A lot of what I experienced growing up in the U.S.S.R. and coming to the U.S. as an immigrant actually reflects itself in Whatsapp. Experiences from our youth shape what we do later in life. Jan Koum More Quotes by Jan Koum More Quotes From Jan Koum I want to do one thing, and do it well. Jan Koum one-thing wells want A lot of times people start out with a lot of good ideas, but then they don't execute. They lose the purity of their vision. You end up running around in circles. Jan Koum circles running ideas No one wakes up excited to see more advertising, no one goes to sleep thinking about the ads they’ll see tomorrow. Jan Koum wake-up sleep thinking I didnt have a computer until I was 19 - but I did have an abacus. Jan Koum abacus computer I grew up in a society where everything you did was eavesdropped on, recorded, snitched on. I had friends when we were kids getting into trouble for telling anecdotes about Communist leaders. Jan Koum anecdotes communist-leaders kids Marketing and press kicks up dust. It gets in your eye, and then you’re not focusing on the product. Jan Koum marketing dust eye Be simple and reliable Jan Koum simple You don't have to give us your name and we don't ask for your email address. We don't know your birthday. We don't know your home address. We don't know where you work. We don't know your likes, what you search for on the internet or collect your GPS location. None of that data has ever been collected and stored by WhatsApp, and we really have no plans to change that. Jan Koum gps data home We focus a lot on the quality of experience, speed, reliability. It’s not sexy from a lot of people’s perspective, it’s not glitzy in the feature set, but it’s what people come to rely on. Jan Koum sexy perspective people Advertising isnt just the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought. At every company that sells ads, a significant portion of their engineering team spends their day tuning data mining, writing better code to collect all your personal data. Jan Koum engineering team writing Communication is at the very core of our society. That's what makes us human. Jan Koum us human communication society At WhatsApp, our engineers spend all their time fixing bugs, adding new features and ironing out all the little intricacies in our task of bringing rich, affordable, reliable messaging to every phone in the world. That's our product, and that's our passion. Your data isn't even in the picture. We are simply not interested in any of it. Jan Koum picture passion time world The F-word here is focus. Jan Koum here focus The encryption genie is out of the bottle. Jan Koum genie bottle out encryption 'WhatsApp' began as a simple idea: ensuring that anyone could stay in touch with family and friends anywhere on the planet, without costs or gimmicks standing in the way. Jan Koum friends family simple way I grew up in a country where I remember my parents not being able to have a conversation on the phone. The walls had ears, and you couldn't speak freely. Jan Koum parents you speak remember Our phones are so intimately connected to us, to our lives. Putting advertising on a device like that is a bad idea. You don't want to be interrupted by ads when you're chatting with your loved ones. Jan Koum loved bad you advertising Anybody can build a company and sell the company the next day. That doesn't make you special, it doesn't make you unique, it doesn't make you all that great. Jan Koum day great you unique A lot of my time, effort, and focus is spent on 'WhatsApp'. And that, to me, is more valuable and rewarding than to work on anything else. Jan Koum me focus work time Nobody should have the right to eavesdrop, or you become a totalitarian state - the kind of state I escaped as a kid to come to this country where you have democracy and freedom of speech. Jan Koum nobody you democracy freedom
