About a Man Who Lived to Adventure in Life - Brian Acton
“My mother opened an air transport company, my grandmother built a golf course. Entrepreneurial and risk-taking are in my blood, ”he said in an interview for the press. So far, the risk he took has paid off handsomely. And he probably hasn't said the last word yet.
1. Photo of Acton from his student days
Young Brian spent his childhood and early youth in Michigan where he graduated from Lake Howell High School and then computer science from Stanford University in 1994. Prior to that, he also studied at the University of Central Florida and the University of Pennsylvania (1).
His mother, who ran a prosperous shipping company, encouraged her son to start his own business. This one, however, remained in 1992. System Administrator at Rockwell International, then worked product tester at Apple Inc. and Adobe systems. In 1996, becoming the forty-fourth employee, was hired by Yahoo!.
In 1997 he met Yana Kuma, his later longtime friend, an immigrant from Ukraine. He convinced him to join Yahoo! as an infrastructure engineer and dropped out of San Jose State University. Both of them worked together in the company for a total of ten years, solving many problems in the IT field.
When the Internet bubble burst in 2000, Acton, who had previously invested heavily in dot-com, lost millions. In September 2007, Koum and Acton decided to leave Yahoo! They traveled around South America for a year and spent their time having fun. In January 2009, Kum bought himself an iPhone. Influenced by these micro-investments, he realized that the nascent App Store had great potential and would soon be fully realized. new mobile app industry.
Following this line of thought, Acton and Koum came up with the Messages app. They decided that the name WhatsApp would be perfect for their joint project because it sounds like a common question in English. What's happening? ("How are you?").
At that time, too, there was a story that is often passed on as a case study for young inventors and entrepreneurs. In 2009, Acton and Koum volunteered to work for Facebook but were turned down. Like many disillusioned candidates, Brian used Twitter to express his frustration.
“Facebook rejected me. It was a great opportunity to meet wonderful people. I'm looking forward to my next adventure in life," he tweeted (2).
2. Acton's frustrated tweet after being rejected by Facebook
When the duo agreed to sell their WhatsApp to Facebook five years later for $19 billion, many pointed out with derision that in 2009 they might have gotten it all for a lot less...
Star App Store
The creators of WhatsApp have taken a fresh look at communication between smartphones. Privacy was their absolute priority.
Their service hasn't changed much since 2009, apart from a few minor additions in newer versions. Thus, the user does not need to provide the application with any exact data about himself, such as first and last name, gender, address or age - just a phone number is enough. Not even an account name is required—everyone logs in with a ten-digit number.
The application quickly gained popularity in Europe and other continents. Already at the beginning of 2011, WhatsApp was a real star of the App Store, winning a permanent place in the top ten free apps.
In March 2015, using the invention of Acton and Koum (3), ca. 50 billion messages – experts even began to predict that WhatsApp, along with similar programs, would soon lead to the disappearance of traditional SMS like Skype, which changed the face of international telephony (it is estimated that the rapid development of applications has led to losses of telecom operators dozens of times). billion dollars).
However, by the time this impressive result was achieved, the brand was no longer owned by Acton and Koum. His sale to Facebook in 2014 made Brian a lot of money. Forbes estimates that he owned more than 20% of the company's shares, giving him a net worth of approximately $3,8 billion. In the Forbes Forbes ranking, Acton is now one of the third hundred richest people in the world.
Privacy First
The protagonist of this text left WhatsApp in September 2017. On March 20, 2018, Forbes reported that Acton publicly supported the "delete Facebook" movement. "The time has come. #deletefacebook, ”says his entry on ... Facebook. Such a statement was widely commented on and circulated on social networks when a scandal erupted over the disclosure of the data of its users by the well-known portal Cambridge Analytica.
Meanwhile, Brian has been involved in a new initiative for several months - Signal Fundwhich he remained president and which he supported financially. She is responsible for building and maintaining the Signal app, which is valued for protecting privacy. Acton works very closely with the developers of this application. The 50 million dollars that he personally pumped into the project are not obligated to be returned to him, as he officially assures. The Foundation is a non-profit organization, which has been repeatedly emphasized by its president in many public statements.
“As more and more people live online, data protection and privacy are critical,” the Signal Foundation website says. “(…) Everyone deserves protection. We created our foundation in response to this global need. We want to initiate a new non-profit technology development model with a focus on privacy and data protection for everyone, everywhere.”
Help for families
There is little information about Acton's personal life and even other business activities other than WhatsApp. He is not among the well-known media stars of Silicon Valley.
The Stanford graduate is known to have a passion for investment and philanthropy. After WhatsApp was taken over by Facebook, it transferred nearly $290 million worth of shares from its shareholding to Silicon Valley Community Foundationwhich helped him create three charities.
He began his philanthropic work with sunlightwhich he founded in 2014 with his wife Tegan. The organization supports low-income families with children under the age of five, developing activities in the field of food security, access to housing and health care. From its assets, more and more amounts are transferred to help those in need - $6,4 million in 2015, $19,2 million in 2016 and $23,6 million in 2017.
Around the same time, Acton launched Family, a donor-supported charitable foundation. It has the same scope of activity as Sunlight Giving and also helps protect endangered animal species.
At the same time, Acton did not refuse interest in technology startups. Two years ago, he led a funding round for Trak N Tell, a telematics company specializing in vehicle tracking. Together with two other investors, he raised nearly $3,5 million for the company.
Never give up
You can find many motivational articles on the internet based on Acton's fate, his abandonment of Facebook, and his subsequent business success. For many, this is a story with encouraging morals and advice to never give up. He himself became a kind of symbol of perseverance and self-confidence, despite opposites and failures.
So if you've been rejected by a major corporation, if you've failed in business or science, remember that failure is temporary and you should never give up on your dreams. At least that's what people who want to find inspiration in this story say.
Based on the analysis of Brian's life so far, we can read here and there that if you fail today, if you are rejected, and yet you will not give up on your plans and stay in action, ignoring the failures, if you continue on your way , then success will come and taste better than if it came right away.
And when it does, it will not only be your victory, but also an inspiration to others – who knows, even an entire generation. After all, no one would have remembered Acton's bitter tweets in 2009 if he hadn't had a business triumph five years later. It was only in the context of what happened in 2014 that a captivating story was created that is told by everyone who wants to be inspired by it.
Because Acton's words - "I'm looking forward to the next adventure in my life" - took on meaning not when they were written, but only when this adventure actually happened. This is also probably not Brian's only and last adventure.
