’t speak freely.”
If you find your job
unexciting, get out: Jan and Brian became disillusioned with life at Yahoo and
they quit.
Don’t allow disappointment to
overwhelm you: Jan and Brian were turned down turned down for employment by
Facebook. Brian was also rejected by Twitter and he took it on the chin. Read
this: "Got denied by Twitter HQ. That's ok. Would have been a long
commute." and this "Facebook turned me down. It was a great
opportunity to connect with some fantastic people. Looking forward to life's
next adventure."
Be passion-driven not
money-driven: Jan wanted to create a product that would meet a need, and when
this product filled the need, money came. Today he is a billionaire. Money was
not his primary motivation. He says he just wanted to build a great product.
"I started WhatsApp, to build a product. I do not want to create a company
around it, the goal was not to earn. We wanted to spend our time building a
service people wanted to use because it worked and saved them money and made
their lives better in a small way.” He tweeted in 2012 that he was not an
entrepreneur: "Next person to call me an entrepreneur is getting punched
in the face by my bodyguard, seriously."
A good product will advertise
itself: WhatsApp has a ‘no ads’ policy. The company refuses to be involved in
promotions, marketing and advertising and it has over 450 million active users,
reaching the number faster than any other company in history. This is what
WhatsApp says about advertising, “No one wakes up excited to see more
advertising, no one goes to sleep thinking about the ads they’ll see tomorrow.
We know people go to sleep excited about who they chatted with that day (and
disappointed about who they didn’t). We want WhatsApp to be the product that
keeps you awake… and that you reach for in the morning. No one jumps up from a
nap and runs to see an advertisement.”
What
other lessons that can be learned from Jan Koum’s story? Please share them with
us.
This is a great piece. It is true that life can sometimes bring what one does not expect. But one has to bounce up. If he had been given a JOB at Facebook, we wouldnt have had Whatsapp today and at best he would have been a very good employee under Mark Zukerbug.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, sir and thanks for your kind words.
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