9781422277331

1: The Founding

able to work his way into college, although like many innovators, he ended up dropping out. Koum taught himself to code and pro- gram, learning both skills and the know-how that would eventu- ally be used developing WhatsApp. By 1997, Koum had found himself working a good job at Yahoo! It was there that he met Brian Acton, who would later be- come his WhatsApp co-founder. Both men rode the highs and lows of Yahoo!’s ups and downs during the heyday of the first in- ternet revolution. After first making a lot of money, as everything tech-related shot up to enormous value in the stock market, Ac- ton personally lost millions of dollars when the dot-com bubble burst in 2000. Lessons from the Road A long the way, both men learned many lessons from working at Yahoo!, which became another driver behind the ultimate success of WhatsApp. Yahoo! made most of its money from sell- ing apps on its popular search pages. Koum and Acton were re- cruited to help launch Yahoo!’s advertising platform Project Pan- ama in 2006. This experience solidified in the minds of the two soon-to-be founders their dislike of advertising. The two men felt that users should be given an experience, not be bombarded with ads that they had no interest in seeing. Thus was born another principle that ultimately became one of the founding corner- stones of WhatsApp.

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