
WhatsApp’s Founder Goes From Food Stamps to Billionaire - jljljl
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-20/whatsapp-s-founder-goes-from-food-stamps-to-billionaire.html
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plg
Didn't he have a job, for many years, at Yahoo, before starting WhatsApp?
Didn't his co-founder also exit Yahoo with what most Americans would consider
a crapload of cash? (an amount one would think of when one thinks of winning a
lottery)?

I appreciate that he started WhatsApp from scratch but this picture that is
being painted of him as some sort of homeless street person is rather warped,
don't you think?

As if a former Yahoo technical engineer with a similarly qualified best buddy
who has a crapload of cash, both of whom live in Silicon Valley, and have (I
assume) plenty of other buddies in the industry, is somehow "starting from
scratch from nothing".

The vast, vast majority of Americans should be so lucky to have the "nothing"
that they had. Not to mention the rest of the earth's population.

The real truth isn't so much a story of "the poor getting rich" but really,
"the rich getting super rich".

~~~
United857
Not sure how much Acton had, but Koum had $400000 when he left Yahoo.
Respectable but hardly "winning the lottery".

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/02/19/exclusive-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/02/19/exclusive-
inside-story-how-jan-koum-built-whatsapp-into-facebooks-new-19-billion-baby/)

~~~
plg
In what universe is having a $400,000 bank account not winning the lottery?
Holy hell, dude.

~~~
throwaway092834
It's not an exceptional level of wealth for this region. Not even top 10%.

~~~
nolok
Except the subject wasn't "the wealth of this region" but a poor immigrant
living on food stamps.

~~~
throwaway092834
The subject I'm responding to is "winning the lotto." That's why it's a poor
comparison.

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TrainedMonkey
I am happy WhatsApp turned out great for him, what did not go so great is
getting away to a country that does not tap phones.

"The experience of living in a country where phone lines were often tapped,
instilled the importance of privacy in him, said Jim Goetz, a partner with
Sequoia Capital Ltd., WhatsApp’s lone venture capital investor."

~~~
mcintyre1994
I wonder if the NSA tapped WhatsApp at all and if so how he felt about it, I
haven't heard anything but it seems like it would have been a great target for
them, US company with loads of international users messaging.

~~~
dmix
WhatsApp's SSL implementation sucks, so the NSA doesn't even need to approach
them directly. They can transparently intercept messages:

[http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/02/crypto-weaknesses-
in...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/02/crypto-weaknesses-in-whatsapp-
the-kind-of-stuff-the-nsa-would-love/)

------
zackmorris
I still hold out hope that someday, someone will go from rags to riches and
opt out of being what everyone expects him or her to be. A billion dollars
could change the world, if applied toward the solving the problems in
externalities and the commons that capitalism currently ignores. Reminds me of
a book that's still in my queue:

[http://www.amazon.com/Only-Super-Rich-Can-Save-
Us/dp/B003JTH...](http://www.amazon.com/Only-Super-Rich-Can-Save-
Us/dp/B003JTHSOU)

~~~
judk
I hope not. Everyone expects billionaires not be massive philanthropists like
Gates and Buffett and Carnegie. You can have Ellison, I guess.

------
gadders
People normally trot out this quote in other circumstances, but it fits here
too:

Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an
exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

John Steinbeck

Seems like some of them could be billionaires, too.

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photorized
Speaking of different universes, most immigrant families from
Ukraine/Belarus/Russia that I know, are working their asses off and are too
proud to be on food stamps or any other form of gov't assistance. They view
the US as the land of opportunity, and that doesn't mean food stamps.

~~~
josefresco
Good for them, but being "too proud" doesn't work when your family is
starving. In fact if I knew of a family "too proud" to use food stamps who's
children were being harmed as a result, I'd report them and I'd hope you would
too as they (the children) deserve better.

~~~
photorized
Working (for pay) does work. Teenagers can work, too.

------
wnevets
but I was told only worthless parasites that are too lazy to work use
foodstamps

~~~
w1ntermute
Read between the lines - what they were really saying is that blacks and
Hispanics on food stamps are worthless parasites. It's nothing more than
codified racism.

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gojomo
Oh, great, now SoMa will be overrun with artisanal food stamp offices.

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amorphid
I was homeless and on foodstamps about 5 years ago. Within three years I had a
bootstrapped business with 15 people and sold my stake. Life can certainly
change quickly!

I'm happy for the team at WhatsApp. All other things being equal, having money
is much nicer than not having it.

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kevingadd
How long do you think it will take for him to start lobbying against taxes on
the rich and social programs? It'd be nice if he maintained some perspective,
but that doesn't seem to happen with SV millionaires/billionaires...

~~~
josefresco
What silicon valley millionaire is advocating against taxing the rich? The
only one I know of that has an opinion is Gates, and it's exactly the opposite
of what you're implying.

~~~
kevingadd
Off the top of my head, from recent memory:

We have Tom Perkins complaining that the desire to have the rich contribute
fairly is a 'Progressive Kristallnacht', tech nutjob Tim Draper advocating a
scheme to basically wall off Silicon Valley from the poors in the rest of the
state, and various SF tech firms monopolizing public resources (like bus
stops, for example) without paying anything resembling a fair market rate.

Less directly, we have people like Peter Shih and Greg Gopman spouting
antisocial rants about how their lives are inconvenienced by the poor and
disadvantaged, and how the world would be a better place without all these
poor people (rephrased, obviously).

There are certainly level-headed silicon valley millionaires out there who
just want to buy a quiet house somewhere and live a happy family life. As long
as they pay their taxes and don't lobby to make the planet worse, I have no
problem with those people.

The issue is that you can easily come up with as many bad examples as good
ones, when it comes to these 'new money' types.

The money in SV obviously does not go directly to the most deserving; some
people just get lucky, other people get their money through deceit and
outright theft, and other people have the vast majority of their money
siphoned off by outside forces like patent trolls. It would be unusual if all
these millionaires WERE good people.

~~~
josefresco
Sooo we probably shouldn't lump them together, and should instead call them
out specifically (as you did in your reply). I'm not even going to touch the
"new money" comment...

~~~
kevingadd
'New money' is not a slur (at least in this case), I'm using it to indicate
that these are people who came into money recently and have typically not
progressed to the point where they are using it responsibly and thinking long-
term.

~~~
josefresco
Anecdotally I would think "old money" would be more against taxation than new
money folks. If you were born into money, and never lived poorly I would
assume that you'd have a hard time empathizing with the plight of the less
fortunate. Also, holding onto your mountain of cash that someone handed to you
is different than someone with an earned high income. It would seem to me that
old money people would be more active in reducing taxes on investments (which
they've arguably succeeded in doing) and new money folks would be more
concerned with income taxing.

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exodust
I tried WhatsApp, then stopped using it when it became painfully apparent that
unless all my contacts use WhatsApp, it will never be a good experience for
me. I don't want fragmented messaging on my phone.

Not only that, but SMS is very cheap. In Australia at least, most mobile plans
come with unlimited, or more than enough SMS messages included in the plan to
satisfy most people. I send a lot of text messages and it never makes any dent
on my monthly bill.

What I'm getting at is, I'm puzzled why the app is worth 19 billion.

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feifan
IMHO, well deserved. A focus on doing right by the users.

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rachellaw
that's an American dream story there

the irony of moving from wiretapping ukraine to corporate wiretapping by
facebook (and possibly NSA) is palpable though. pretty sure facebook just
bought whatsapp to get the giant phonebook directory...

~~~
Dewie
> that's an American dream story there

Even a broken clock is right sometimes.

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benched
What was it that triggered such a verbose non-discussion of a non-controversy
in this thread?

~~~
TheBiv
The title. People have their own opinions of why saying 1. Be poor 2. ???? 3.
Be rich. Is counterproductive to helping other replicate their success.

Other people read the story and are inspired by the title and so they feel a
connection with it.

Other people want to troll! :)

