"We're the most atypical Silicon Valley company you'll come across," Acton told Wired in a December interview that the magazine will publish next month in its U.K edition. "We were founded by thirty somethings; we focused on business sustainability and revenue rather than getting big fast; we've been incognito almost all the time; we're mobile first; and we're global first."
The pair started WhatsApp in 2009, two years after they left their jobs at Yahoo Inc. and five years after Facebook got its start in Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room. The service is simple. People use it to send text, photo or video messages to their contacts, bypassing text messaging charges and other fees from wireless carriers.
"WhatsApp is simple, secure, and fast. It does not ask you to spend time building up a new graph of your relationships; instead, it taps the one that's already there. Jan and Brian's decisions are fueled by a desire to let people communicate with no interference," writes Goetz, who along with Sequoia also stands to reap a hefty sum from the deal.
