From Reject to Hero: Success Story of Brian Acton, Whatsapp founder

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The road to success is paved with hard work, sacrifice and determination. Brian Acton’s hard work paid him off big time with a simple idea called Whatsapp. Born in the year 1972, Acton is more popular as the Co founder of WhatsApp. His life was not very simple. The man who was once rejected by Facebook as an employee sold WhatsApp to Zuckerberg recently and also holds stakes in the company.

According to Acton, “Life is all about adventures and achieving success or nothing”. This adventure helped him create a mobile message giant which is now being used by more than 450 million people.

Brian spent his childhood in Michigan. His mother ran a freight shipping firm. She was the one who advised Acton to start his own business. He was a computer science graduate from Stanford University. Earlier he also studied in University Of Central Florida and University of Pennsylvania.

Acton was not a stranger to failure but his hard work speaks a lot about the value of vision and tenacity. Both Acton and Koum applied for a job at Facebook but were rejected. In the year 2009, Jan Koum visited one of his friends Alex Fishman and planned on developing an app. A week later on his birthday, WhatsApp was incorporated in California. He chose the name WhatsApp because it sounded similar to daily phrase, “What’s up”. That is when Brian Acton and Jan Koum founded WhatsApp.
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In the year 2014, the duo agreed to sell off WhatsApp to Facebook for $19 billion in stock and cash. According to Forbes, Brian Acton holds a stake of 20 percent in the company. He fondly tweeted on his personal Twitter account that he was a once reject by both Facebook and Twitter in the year 2009.

Brian Acton now has a net worth of $3.4 billion. He is ranked 161 among the Fortune 400 people by Forbes and 551st billionaire in the world. He is ranked as the 190th wealthiest man in the United States of America.

SIDE NOTE: cheki mlami, he is worth billions lakini still dresses ordinarily bila bling et’al, hii ingekuwa nigga zile mabling zingekuwa zina shine kwa shingo na spending galore nayo!! nowonder many successful negroes end up wasoto after a while angalia DMX, Mike Tyson, Bobby Brown, Ja rule and many more will follow…kwanza iko Mayweather jnr na akina Kanye West ngoja tuu

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Nice.

Kanye West hawezi sotA

Really dude? Kweli hujui Kanye West. 7 platinum certified albums, a fashion line, sneakers with Nike and you claim he depends on Kim

Btw, how does whatsapp make money? Is it from that one dollar annual subscription? Coz that would make their revenues $450m annual, yet they sold it fro $19B. That would mean the buyer has to wait 38 years to recover their costs, assuming no operation costs.

I guess them assholes sell contacts, or are paid by governments to snoop people’s conversations.

http://blog.whatsapp.com/245/Why-we-dont-sell-ads

Zuckerberg bought whatsapp as a matter of speculation and that is why you are not yet paying for it. the app has 500m+ users and that is one important crowd. Collected information on users is also an invaluable asset. Mafisi kama google, Amazon, and Twitter were eyeing to grab it and thats why he offered that much. Hiyo pesa alinunua nayo ni budget ya kenya ya mwaka mzima including borrowed money.
Imagine you were to place an add or link on whatsapp? You would have to pay around $400K per day.
Again Zuckerberg wouldnt have hired an ambitious muthafacka like that. You hire people good at doing the real coding not people hoping to become millionares/billionares. So if in his interviews he exhibited ambition, he wouldnt have made it into facebook, twitter, or whatever because he would be there only to steal opportunities and tricks.

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So, the company doesnt sell adds, but sells the services at $1 per year. That is a revenue of $500 per year. So, obviously, it is not the revenue that made facebook but it. Must be something else. And that something else turns to be your data as the user!

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nigga sold Whatsapp to Zuckerberg for 19 billion dorare and u are calling him an idiot…SMH

Take time to read. Who called him an idiot?

It wasnt 19billion in cash… It was in form of cash and stocks. We all know that stocks are not that stable… Leo mtatrade at 100 kesho 40 keshokutwa 150

its still big money

That’s very true. However, its not good to generalize issues. Not all Africans or African Americans are spendthrifts.

Stocks are like cash for a clever investor. And you can sell them for cash or even more. If the investor spreads them kama Gates, youare likely to become richer. And the fact is if kenya were given that stock and cash she could have used it to offset the whole 2014/2015 budget. After all stock isnt difficult to sell if the company isnt doing bad.

SO ZUCKERBERG IS WORTH HOW MUCH NA MTU ASINIAMBIE NI GOOGLE

It depends on your point of reference. In Maasailand he is as poor as rot.

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Google

It is all about user data, companies buy the data to know the stuff you like then they place specific ads. targeting that user group.

Ongeza mike jackson hapo, stupid niggas

lakini watu wakumbuke the guy wasnt in rags ati. He was a graduate of staford. Few people make it to stanford. His mother was well to do too. People from Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and Princeton run this world. So his success isnt so out of the ordinary.