Jan Koum’s exit reportedly followed clashes over Facebook’s attempts to weaken encryption of the messaging service
E
arly in 2009, two former Yahoo employees, Brian Acton and Jan Koum, sat down to try and create a smartphone messaging app. They had a few simple design principles. One was that it should be easy to use: no complicated log-in and authentication procedures; instead, each user would be identified by his or her mobile number. And second, the app should have an honest business model – no more pretending it’s free while covertly monetising users’ data: instead, users would pay $1 a year after a certain period. Searching for a name for their service, they came up with WhatsApp, a play on “What’s Up?”
Koum was born in Ukraine during the Soviet era and emigrated to the US with his mother and grandmother when he was 16. So his childhood had a background of tapped telephones, thought control and state surveillance. In the US, they lived on welfare in Mountain View, a town in Silicon Valley. Acton, in contrast, grew up in Florida and went to Stanford, where he graduated with a degree in computer science. The two men became friends when they worked briefly at the consultancy firm Ernst & Young. They were then recruited by Yahoo, where they spent 10 years, after which they departed with substantial personal savings, took a year out and then turned their attention to what became WhatsApp.
/https://www.niagarafallsreview.ca/content/dam/thestar/news/canada/2021/09/25/huawei-executive-meng-wanzhou-receives-warm-welcome-upon-return-to-china/_1_meng_wanzhou_2.jpg)
