WhatsApp founder Ian Kum: “Honestly, I didn't even plan to build a company”

In early 2014, the WhatsApp messenger was sold to Facebook for a record $ 19 billion. The deal entered the history of the venture capital market. WhatsApp founders Jan Kum and Brian Ecton became Facebook shareholders and remained to work in WhatsApp.

Jan Kum told RBC about the reasons for the popularity of WhatsApp in Russia, about the monetization of the messenger, about how Facebook helps him to develop his business.

"Megamind" leads the most interesting statements from the interview .
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WhatsApp audience in Russia and in the world

We do not follow the settings, this is a completely unimportant metric. We follow the monthly and daily audience of WhatsApp. It seems to me that we have never talked about this, but I can tell you: in Russia, our monthly audience is over 25 million users. Russia is one of the most important countries for us. Big, many people have smartphones, many communicate with friends and colleagues abroad, and our product is great for this.

The last figure we voiced publicly is 900 million users [worldwide]. But we want WhatsApp to be on every phone, or rather a smartphone, because only smartphones will be in the future. I don’t know exactly how many smartphones are in the world today, probably about 2-3 billion. So, while we are lagging behind our goal, we still have a lot of work.

What has changed since the Facebook deal

We fully control the product development. Facebook helps in other areas - with finances, lawyers, PR, recruiting ... When we were independent, we did not have a financial director. We just got bills, I or Brian pressed the "pay" button, and that was all. We were a small independent company, so we could afford it. Now we are part of Facebook, a public company, so the requirements are completely different. An employee came to us from the social network, who now deals with finances in WhatsApp, and he reports to Facebook's CFO.

About Facebook Messenger Competition

We have different niches, and these are two completely different products. Facebook Messenger is tied to Facebook contacts, it works with friends who are inside the social network. And WhatsApp works with friends from the phonebook. These are two completely different lists of contacts, and people communicate with them in different ways. WhatsApp is very focused on mobile, and Facebook Messenger focuses on working equally well on the desktop, on mobile, and being part of Facebook.

About monetizing whatsapp

I worked for a long time at Yahoo, so I had shares of the company, there were savings for which I was comfortable to live. This gave me the opportunity to not worry about whether WhatsApp can bring me money tomorrow or not. I had a plan to work a year on WhatsApp and see what came of it.

When we built the product and people started using it, we realized that we had a chance to work on it further. We received a venture capital investment from Sequoia and realized that we should not worry about personal financial gain.

We do not have the task of making money yet. The Facebook deal allowed us to focus our resources on growing and making our product better. In the near future we do not plan to focus on monetization.

About the reasons for the success of WhatsApp in Russia

Yes, we were one of the first, and it helped. But, first, we did one unique thing - we built an instant messenger that just uses your contacts from the phone book. ICQ, for example, gave you a seven-digit number that needed to be memorized, written down on a piece of paper, shared with friends: it is not very user friendly, to say the least. In Skype, you need to get a username, which you need to give to a friend, receive a username from him, add each other ... Same with Yahoo messenger and others. They were all not very comfortable.

Secondly, when using instant messengers that were before us, the person does not know whether his message will come, because Skype and the computer can be turned off. Finally, we helped people save a lot of money on SMS and MMS.

On the role of the head of the company

Of course, I like the fact that I work on a product that I love, along with people I adore. But on the other hand, I very often have to solve those issues that are not very interesting to me, for example, issues with the building - when we move, where and how it will look. Constants with recruiting - who we hire, when, what budget is allocated.

From my hobby grew a business that happened unnoticed by me. Honestly, I did not even plan to build a company, but wanted to make a product. But he turned out to be the man who heads the company.

About "millionaires without a diploma"

I was bored at the university, and when I had a chance to work at Yahoo, earning enough money for a 21-year-old immigrant from Russia, I jumped at the opportunity. In addition, I liked the work, the company, my colleagues. We still communicate with them, although more than 15 years have passed. Of course, it is a shame that I did not graduate from university, but the result of my career is not so bad as to be sad about it.

It seems to me that having a university education is always useful and necessary. People often get stuck on it - they say that Bill Gates or Steve Jobs did not graduate from the university, which means they don’t need it either. But these two examples can be given a hundred thousand other examples: when a person graduated from university and became successful. University education is a key building block, a foundation that all people need. If I or another person was lucky without him, then these are isolated examples, not a standard.

About their idols in the technology business

I really like what Yuri Milner does - all of his initiatives on science, on the development of research and innovation. He really does it not to earn money.

He has a prize for achievements in science, including mathematics: Breakthrough Prize, which he does every year.

About dream

The dream is quite simple - so that people use WhatsApp in ten, and 20 years from now. That it was such a standard in communicating people.