> also had to make a lot of promises. Some of those promises were even enshrined in the acquisition agreement: If Facebook imposed “monetization initiatives” like advertising onto WhatsApp, its founders’ shares would vest immediately, and they could leave without suffering any kind of financial penalty.
That's pretty interesting. They foresaw it of course and put a claim in the contract about it. Though when trying to trigger it FB fought back so Acton left the money on the table.
> Acton gave up some $900 million; Koum gave up about $400 million. You need to be really unhappy at work if you’re willing to quit a job that’s effectively paying you some $60 million per month, and from which you basically can’t be fired.
A new type of "fuck you" money VC style - you can have your dirty stock options I am out of here.
> or was he talked into breaking his promise by Sandberg and other executives looking covetously at WhatsApp’s unmonetized userbase? Either way, he has clearly failed a key leadership test.
The leaders tend to aggregate around them minions who are an exaggerated version of themselves. If they are liars they will surround themselves over time with even bigger liars. If they are narcissists they'll end up with minions who are narcissists. It's mostly natural selection. Well it happened in this case, there was a clash and those who don't agree leave. Over enough years it "distills" the company culture into whatever characteristics the top leaders have.
Why would someone walk away from over $100M just because they don't want to pay a legal team under $1M to argue their case? Seems like they just didn't care.
Right, I'm sure that the WhatsApp founders thought that Facebook paid $19 billion for a company just to keep charging $1 per year with no ads and no data collection.
I'm assuming here that your comment is sarcasm. But in fact it's not entirely wrong headed. At the time of the purchase WhatsApp had clear momentum with 500m users paying $1 per year, say. The standard business assessment is that a business is worth 10x earnings so 5bn. But that's assuming WhatsApp was static in users but it, in fact, was on a growth curve. So $5bn was the low end of valuation, the top end would include all 7bn humans on earth. That would be stretch at $70bn for WhatsApp. $22bn in the end was pretty reasonable given the circumstances.
Why is it Zuck's fault if he lets Sandberg monetize WhatsApp, but it wasn't Acton and Koum's fault for letting Zuck do it?
How can it be Facebook's management's fault if they let 3rd party apps abuse FB user data, but not WhatsApp managements fault for letting Facebook do the same? Acton and Koum sold out their users for a huge payday, and now they are so rich that they can walk away from a few hundred million dollars to "buy an indulgent" for their immortal souls.
I'd love to move out of Whatsapp, but in Mexico and Spain literally everyone is using it.
The other day I ordered take-out exclusively from Whatsapp. The company where I work recently implemented user support using Whatsapp. I buy coffee from a nearby roaster and he informs me the day before roasting so that I can get fresh coffee. I also know lots of parents that communicate with schools and create groups with other parents.
Not to mention it will only become more entrenched since carriers at least here in Mexico don't count Whatsapp/Facebook towards your data usage, which is pretty awful if you were ever hoping for a competitor to emerge.
I had the same problem recently. After failing to get my friends and wife to use Keybase (they tried it, but it just doesn't work on mobile beyond basic text chats with no image pasting).
Requirements were: secure, iOS/Android/Mac/Linux/Windows, multi-person chats, and multiple simultaneous/alternating device support (that means chat history needs to propagate to my phones and computers).
iMessage was not considered (because it supports only iOS & macOS) and WhatsApp was not considered (because Facebook).
After looking at Signal, Telegram, Keybase, and Wire, we ended up using Wire. It's not perfect by a long shot, but it is better than the others we tested and AFAICT better than any solution currently available.
But I had never heard of it until I really started looking around.
They bought the company, it's facebook's to do with as they wish.
There was talk about independence but no indication that facebook was paying bazillions and were going to leave them alone for long. The founders even knew it enough to note the possibility of having ads forced on them in their contracts.
I'm no fan of facebook, but justification is ... it is their product.
> What’s more, WhatsApp’s two founders both left hundreds of millions of dollars on the table, so keen were they to leave Facebook’s ad-friendly walls. (It turns out that their contractual right to being paid out in full would require them to sue for the money, and, according to the Journal, neither of them had the appetite for that.)
Whatsapp was bad to begin with. Some non standard XMPP without federation and with very poor security. Irresponsible developers who created it, shouldn't have started such project.
[+] [-] merricksb|7 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17238241
[+] [-] rdtsc|7 years ago|reply
That's pretty interesting. They foresaw it of course and put a claim in the contract about it. Though when trying to trigger it FB fought back so Acton left the money on the table.
> Acton gave up some $900 million; Koum gave up about $400 million. You need to be really unhappy at work if you’re willing to quit a job that’s effectively paying you some $60 million per month, and from which you basically can’t be fired.
A new type of "fuck you" money VC style - you can have your dirty stock options I am out of here.
> or was he talked into breaking his promise by Sandberg and other executives looking covetously at WhatsApp’s unmonetized userbase? Either way, he has clearly failed a key leadership test.
The leaders tend to aggregate around them minions who are an exaggerated version of themselves. If they are liars they will surround themselves over time with even bigger liars. If they are narcissists they'll end up with minions who are narcissists. It's mostly natural selection. Well it happened in this case, there was a clash and those who don't agree leave. Over enough years it "distills" the company culture into whatever characteristics the top leaders have.
[+] [-] bsg75|7 years ago|reply
Is there a term for this behavior? It explains a number of situations.
[+] [-] fjsolwmv|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ggg9990|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sunstone|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimmywanger|7 years ago|reply
This is wrong. Who cares what somebody else thinks when you get billions of dollars? Not your problem anymore.
They should have really held Zuckerberg's feet to the fire and enforced the contract by suing. It seems like a slam dunk. (IANAL)
[+] [-] fjsolwmv|7 years ago|reply
How can it be Facebook's management's fault if they let 3rd party apps abuse FB user data, but not WhatsApp managements fault for letting Facebook do the same? Acton and Koum sold out their users for a huge payday, and now they are so rich that they can walk away from a few hundred million dollars to "buy an indulgent" for their immortal souls.
[+] [-] pier25|7 years ago|reply
The other day I ordered take-out exclusively from Whatsapp. The company where I work recently implemented user support using Whatsapp. I buy coffee from a nearby roaster and he informs me the day before roasting so that I can get fresh coffee. I also know lots of parents that communicate with schools and create groups with other parents.
[+] [-] always_good|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sandov|7 years ago|reply
Signal requires google services and phone number, Telegram doesn't encrypt by default, riot's interface is still not good enough.
I can't redirect my non-techie friends to any alternative because none of them is good enough yet.
[+] [-] veidr|7 years ago|reply
Requirements were: secure, iOS/Android/Mac/Linux/Windows, multi-person chats, and multiple simultaneous/alternating device support (that means chat history needs to propagate to my phones and computers).
iMessage was not considered (because it supports only iOS & macOS) and WhatsApp was not considered (because Facebook).
After looking at Signal, Telegram, Keybase, and Wire, we ended up using Wire. It's not perfect by a long shot, but it is better than the others we tested and AFAICT better than any solution currently available.
But I had never heard of it until I really started looking around.
https://wire.com
[+] [-] aries1980|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acct1771|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duxup|7 years ago|reply
There was talk about independence but no indication that facebook was paying bazillions and were going to leave them alone for long. The founders even knew it enough to note the possibility of having ads forced on them in their contracts.
I'm no fan of facebook, but justification is ... it is their product.
[+] [-] Redoubts|7 years ago|reply
Can I sue for it then?
[+] [-] lord_ring_11|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anilgulecha|7 years ago|reply
I only hope Signal will take steps proactively to not go down whatsapp's path (lucrative as it was).
[+] [-] Bucephalus355|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shmerl|7 years ago|reply