Who thought that the dissent from the big brother attitude of the Soviet would create an app that would ultimately become a $19 billion golden goose? WhatsApp is one of the few majors in the tech industry that does not collect user data directly from its chats. Now this is the story of Jan Koum or should we say WhatsApp. So the story begins with Jan Koum (from here on we shall refer him to as JK) stuck in Kiev erstwhile USSR with his mom. With great difficulty they sneak out of the country and end at Mountain View (I am still in dilemma of how they did this). If you are wondering what they carried for luggage, you are in for a surprise! They carried notebooks; yeah you read that correct they carried notebooks so that Mr. JK does not have trouble at school for supplies. So JK does back end job to support his family and along with his school work.

Two years later, seems like JK’s mom’s bet about the book really did not turn out well! He was a trouble at school but JK was smart enough to teach himself about computer networking through books and sell the books back after use. He joined a hacker community for a while and did his time with w00w00. He simultaneously enrolled at San Jose University. It was here Mr. JK met his bud, Acton a yahoo employee. There was a strong attraction between the gentlemen. I think 600 million users are benefitting how these gentlemen feel about advertisement. Both of them hate it. In the words of Acton “You don’t life make anyone’s life better by making ads work better”. And WhatsApp does not advertise. I have always loved this aspect of the app.

                    

The best part is coming up just started. After working at yahoo, for a while, they took a vacation off to Brazil to play ultimate Frisbee. I have always believed that big things (not necessarily good) are associated apple (consider Jobs, or the forbidden apple) and this is the evident here as WhatsApp’s idea originated after JK was playing around with an I-phone. They thought of an app which could display status on your phone (eg. low battery, at gym) and thus “WhatsApp was born. The first thing they did was to register the name “WhatsApp” (A smart move eh! coz even if the app failed it does sound like a cool name. Who knows you may earn good money just selling the name). Here comes the differentiating thing on the part of JK and Acton. They started working on back-end coding even before the WhatsApp was even launched (I suppose there is amount of OCD associated with all entrepreneurs). Like most apps it had its humble beginnings (with only close friends downloading the apps just to tell you that they are there!). Frequent crashes and extensive back end coding were norms. After I while they did outsource the coding with the help of “rent a coder”. Not much was happening at this point except fixing bugs. Then the angel came in the form of Apple which allowed developers to ping users. This started a wave as people started to ping each other silly status messages.

It is tough to imagine that there was modern world without WhatsApp and then it happened. As WhatsApp version 2 was launched, it had an added messaging feature. It was an instant hit! I remember the time when most of us wanted to buy a smart phone just for WhatsApp. It had the convenience of ISD and national messages with no extra charges. It meant freedom to a lot of us because we could do away with our costly message boosters offered by the telecom operators. And thus began the true era of WhatsApp. And off course there was an 19 billion USD buy out from fb later which everyone knows.

At the end I do think we all can take some points with this story. We have to understand that it is alright to be different (I guess everyone is in some ways and these stories are celebration of “being different” culture). It’s good to take vacations now and then (I would rather just make a reason to holiday). But taking time off to do a reality check is a quintessential in our modern life. After reading the hefty article I decided to pay my WhatsApp subscription fees (at least for this year, not sure about the future. I feel bad every time I get a message saying your subscription is extended). And last but the least my favorite quote DFTBA (don’t forget to be awesome) #thankstojohngreen.

#This opinion is based on the article – rags to riches tale of how JK built WhatsApp into facebook’s $19 billion baby (http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/02/19/exclusive-inside-story-how-jan-koum-built-WhatsApp-into-facebooks-new-19-billion-baby/)

- Varun Chandra
PGP 2014-16

IIM Bangalore