Your name may not be as well known as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg or Jack Ma; but its creation is marking an era in world communication. That’s why we bring you 30 phrases from Jan Koum, the creator of whatsapp, to inspire you to fight for your ideas.
Jan Koum’s story was marked by much self-consciousness. He was born in the Ukraine, part of the former Soviet Union, where the situation was extremely complicated and they controlled all communication to the maximum.
If you want to know a little more about its history, click here.
As you will see in these phrases by Jan Koum, all his experiences allowed him to have a clear focus on what WhatsApp would be, and what it would not be.
30 phrases by Jan Koum to inspire you to fight for your ideas.
- I want to do one thing and do it well.
- Communication is at the core of our society. That is what makes us human.
- Advertising is not just the interruption of aesthetics. It is an insult to your intelligence and a disruption to your train of thought. At every company that sells ads, a significant portion of their engineering team spends their days fine-tuning the data mining; writing better codes to collect all your personal data.
- Anyone can build a company and sell it the next day. That doesn’t make you special; it doesn’t make you unique; doesn’t make you cool.
- Our team has always believed that neither cost nor distance should stop people from connecting with their friends and loved ones; and we will not rest until everyone, everywhere; have the opportunity to do so.
- For everyone who wants to use WhatsAppwe will do our best to be a truly amazing customer to them.
- At first I had a lot of fun learning about networking, security, scalability and other “nerdy” stuff.
Phrases by Jan Koum #8.
- I didn’t have a computer until I was 19 years old; but he did have an abacus.
- It is important that people have the freedom to use whatever product they want. We don’t have issues with other people using other apps; as long as they keep using WhatsApp.
- Many times, people start with many good ideas; but in the end they are not executed. They lose the purity of their vision and end up running in circles.
- A lot of what I experienced growing up in the Soviet Union and coming to the US as an immigrant; actually reflected in WhatsApp. The experiences of our youth shape what we do later in life.
- In some countries, WhatsApp it is like oxygen.
- I grew up in a society where all you did was eavesdrop; of recordings and go unnoticed. When we were kids, we had friends who got into trouble for telling stories about communist leaders.
- I grew up in a country where there was no advertising.
Phrases by Jan Koum #15.
- There were positive aspects of living a possession-free life. For example, it gave us the opportunity to focus on education.
- When there is advertising, you, the client; you are the product
- No one wakes up excited to see more advertising. No one goes to sleep thinking about the ads they will see tomorrow.
- When I was a child and trying to communicate with my family in the Soviet Union, it was very difficult. Had to use long distance phone companies that were expensive and impractical.
- At WhatsApp, our engineers spend all their time fixing bugs, adding new features, and solving all the little complexities in our task. Which is to bring affordable and reliable messaging to every phone in the world. That is our product and that is our passion. Your data is not even in the panorama. We’re just not interested in any of that.
- What makes our product work is the way that we are very focused on messaging and being a replacement for conventional text messages.
- A great deal of my time, effort, and focus; I dedicate it to ‘WhatsApp’. And that, for me, is more valuable and rewarding than working on anything else.
Phrases by Jan Koum #22.
- I have many regrets and things I wish I could go back and change; but I have also worked a lot and tried to improve.
- People appreciate a good product; a stable system.
- Somehow, you can think of the end-to-end encryption, as an honor to what communication was in the past.
- The extremely high engagement of WhatsApp users and its rapid growth; they are powered by the simple, powerful and instant messaging capabilities we provide.
- We’re not interested in bombarding our users with ‘Hello, play this game, play this game, play this game.’ It gets annoying. It gets in the way of the message. And it gets in the way of staying in touch with people who are important to you.
- The hard part for us is adding features without complicating the product.
- To everyone I know who uses ‘WhatsApp’, I ask a question: ‘How did you find out about it?’ And they say: “My friends, my sister or my brother; someone I know chased me to install it.” We believe there is more power when we grow organically.
- We continue to grow. In countries like China, where we are not doing very well; we focus on the long term.
- As long as our user base continues to grow; at some point it will have a critical mass; will bow down; and people will simply have to use WhatsApp because their friends are using WhatsApp.
And remember, if you are really interested in creating your own business, you can read our book “How to create a company while working: Discover how to manage your time, manage your money and motivate yourself while creating a company and working for another” , where you will find all the information you need to found your own company, without having to leave your job.
