Table of Contents
In this modern era, connectivity among people is fast and secure. People always tend to be in touch with their loved ones.
So people get in contact with chats, video calls, voice calls, and in many more ways. It’s all possible because of WhatsApp.
WhatsApp is ruling the whole world. All people are familiar with the app. Whatsapp calls and chats have the routine of billion of people every single day.
WhatsApp made life more interesting and exciting. People can post their photos and videos through the app as Whatsapp status. Statuses give an insight into your near and dear ones.
In the blog, we will give a brief history of WhatsApp success story.
WhatsApp success story
WhatsApp is an online messaging platform. People can chat, call, render their identity through DP’s and put statuses via WhatsApp. The chats were end-to-end encrypted.
This chatting application was launched on February 24, 2009. The founders of WhatsApp were Jan Koum and Brian Acton. Both of them were former employees at Yahoo.
This application has a great trend all over the world. So there are over 2.5 billion users worldwide. Subsequently, there are 1 billion active users every day. Almost 100 billion messages are sent via Whatsapp every single day.
This application has its presence in around 100 countries. This app is simple to use and ads-free. This app made revenue of $ 5.5 billion in 2020 alone.
WhatsApp business is another service from this app. This helps small and medium scale businesses to transform into digital stores.
WhatsApp for business helps vendors to sell products online. So that sellers can make extra income online. This all made the whatsapp success story.
WhatsApp success story
To build, this super app founders had put their heart and soul into the project. WhatsApp founders Jan Koum and Brain Acton come across a lot of hardships in this journey.
WhatsApp founder Jan Koum
Jan Koum born on Feburary 24, 1976 in Ukrian. He belongs to the Jewish community, a highly discriminated caste in Ukrainian. As a result, he and his family have the worst experience over there.
So Jan Koum and his mother left Ukraine shifts to Mountain View, California. But his father being adamant over the migration.
Jan Koum became clean in stores and his mother was looking over children in daycare.
Jan Koum did not have normal childhood days. Instead, a lot of difficulties and hardships were dealing in his life.
At the age of 17, Jan Koum had a deep interest in programming. So he went on studying himself and got some of the used manuals from stores. Because he did not have enough money to buy a new one.
In his mid-20s he lost his father and mother. His father’s demise in Ukraine. Whereas his mother could not fight cancer anymore.
Finally, he got admission to San Jose State University. During his studies, Jan Koum was doing a part-time job at Ernst & Young. Subsequently, he the part of a hacker group company w00w00.
Further, in 1997 he got an offer as an employee at Yahoo. Then he joined and started working for the next 9 years. During this course of time, he met Brain Acton in Ernst & Young company as a Security Tester. This founder played a vital role for the whatsapp success story
Brian Acton
He is a well-educated person. Acton had his study at Stanford University in 1994. Then he had a lot of passion for technology and programming.
Finally, Brian Acton took the job at Yahoo. Then Brian Acton and Jan Koum started working for 9 years. During this time, they learned a lot from the company.
Further, in 2007, both took the decision to quit their jobs at Yahoo. After resigning at Yahoo, they went on vacation around South America. They spent a good time over there playing Ultimate frisbee.
Meanwhile, Brian Acton had huge losses on investing in the Dotcom bubble.
Also read: Jack Ma losses in 2021
Whatsapp success story foundation
Jan Koum took a new i-phone in January 2009. He came to know about the app store launching new apps later.
So Jan Koum took this opportunity to launch his own app. Then he made an approach to his friend Alex Fishman. There he opens up his idea of creating an ads-free and secure messaging application.
Then in came up with the name “WhatsApp” for his messaging application. He took this name as it sounded like ” What’s up” a relevant work that everyone uses.
In the beginning, the app was not up to the expectations. Because frequently app would crash and users find it a dummy app.
At one point, Jan Koum made his decision to quit. But Brian Acton gave some motivation to continue for the next few months.
Later, due to the good fortune of Jan Koum, the i-phone allowed push notifications for its users. So users get a notification for new messages they receive.
This was the turning point for Jan Koun and WhatsApp. This push notification enabled them to ger userbase of 250,000. Whatsapp got a lot of popularity.
Brian Acton convinced his former employees at Yahoo for investment. So five members invested $250,000.As a result, Brian Acton got appreciated and got the title of co-founder of the company.
Also read: success story of Internshala
Fundings
After gaining a lot of users and popularity, investment came all over.
Sequoia made an investment of $ 8 million in 2011 and $50 million in 2011.
But then there was a deal between Facebook and WhatsApp for acquisition.
Facebook and WhatsApp deal
On February 19, 2014, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion. This was one of the highest acquisitions ever made.
Facebook made a lot of extra features to fix it to the chatting application. Voice messaging, video calling, and beautiful emojis are the development from the Facebook side.
Now WhatsApp is the world’s most trending and outnumbers the download in play store and AppStore.
WhatsApp Privacy Policy
Facebook had to face a lot of criticizing from the users because of sharing the private information of users.
In recent times, Facebook was sharing data users to data from WhatsApp against privacy policy. Facebook was sharing data because to improve their rendering of relevant ads to users.
There is speculation that Facebook is sharing WhatsApp user’s data with its subsidiary companies for profits.
Presently, there is a threat for WhatsApp users. So some of the users are leaning toward Signal and Telegram.
Also read : Whatsapp privacy policy issues
whatsappFounders quitting
In September 2017, Brian Acton made a resignation from WhatsApp.
Then Brian Acton found an app, Signal a messaging application. Signal proved a high priority for the user’s privacy.
Then it was the turn of Jan Koum to quit WhatsApp. In April 2018 Koum resigned from his own venture.
Because he was not fed up with Facebook supremacy. Even Jan Koum became distressed over privacy policy issues.
So, this is how WhatsApp came into existence. It is the pure hard work and dedication from Jan Koum for his success. Even Brain Acton also motivated Jan at difficult times and took an active part in leading the company.
In this way, WhatsApp’s success story will be an inspiration for all the budding entrepreneurs.