What happened to WhatsApp developers and founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton? Where are they now?
WhatsApp is one of the most installed apps in the world, alongside Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. There are countries where everyone communicates via WhatsApp. A simple idea succeeded at a time when you had to pay for every SMS message you sent. WhatsApp was the cheaper, simpler, and easier alternative. This is how Jan Koum and Brian Acton, the minds behind this mobile application, found success. It is not surprising that Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, decided to acquire it for billions.
We have already heard the story on several occasions, but it still surprises us. Two programmers, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, who met at a large company, Yahoo in this case, decided to start their startup with a simple idea in mind: telling their friends what they were doing at that moment. The idea quickly evolved into a messaging application for sending and receiving messages. Something simple that you could already do with SMS messages. However, at that time and in many countries, you had to pay for every SMS message. On the other hand, WhatsApp was much cheaper. Seven years later, Facebook decided to purchase it for $22 billion.
The key year was 2014. In February of that year, the usual annual edition of the Mobile World Congress, one of the most important events related to mobile phones, was held. Mark Zuckerberg announced a project to “connect all the people on earth,” which did not fully launch and sparked some controversy. However, in addition to that presentation and Zuckerberg’s presence, the founder and CEO of Facebook, there was another image that caught everyone’s attention. Alongside Zuckerberg, there were two unfamiliar people, Koum and Acton, unknown to the public. Then the announcement of the acquisition of WhatsApp for billions of dollars was made, and two years earlier, Zuckerberg had acquired Instagram for a billion dollars.
Usually, acquisitions of this kind are beneficial for those who sell their company, but things do not always end well. WhatsApp was no exception. In 2014, WhatsApp had 55 employees. NBC News published an interesting headline: “The 55 employees at WhatsApp are rich. But what will happen next?” Well, now they had to adapt to a large company like Facebook, with over 6000 employees. The Guardian reported in December 2013 that there were 6337 employees spread across 13 different countries, including the United States and 24 other international offices.
Since its creation and until its acquisition by Facebook in February 2014, Facebook had made over 40 acquisitions. Some of them were well-known like Instagram, Onavo, FriendFeed, and Drop.io. Interestingly, the data provided by Onavo played a significant role in Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to acquire WhatsApp. After the acquisition, Koum and Acton decided to continue running their own company, acting as if nothing had changed. Interestingly, they had tried to join Facebook as employees in the past but were rejected. As for the rest, they benefited from the acquisition to announce a new feature: voice calls. Jan Koum continued to lead the company as the CEO of WhatsApp, as he had been doing since 2007. Additionally, he became a member of Facebook’s board of directors.
Jan Koum’s wealth is estimated at over $16 billion, ranking him 115th on Forbes’ list. Personally, he resides in Atherton, California, is 48 years old, single, and childless. After leaving WhatsApp, he posted a message on Facebook saying, in jest, things like “I will take some time to do things I enjoy outside of technology, like collecting rare Porsche models and playing Ultimate Frisbee.”
Since then, what has Jan Koum been up to? Being a billionaire allows you to take things easy. In general, a November 2023 Forbes article puts us on the right track for Jan Koum’s present. It seems that he invested some of his money in Neulands, an investment fund based in Dallas, Texas, managed by Michael Abramson, a former partner at Sequoia Capital. Forbes pointed out that this fund invests $10 billion in technology stocks like Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta.
Professionally and financially, things seem to be going well for Jan Koum. Personally, being Jewish and Ukrainian is not easy in the current context, with the invasion of Ukraine and the conflict in Palestine. Through his foundation, the Koum Family Foundation, established in 2016, he has donated millions of dollars. A prominent donation of $41 million was made to Stanford University. He has also donated to Jewish organizations, especially the European Jewish Association, as well as conservative organizations supportive of Israel.
– Jan Koum
Brian Acton’s wealth is estimated at $3.1 billion, ranking him 1048th on Forbes’ list. Personally, he resides in Palo Alto, California, is 52 years old, married, and has a son. After leaving WhatsApp in November 2017, he announced a new project in 2018, the Signal Foundation, created with Moxie Marlinspike (also known as Matthew Rosenfeld). With an initial investment of $50 million, the nonprofit organization aimed to create a mobile application focused on privacy. Marlinspike took care of this, creating both the protocol and the application itself, which is used by Signal, Google’s messaging app, Skype, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger.
Specifically, Acton’s departure from Facebook, like Jan Koum, was heavily influenced by Facebook’s use of user data. The Cambridge Analytica scandal did not help either. It is not surprising that in 2018, amidst the scandal, Acton supported the DeleteFacebook# campaign on Twitter. This campaign emerged from the same scandal. In an interview published in 2023 in Forbes, Acton added another reason for leaving WhatsApp. He mentioned that both Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, wanted to monetize WhatsApp at any cost and doubted its encryption.
Currently, Brian Acton serves as the CEO of the Signal Foundation, since assuming his position in 2018. Since 2022, he has also served as the CEO of the organization, following Marlinspike’s departure. In parallel, he has several charitable organizations with his wife, Teagan Acton, under the name Acton Family Giving.
